A human readable sitemap is nothing else than a page, linked from the homepage, that is linking to all pages of your website. This kind of sitemap seems to be very important for search engines (even if it is called “human readable sitemap”).I have recently decided to add one to the Linkrain Web Directory, which you can see here. From my experience a HTML sitemap is important because of PageRank distribution. By creating a sitemap containing HTML links to all the pages of your website and by linking this page frm your homepage, it will surely get a good PageRank and pass this PageRank to all the pages listed on it.

Many websites don’t use a HTML sitemaps because it’s not important for them to have inner pages with PageRank but for a Web Directory it’s surely on of the most important factors. All those Web Directories built on an expired domains that have only one page (the homepage) with PageRank, are completly worthless. Getting a good inner PageRank is quite hard because you will need to get some quality backlinks for each of your pages and this can be really expensive (even if it’s something you will have to do).

After getting many of Linkrain’s categories linked by other websites and after achieving a PageRank for most of them, I decided to try if it’s possible to increase inner PageRank by adding a HTML sitemap to the directory. I had this idea after visiting Linkforever, a Web Directory which is offering a MOD for phpLD that creates a html sitemap within a few seconds after installing it (the cost of this mod is 15$).

Before buying this mod I checked nearly 50-60 categories of Linkforever, and all of them had at least a PageRank of 2. Even 3rd level categories had a PageRank of 2. After a quick look at their sitemap, I noticed that it achieved a PageRank of 4, and that it passed some of this juice to each categorie of the directory (of course there are also some categories without PageRank, but I think that these are new ones and that they will get a PageRank with the next Google PR update).

For a Web Directory, a html sitemap is not necessary, but surely very important and also an easy way to pass some of the PR juice to all categories.

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After writing about the amount of money I’ve spent to create the Linkrain Web Directory, let’s now talk about the earnings you can make with a only-6-months-old Web Directory. Before I’m going to tell you how much I earn only with the Directory, you should consider some very important keyfacts:

• Even if you have a great website, you won’t earn much if you don’t work hard on it.
• Linkrain has got a few sponsors, don’t expect that they will come to you and ask if they can become one of your sponsors. You have to promote your advertising space and at the same time find sponsors that have a website related to yours.
• The less you work on your websites, the less money you will make
• Before you are going to start a Web Directory, consider that the Directory Business is a really hard one (there are thousands of Web Directories out there) and making your Directory “better” than the others is not one of the easiest things to do.
• Too many webmasters are interested in PageRank. To make money you will need a good homepage PageRank (at least 5) and also innerpage PageRank

After the first 3 months, I did not make any money with Linkrain because traffic was really low and I had no PageRank yet. After the PageRank update in May, Linkrain jumped from 0 up to 5. Also many categories got a PageRank with the first update, which was the reason my first customers decided to add a link.

Ok, thats enough introduction to the Directory Business for now. Let’s talk about the earnings

• 600-700$/month from people that add a link to directory (17-18 regular listings and 2-3 featured listings each month)
• 300$/month from my main page sponsors (other web directories and related sites displayed on the main page of Linkrain)

Total: 900-1000$ each month

These are only the earnings of the Web Directory (blog earnings are not included). To get to this point I spent nearly 2.000$ which I got back within 2 months. Of course I could now stop to invest time, work and money into Linkrain, and earn nearly 1.000$ each month by doing nothing. Earnings would go down each month but I would surely make 5.000-6.000$ within the end of the year. But this is not my objective. Having a blog and a website which is becoming more popular evey day is a lot of fun, the major reason why I started and I’m still running this website.

Regarding the future earnings, I have a very positive prospective:

• The directory is not publishing any kind of advertisements yet. Only by displaying one Google Adsense Block in a good position, I could easily average 100$/month. I’m not going to do this anyway (or maybe not yet) because this could reduce the value of the directory and reduce the number of customers.
• By getting PageRank 6 with the next update or with a future Google PR update, customers would increase a lot and also my sponsors would pay more to list their service on the main page.
• The directory is still using a free template. Once the custom template is up, customers will surely increase.

In my opinion, it is easily possible to create a one-year-old Web Directory which is generating 2.000$ of revenue each month. I will write a new post in 6 months to let you know if I reached this goal

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Starting a Web Directory is still a good money maker even if many webmaster think that the directory business is not profitable anymore. Basically they think this way because they created a directory and did not succeed in making it unique and popular. At the beginning, running a directory could be frustrating because you won’t sell any links even if you spend a lot of money in it’s promotion. On the other hand, once your directory is popular, it could become the big earner in your website portfolio.

Let’s skip to the main question of this article (the earnings of a web directory, will be discussed in another post): how much money do I need to invest to create a quality web directory?

Many people create a directory network instead of creating one single web directory. The benefit of a directory network is that you can create a lot of directories that look the same, and offer a submission to all these for a cheap price. Also in this case, you will need to promote only one of them and than link all your directories from the promoted one. A directory network can bring quite good money, but it will never beat the earnings of one single professional quality directory.

In my opinion it’s always better to focus on one single directory and try to make it as unique and popular as possible. Here is a list of what I’ve spent to create the Linkrain Web Directory:

• 10$ for a domain name at Godaddy
• 75$ for a directory script ( PHP Link Directory) with full rights
• 100$ for a Deeplink Mod (a modification which allows users to submit also inner pages of their site and not only the main page). This mod can also be installed on your own if you are a good PHP coder or if you have already some experience with the “php link directory” script.
• 400$ for a custom template (which is not online yet) and a logo. Also this can be done by yourself if you already have some experience with “php link directory” templates and if you are good in designing with Photoshop.
• 1.000$ in promotion. I don’t really know how much I’ve spend in promotion yet, but with 1.000$ you can get some really good results. At the beginning you should not spend them in Adwords but only in permanent links, blog posts and some cheap monthly links. Once you have an established directory, you could also start to sponsor Wordpress themes (or other kind of templates) and to spend some money in a Pay Per Click advertising service such as Google Adwords.

TOTAL: 1.585$

If you think that this is a lot of money to start only a web directory, wait to see how much you can earn with a 6 months old and well promoted one (article that I’m going to write soon). If you are to lazy to come back, subscribe to the full RSS Feed.

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