Newsletter Advertising – Does Your Directory Deserve It?

As with any website, we as webmasters are always looking for new ways to bring quality traffic to our latest online creation – as directory owners, visibility of our sites (whether general or niche in nature) tend to make or break the success of our directory. In the infancy of a directory we tend to experience a huge surge of traffic and submissions, firstly because we realise the appeal of offering a freebie (in the form of a select quantity of free submissions) and secondly because to get our directory seen initially, we tell people about it via such methods such as forum posts, forum signatures and submission to directory of directories. During this initial period (and beyond) we also begin building back links (primarily from other free directories) in the long term effort of promoting our directory, increasing our SERPs and eventually obtaining a Google PageRank – a point in time when we are likely to consider whether it is now profitable to become a paid web directory.

Since 2005, I have been running a webmaster directory – a niche directory that now ranks in the top ten on Google (for the search term ‘webmaster directory’), has a PR5 (predicted to shortly become a PR6) and 1200+ unique, targeted (and most importantly) quality visitors each month. As with most directories I started small and I started free. As I improved and developed the site, both in terms of content and appearance, my visitors, SERPs and PR gradually increased leaving me with a niche directory that was not only popular but that also generated a rather reasonable amount of income.

As the ‘daddies’ of the general directory world, the Alive Directory and Aviva Directory are renowned general directories that many webmasters and directory owners aspire to. The reputations that they have earned in the directory community (and as Alive’s identification as an authority site by Google, something I’m sure Aviva will gain very shortly) is built not only on the quality, communication and reputation of their owners but also by their investment in promotion – mainly by the purchase of sitewide links on new and developing directories or relational sites. Unlike Chris and Jeff however (and I assume most of you out there) I simply do not have the financial backing to purchase a sitewide link on pretty much any directory website I see (although I have started to target other webmaster related sites and directories in a similar way). So how I wondered could I get my webmaster directory to be seen and visited by more paying visitors?

The answer and the conclusion that I came to was Newsletter Advertising – specifically a newsletter that was geared towards the content and niche of my directory. For the purposes of this exercise I choose a very popular webmaster newsletter that gets sent to over 500,000 webmasters interested in search engine and web promotion. The ability to get my directory banner shown to even a small proportion of these subscribes (I thought) would mean I would only need 10 or more sales on my directory in order to break even and cover the cost of the advertising banner purchase – a target and figure that I believed to be quite easily attainable.

Having designed and created a suitable animated GIF banner – something that reflected the design of my directory (so as to convey continuity) and that combined a few eye catching slogans (such as ‘Improve your SERPs and PR’ and ‘Attract quality, targeted traffic’, I then needed to decide on the position and location of the banner in the newsletter.

As with most newsletters there are usually multiple options available for positioning and banner location. As a general rule banners tend to differ in price based on their size and position – the closer to the top of the newsletter and the larger the banner or ad space the higher the likelihood that the position will cost more money as it will potentially be viewed by more people and hence clicked more times. My theory on the subject is somewhat different and hence reflected my choice of banner location. I went for a slightly cheaper banner positioned at the bottom of the newsletter – located at the very end of the newsletter article. My reasoning behind this was that once the reader has read the article they are more likely to click a banner once they have finished reading than when they are half way through reading (hence I decided against purchasing a position in the middle of the article). Finally I need to decide when I wanted my banner showing – I selected the newsletter published at the beginning of February 2007. Promoting at this point in time meant that the effects of the recent PageRank update had subsided and my site PR (along with inner PR’s) had settled due to the synchronisation of the Google data centres – this way I could be assured that every visitor was seeing the correct PR5 PageRank.

Then all I had to do was wait for the results.

As predicted, the majority of clicks occurred within the first 3 to 7 days (with the basis of my results covering the period 1st February 2007 to 17th February 2007). During this period I achieved 87 clicks. Not exactly a huge number considering the potential 500,000+ advertised subscribers that the newsletter apparently attracts. Of course the main importance behind the result was not how many clicks were achieved but how many conversations/sales were successfully made – this would truly give an indication of whether Newsletter Advertising was a suitable advertising and promotion method for directories.

In the run up to this advertising drive I had created an eye catching banner, selected (what I felt to be) the most appropriate type of newsletter publication and had deliberated the location of and the publishing date of my promotion – this had obviously not been enough as the result for the 17 day period was zero paid submissions and about 5 free reciprocal entries. Obviously all of these could have quite easily come from other referrals that were unrelated to the newsletter.

So why did it fail? Perhaps my directory was not good enough, perhaps I would have had better luck promoting a general directory, perhaps I had chosen the wrong newsletter to advertise in or perhaps people reading the newsletter simply didn’t have the understanding of how powerful web directories can be for a websites SERPs and PR. Ultimately I was slightly disappointed by the result (or lack there of) however some days later I had a discussion with a fellow directory owner – someone who owned a very strong PR6 general web directory (with similar submission prices to my own). He had had exactly the same idea as me and had decided to promote his directory (via a banner) in exactly the same newsletter (but in an earlier publication). Although it was no real consolation, he had experienced exactly the same lack of sales using this method and although it didn’t make up for the lose of advertising money and the failure to break even, it did set my mind at rest that the failure of this advertising wasn’t down to the quality of my directory but simply the visitors who had viewed it.

So does your directory deserve newsletter advertising? From my experience I’d say no – your directory probably deserves better!

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