AP 0798: Should I Charge for the Business Directory on My Website?

AskPat 798 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody, Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 798 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

We have a great question today from Michael, but before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks. You know they serve me and millions of other companies with helping us manage our business finances. From easily keeping track of the expenses, to keeping track of the income of course, but also invoicing. That's one of my favorite things that I've been doing lately through FreshBooks, is the invoicing. So in less than thirty seconds, I can send a bill to somebody for somebody who I've coached, or a company that I've consulted with, and it makes it really easy to create that professional invoice too.

But also, I get to see who has already paid, of course, and also who has already opened or not opened that invoice, which makes it really easy to follow up with, and then actually just continue to ask that person to check out the invoice if they haven't opened it yet.

So, I highly recommend checking out FreshBooks for all of those things. If you want to check them out for free, for thirty days, give them a free trial at FreshBooks.com/askpat. Make sure you enter “AskPat” in the How Did You Hear About Us section.

All right, now here is today's question from Michael.

Michael: Hey Pat, this is Michael from www.emailoverloadsolutions.com. I run a small niche site focused on providing tips, techniques, and resources to help people better manage their email. On my site, I have a resources page, where I have links to book and tools that I recommend including a few with affiliate links. I'm clear to always disclose this. But, I also have a section listing some firms that provide training and products around email overload, and so far I've just added in links when people email me and ask me to list their firms.

Now I'm thinking that maybe I should just start to charge them a small fee to get listed on my site. Sort of like a directory of service firms where people pay to get listed. What do you think about this approach? Is this worth considering, should I look at getting people to pay a small fee to get listed or should I just be happy to have them be listed on my site and just ask to link back? What are your thoughts on this? Thanks so much, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Michael, thank you so much for your question and congrats for getting a site up and getting people interested in getting on your resource page. Creating a directory and charging people to be there is something that I've actually done before. I've done that on a couple of sites. My Security Guard Training HQ website, where I tried to automate that process, which kind of failed and didn't work out very well, so I actually don't have the directory there working anymore. I found it much easier and more profitable to go through just regular AdSense advertising and working with companies one on one for affiliate marketing on that particular site.

On another site, actually my original site at www.greenexamacademy.com, I initially started with some private advertising in a similar way that you're doing it. So instead of having a resource page where I listed all of these companies that were reaching out to me, because they wanted to get in front of my audience as well, similar to these companies in your audience, instead of a resource page though, I was selling banner advertisements, because those were more popular back in the 2008-2009 era.

People would pay to get access to a 150 x 150 pixel advertisement that they would create, that would then go into the sidebar, or the header, or on specific pages that were related to their product. For example, the Classes page that I had. And so, that's the only difference here, that I feel. I feel that you can, on your resource page, include a link to these websites in exchange for a dollar amount. Why not?

Why not ask them to do that? And that way you can start to begin to create a little bit of an income stream here, and you can even create it to a point where, maybe there's a huge list and then there's one that's featured at the top that would pay a premium price to have that.

Now I will recommend that if you do reach out to these companies and do this individually, I wouldn't just send an email out to all of them at the same time, and say, hey guys I have this opportunity now. I would actually try to get on the phone with them, because that way you are actually speaking with them. You're talking with them about your audience and this page that you want to create, and that you have traffic going to this site already.

It's going to be very beneficial for them to hear from you, plus you're just building that relationship. And then, I would actually offer them a payment for several months to be on this page. I wouldn't just do one month. I would do, for example, if you can, try to do a year for a specific dollar amount. Now that dollar amount is going to depend on the amount of traffic that's coming to that site, is there anything else beyond just a link on that page that they're going to get access to, for example, your email address, or your email list, and other things like that.

Maybe you could also offer banner advertising on that particular page or on other pages on your site as well. So, there's a lot of things you can do here. I would think through what the total package would be and how much that would cost. Perhaps there's one spot available for one of those featured spots at the top, which maybe will be in a different box or a different shade of color or something. That way you have an additional thing that will anchor a price point and then maybe people won't bite on that, but they will on the other ones, because of the price, and the fact that they're getting traffic potentially coming to their site.

So, yeah. You don't have to be charging them if you want to get a link back instead. You’re more than welcome to ask for that too. I feel like it's just what's most important to you, and what do you need right now? If you are maybe ranking number three or four for certain keywords that you really want to rank number one for, well then maybe the link back would be a lot more important for you right now, so that you can climb over those competitors in Google.

Again, it's completely up to you, but you are more than allowed to charge for having those companies advertise, because that's essentially what they're doing on your website. But I would reach out to them individually. I would also make sure that you get a contract signed, and when you create these deals, you know, maybe you would say something like, oh, well every month it's going to be $50, but if you go for six months, I'll take $50 off of a single month. So, you get a month free, for example, for every six months that you book, and that way it's up there, and it's already making money for you.

Now the other option is to reach out to them and have an affiliate link. If you have not yet seen if they have an affiliate program, check. Because then that would be an easy way for you to make money and know that you would be making money through selling these  products by having people go through your link anyway.

Then you can actually keep track of, well, are people clicking through it? If not, or if you're not getting any affiliate income from those companies, well then you would want to change to have those companies pay to get space on your site for traffic, because it's their fault that they're not converting, but you can actually make money from them by having them featured on your site, if those aren't converting the other way around.

So, hopefully that all makes sense, but just keeping track the whole time Michael is what you want to be doing. And, yeah, I wish you all the best. This is really cool, a great opportunity for you. So, try it one at a time and see what happens, tweak along the way, and keep optimizing.

Thank you. I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. And for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd love potentially featured here on the show, just head over to www.AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

Thanks again to FreshBooks for offering a 30-day free trial. Check them out. That link once again is www.FreshBooks.com/askpat and make sure you enter “AskPat” in the How Did You Hear About Us section. And then, finally, here's a quote to finish off the day by Martin Luther King, Jr. He said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Take care guys and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.