What Is A Directory?

From Wikipedia "A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links.

A web directory is not a search engine, and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords, instead it lists web sites by category and subcategory. The categorization is usually based on the whole web site, rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only one or two categories. Web directories often allow site owners to directly submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness."

Web directories were the foundation and the core of the Internet (until search engines came along, that is). With the wide spread use of search engines and the diminishing influence of the web directories such as Yahoo, the question of whether to use a web directory on a website is a legitimate one.

From the perspective of a webmaster, a major consideration would be the functionality of a directory. How useful is a web directory to your website visitor?  Not everything installed on a website has to be of a huge and earth shaking visitor experience, does it? So a moderate or even small benefit might be sufficient to warrant installing one if the costs associated with it are low enough.

The most important factor for a webmaster, and the one which BungeeBones excels at, is how to lower the costs associated with the directory feature so that the question of whether to include one or not is determined by the benefit of it compared to its cost. The BungeeBones web directory widget is a free "web widget" that installs with just a few lines of code. BungeeBones maintains the directory (for free) so that the webmasters who have installed it have zero maintenance. The only costs of the BungeeBones web directory widget is the little bit of time it takes to install the small code blocks into one of their own web page templates and the cost of the bandwidth used to retrieve the data for the visitors.

The analysis of whether to include a BungeeBones web directory widget would not be complete without talking about the income opportunities it offers. The BungeeBones web directory widget provides both a service to webmasters and an opportunity to sell traffic to webmasters. There are only two types of visitors that would be looking at the widget directory on your website - those that have a website and those that don't and we would like the opportunity to use your web content as a way to introduce them to our widget.

We would like for you to help us reach those that have a website. You can help us by offering them a free link in the directory and a free widget for their website. To help keep category size down to a reasonable level and for a better user experience we allow for certain categories to become "paid categories" as they fill. You can then offer webmasters placement in these paid categories and we give you a hefty 50% commission on any sales your site makes for the whole time that link remains a paying link.

So, in summary, we looked at the history of directories and how they relate to search engines. We looked at their benefit to users and to webmasters. We looked at finding a cost to benefit ratio of installing and operating one and found that to be very favorable. And lastly we looked at the income opportunities it creates. The final answer, then, can vary depending on the specific need of the webmaster. Some webmasters need only traffic and need to find the lowest priced traffic they can. The BungeeBones system's traffic is derived from the widget directories. It grows with time as new widgets are installed. The value of the traffic also increases over time. Other webmasters have traffic and want to earn income from it. The BungeeBones system is a "pay per action" one where they get paid when the customers (other webmasters) perform an action (become a paid link). Most webmasters are somewhere in between these two groups and can benefit from both the traffic they receive and the modest income they will earn from hosting the widget directory on their site.

So, register and submit your link(s) to the directory absolutely free. Use the easy form to create a widget directory for your website in just a few minutes. Then, kick back and leave the "driving" to us!

RETURN TO ARTICLE INDEX PAGE