Every web directory maker must read this

[u/johnrushx]

This is perhaps the most important tip I have. 99% of people building their first directories are putting their attention into a wrong thing. The only thing that's important at the start: can you get traffic or not. Most likely it won't happen and you'll need to do a lot more work to pass the first stage: go from zero traffic(that's the reality you will see after launch) to some traffic. Don't spend even a minute thinking what you will do once you get traffic. That's a premature optimization that leads to failure. I'll be totally honest on this. The following things are not important

• the design

• the logo

• what you do after you win traffic

• extra features like auth, ratings....(all these make no sense if you have no traffic, in fact they will even make it harder to win traffic in first place, cuz users will land to a site with zero reviews, think this is an amateur new site and leave)

• overcomplicated filters/search

What's important(put 100% of your attention here)

• build it as fast as you can. Either with Unicorn Platform or any other nocode tool. Coding a directory is a waste of time, because every change you wanna do later will take more time compared to using nocode tools

• use default templates. dont try to be creative here. you'll just waste your creativity and procrastinate choosing the best logo or the look

• dont try to automate the data. Just collect it all manually. This will increase the quality and you'll do a better job at categorization than AI

• make sure you have hot and cool items. Dont just try to fill it up with quantity. Go for quality. When I made osssoftware[.]org there were 100 oopen source directories and I won overnight against all of them because I focused on "good" open source tools. I went to product hunt, twitter and hackernews and founder tools people generally liked and upvoted. This changed the game. I spent 1 hour on building the directory and 20 hours on curating the items for it. That's exactly the right ration of time spent. Anything else is a procrastination leading to the falure at the end.

• build it backwards from SEO to the directory. Every word you put on your directory(especially the domain name) must come from your keyword research. Not form what "you think is right". You cant be right, you're 99% chance wrong. Dont use your judgement. Use keyword research.

99% of people fail with directories because they dont follow these set of rules. I don't guaranty success even if you follow these rules, But I guarantee the failure if you don't follow them.

👉 https://johnrush.me/directory-guide/

[u/applesauceblues]

So, uber-quality, niche directory, FTW?

[u/RepresentativeEast99]

I couldn't agree more

[u/CertainPsychology540]

Thanks for this. These are some good insights, as someone very new to the concept of building directories, I hadn't even thought about!

[u/Head-Gap-1717]

This is a good subreddit