Revenue sharing plugin idea - responses needed

[Bruceper]

I had this idea a while ago, but this only became really possible with plugins. Please allow me to explain and please read the entire post before you reply.

I REALLY want feedback on this one.

First, understand that a plugin does NOT work unless you enable it. So if you don't enable it, nothing would happen.

The idea is to have a plugin, that would allow a single website to connect to your IndexU site where the plugin is running.

This plugin would send a copy of your directory structure back to a website.

The website would then compile all the directory structures and offer users a way to submit their listing to potentially thousands of IndexU directories.

A user submitting their listing would pay a fee, and part of this fee would be credited to whoever the listing was submitted to.

This could be done with basic listings, or with premium and sponsored listings as well.

Yes the cost would have to be within a good price range. But the more targeted your directory is, the more of the share you would receive.

Lets just say for example someone wanted to submit their listing to directories with the category Webhosting and the cost for submission was $59. There could be 1000 sites with a webhosting category.

Now lets just assume it's a 50/50 split. That would be 2.95 cents per user. Not a lot of money is it?

But what if the user wanted to pay for a submission to any directory with a category of Dodge Trucks. I bet there's not more than a dozen directories with a category like that. That would work out to be $2.49 per user.

Yes a general directory could make up for the income with volume.

Now how about premium/sponsored listings? Some users charge ridiculous fees and that just wouldn't work with a system like this. We would need to set a price and force the cost at that. Perhaps they could purchase their listing at $59 and then say $5 extra for each site that they want. If they wanted an additional 20 sites then they would be picked at random.

Using the above example that would earn each site $3.98 for each submission.

Of course the user and the directory owner would be sent a report each week of their activity.

Now don't forget, premium and sponsored listings can be set to recurring payments. So you'd make money each and every month.

Please note, any numbers that I used above are not real. I just pulled numbers out of my head and used them.

The one issue I see is that of submission flooding. If a website signed up for a category like webhosting and their link was suddenly added to 20,000 sites overnight then Google would see something fishy.

So perhaps a slow submission process would be required. Perhaps at a rate of x amount of sites per day or week.

So what do you think? Give me your total and honest opinion.

[Bruceper]

No opinions, thoughts or ideas?

Another idea that was floated was that we could offer a lower cost submission service and simply send it out to any directory with no income earned. This type of service would simply allow users to get submissions quickly, and promote a paid service as well.

Another idea was that we could charge a higher fee for a higher page rank.

[FSGDAG]

I just read this now and haven't thought it completely through yet, but at first thought it seems like a good idea.

Regardless if the payment amounts per submission would be low or high, its probably more than what some people are currently making. There would be very little work that the actual directory owner would need to do, so making ANY money for doing nothing ( regardless of the amount ) is a plus for me


You have the option to opt-in or out of it be enabling / disabling the plugin. If it wasn't working out or for whatever reason you needed to take a 'break' from the program, you *might* be able to just de-activate the plugin until you were ready to start again.

I'm going to think about this more so I can see if I have any additional ideas or come up with any 'cons' to the idea. But I definitely like this on first thought

[Bruceper]

Yes, since it's a plugin it could be easily disabled to turn it off any time a user wanted.

[mpdaddy]

Bruce

I have read the post 3 times and like Frank, I needed a little time to digest the whole thing and see the whole picture. Since I do not have an active IndexU site, I don't know how valuable my opinion would be.

1: Positive - This would be a good marketing tool for IndexU. I am sure you would get people buying the script for this feature alone. I mean, who is going to pass up the free money. I would, but that is a different story. With that, may come a negative side.

2: The negative - You get people buying the script and putting up multiple link farms filled with categories and links from dmoz and making money for doing nothing. You would have to have a moderator to approve and deny sites being included in the revenue sharing. The script could still send the submissions to anyone who had the plugin activated, but only the sites included in the program would get a portion of the revenue. You would have to have some standards set for inclusion into the program.

3: You would have to have a moderator for the link submissions. I would guess there would be a large number of sites submitted on a daily basis. Frank knows what it is like to have a backlog of a couple hundred sites to approve or deny. The task would be tedious and boring.

4: The person moderating the listings would need to get paid too. Let's just say you pay the moderator 1% (pulling that number from nowhere) of each link that is approved from the submitted links. The moderator would need to be moderated because he might be broke that week and needs the money for strippers . Maybe I am thinking too far into it, but I could see a moderator approving junky links because he gets paid for each listing he approves.

Maybe you could set up a forum for users of the program so if the moderator starts slipping his standards with the approvals, the users can voice their opinions to him/her and you or whomever can get him back on track.

5: Can this plugin even be created? In my opinion with some effort in setting standards, it would be a great program and a revenue builder for IndexU. But, can it be done? I don't even know where I would start with a plugin like that. I have a general idea of how price comparison sites work where you submit a feed file and submit it via ftp. Then the comparison site reads from that file to create it's listings. Maybe it would work in a similar fashion. Maybe you already have the plugin done and I am just wasting space with this paragraph.


Overall, I think you are onto something good, if it can be done. I would set the standards high and lower them if needed. Make sure you have a detailed plan on listing standards. Make sure it is moderated fairly. Make sure you listen to the program members about requests and issues they have with how it is run.

One last thing. Can I be the moderator? I am broke and I need money for these greedy money hungry strippers.

Regards
Wayne

[Bruceper]

The plugin is not written, and it will take a bit of time to do. Dody seems to think it's possible and the way I see it is that IndexU would connect to the site to check for new listings, and not the other way around.

This "should" prevent some issues and once the connection is established it can be two way after that.

I think the sites that are added should be approved, and not just any site can use the plugin. Or perhaps approved sites are the ones who get paid and none of the others do.

But the one thing I do NOT want to see, is IndexU turning into a FFA (Free for all) link site. Those died and for good reason, they were just spam farms that allowed any jackass to connect to them.

So we'll have to think it over, and I'd be glad to hear any ideas, submissions or thoughts.

[FSGDAG]

Something would need to be put into place to ensure that not just anyone can purchase IndexU, install it with the 'out of box' experience, and get paid. Its amazing to me when I look around at most of the PHPLD directory sites and its like they purchased the script, grabbed a free template and that was it.

I also dont think that many site owners would want to participate in it, if they knew their link was going to be placed on a bunch of sloppy directories.

I guess what it boils down to is somehow keeping the integrity of the program so that it doesn't loose its value.

[Bruceper]

Any other thoughts or opinions on this?

Here's my latest thoughts.

1) The ability for a user to submit a link to a central site/page and that listing is sent out to ALL directories that match the link. The submitting user would pay a small fee ($20) and the sites that get the listings would receive nothing.

What this would do is give new sites the ability to add content for pretty much nothing, which is one of the biggest issues with a directory.

Note that the site would not be approved on your own directory automatically, but it would be put in queue for approval.

2) The second option would be to offer a service where users pay a premium to have their site listed on directories with a minimum page rank. So lets assume that the user only wants to submit links to directories that are PR4 or higher and there are 20 directories that are PR4 or higher. For arguements sake lets say the fee is $100.

There are
15 PR 4 sites
3 PR 5 sites
1 PR 6 site
1 PR 7 site

The PR7 site would get 4 times the payment the PR4 site would. The PR6 site would get 3 times the payment, the PR5 sites would get 2 times the payment and the PR 4 sites would get 1 times the payment.

Yes this is some funky math, but this rewards sites with higher page rank and more traffic/visibility.

Assume out of that $100 fee that Nicecoder keeps $40, that leaves $60 to be split up.

The PR4 sites get $2 each, the PR 5 sites get $4 each, the PR 6 site gets $6 and the PR 7 site gets $8. Yes there's some change to be split up, but I didn't feel like doing the math.

Give me ideas on how to make this work and make it fair. It could be based on home page PR or subcategory PR which on a LOT of directories is near 0.

3) Should we hand pick the best/nicest directories to work in the program? Users can submit their site and we would review them for originality and quality and approve them only if they met certain standards? What are those standards and how do we keep it fair?

For users to be willing to pay, please remember that there has to be a large amount of sites that they will get a submission to.

I think overall, #1 works out the best and gives users the opportunity to get new listings and then to promote themselves to the link owner. This comes dangerously close to the FFA issue because the user ends up with a barrage of emails. I think we could work something out so that the user could check their control panel (on the submission site) for specific offers.

And with #1 we could also hand pick the sites that we allow. This is the way I'm leaning right now as it ends up being available to almost anyone and would keep the cost very low.

[FSGDAG]

Any other thoughts or opinions on this?

Here's my latest thoughts.

1) The ability for a user to submit a link to a central site/page and that listing is sent out to ALL directories that match the link. The submitting user would pay a small fee ($20) and the sites that get the listings would receive nothing.

What this would do is give new sites the ability to add content for pretty much nothing, which is one of the biggest issues with a directory.

I really have to go back and re-read this post so that I understand all of it a little better before commenting, but this particular one has me a little concerned.

What is my incentive for participating in this, if I receive nothing for the listing. Obtaining content isn't really that hard once you know how too. The real issue is getting traffic. Atleast in my opinion.

Like I said, I haven't really thought about it completely yet, but I'm just thinking off the top of my head, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to want a little piece of the pie if I'm going to participate.