23
Aug
10

When Free Isn’t Good Enough

By Joshua Steimle 8 Comments Categories: Marketing

This post is a question, more than an answer. I’m a bit confused as to why, when I’m giving away something for free that has real value, people aren’t going for it as much as I would have suspected they would.

My latest venture launched a week or so ago at DeclareMedia.com. We are building tens of thousands of niche business directories. We offer two types of listings; free, and paid. Free listings get a full page where they list their business name, contact info, business description (5,000 word limit–not exactly limited), and a link to their website. Paid or “featured” listings get the same thing, except they get a summary that shows up prominently on the homepage, in the case of state or metro directories, as well as on the city-level pages. National directories offer paid listings at the national (homepage) and state levels.

During the past week we’ve launched over 700 directories. Most of these have not been publicized or promoted in any substantive way. But in the case of several (less than 10) I have sent an email out to potentially interested individuals. And yet the directories about which I have emailed in many cases have no more than a single listing, and in some cases have not a single listing. In some cases I have sent a message to upwards of 60 people about a single directory, without more than 5 people signing up. One such case is UtahSEOFirms.com. I run a Facebook group for Utah SEO professionals, and it has around 60 members. I sent a message out to all of them announcing the new directory. Granted, the directory isn’t ranking terribly well for “utah seo” yet. It’s down at #33. But it is #1 in a search for “utah seo firms”. In other words, if you own a Utah SEO firm, you would want to be on this directory. It’s relevant, it’s got at least some good rankings, and it’s likely to improve in the rankings where it isn’t already #1.

However, only two people (other than myself and an employee of mine) have created free listings. One person has create a paid listing, so I’m not worried about them. But why only three listings? Why not 10, 20, or 30? There are certainly a lot of SEO firms in Utah that should be interested in listing themselves, definitely more than three. In my mind, there are a few reasons why this could have happened:

1. The Facebook message malfunctioned and didn’t get sent out.

2. People misunderstood, didn’t realize there was a free option, and never even checked out the site.

3. People checked out the site, but the “free” part wasn’t visible enough.

4. People just thought it all sounded spammy and quickly deleted the message.

Now, being part of the target audience myself, I don’t find items #2 and #4 realistic. If someone sent me a message about a new directory focused on Utah SEO, I’d at least check it out, whether I thought it was free or paid and whether it sounded spammy or not. I can see people going to the site and thinking “Well, I’m not going to pay $20/month for this” and leaving, not realizing they could list themselves for free, and we’re working on a remedy for that potential situation, and I can certainly see #1 having happened, since I later sent out another message asking why people hadn’t responded, and nobody responded to that second message either.

But if you’ve got other ideas or suggestions, let ‘er rip.

Related posts:

  1. How to Make DeclareMedia Go Viral?
  2. Two Types of Customer Feedback
  3. How is DeclareMedia a lean startup?
  • davidbitter
  • davidbitter
  • Joshua Steimle

    Thanks, I appreciate the input. However, having thought through it all, while I agree this may be a reason, it would only apply to SEO types who know enough about SEO to be worried about it and not to the other types of people I’ve emailed regarding available directories for other industries. I just happened to use UtahSEOFirms.com as the example.

    As for SEO types fearing being listed on these directories, if there are any that fall into that situation I think the fear is unfounded. The only point from the Google Webmaster Guidelines that applies is that of selling links, sort of. Anyone can get a free listing on our site, which includes a link, so those aren’t paid links. If someone upgrades to a featured listing, they get their company promoted on the homepage of the directory, and that “promotion” area includes a link to their site, so yes, that is a paid link, in the sense that the location if the link changes based on whether someone is paying or not.

    However, if SEO types were afraid of this, then it seems that major SEO community websites would have problems selling text links for $500/month that are often much more irrelevant than anything on these directories.

    I think we all recognize completely spammy websites when we see them, and perhaps there are some that see these directories that way. We’re taking pains to overcome that stigma, or the potential for it.

    Anyway, that’s good input, if anyone else has more let me know.

  • davidbitter

    Other reasons to consider:

    - The approach/copy of your email invite might be to blame.
    - Technical issues (site down, site performance, etc).

    In general, I think people are just apprehensive. They are looking to associate themselves with a real community (local, professional, etc). Generic directories (even ones with targeted domain names) don’t give off the warm fuzzies people need to go out on a limb and associate themselves as “members”– especially if they are one of the first ones to be listed.

    New directories have no intrinsic value. I’ve never seen a directory, portal, or web page that had true value that wasn’t rooted in something deep and real. People don’t have to know about SEO to detect the value of a website– it’s just web-browser-intuition I guess.

    I think this is a case of putting the cart before the horse.

  • http://www.senatesite.com RC

    Good work here. Add a Politics & Government directory and I’m in!

  • http://www.sparkgenius.com Joshua

    Let me just put in a plug for Joshua’s new venture here: I listed my company on the Utah Web Design Firms directory, and I have already received several very good leads from it–I would definitely call it a success for my business.

  • Joshua Steimle

    Sorry David, your second comment from the 23rd didn’t get published for some reason so I just saw it. I’m aware of the duplicate content issue, some of which has already been remedied systemically, some of which is still on the docket since it will take a bit more time to remedy.

    In response to your third comment, yes, I think there is probably a fair amount of hesitation with some of these, although traffic has begun to pick up. We’ve got about 160 listings across all our directories at the moment, which isn’t saying much since we now have over 1600 directories, but the majority of those were created in the past few days, so they haven’t even been seen yet.

    It would appear that perhaps these are going to start off slow with the more “daring” types signing up first, and the “laggards” signing up only after they see that everyone else is doing it.

  • Joshua Steimle

    Alrighty David, you’re making a difference in the world. We’ve taken some steps based specifically on your input, and may take more as time goes on, since this is certainly the early stages of a long process.

    Check out Do your directories run afoul of Google’s “link scheme” guidelines? and Are links from DeclareMedia directories of low or high quality?.