Whether you’re a small business, or somebody who wants to make money online, WordPress Directory Software plugins are definitely worth looking at.
With a WordPress directory plugin you can create directory listings on your website for a variety of uses, for example:
- Sell the links to people who want to advertise on your website
- Let people put a free link on your directory, but use other methods to monetize the page.
- Use it purely as a way of organizing your resources page for your website visitors.
- Bringing free traffic to your website
Like all things, there are a variety of free WordPress Directory plugins – and some you have to pay for. The advantage of free WordPress Directory plugins is you don’t have to pay for them with money, but you DO often pay for them with time, frustration and lost productivity. How much is your time worth?
If you’re running a successful business or website, then the time spent fiddling with free plugins, compared to running your business or website to earn money, can mean they end up costing you dear. Also, free plugins might not always be supported. They are sometimes written by companies and sometimes by individuals, but without any cash incentive to keep updating them for every new version of WordPress, they might at some point just stop working.
When you pay for WordPress Directory plugins, the product is easier to use and there’s ready support available.
You’re all at different stages and have different needs…. so I won’t tell you that using a free Directory plugin is wrong, but I will tell you I wasted about four days trying to find one that I felt was “just right” for one of my websites, before abandoning the whole idea as I’d already wasted too much time on it 🙂
Using WordPress Directory Plugins for Income
One way to make money online with free WordPress Directory plugins would be to create niche directory websites, then resell them. Many people resell ready-made websites on ebay and doing it using WordPress is a popular and quick way to build a directory website. If you are going to set up website directories for resale, then you will need to pay for a premium WordPress Directory plugin – for each website you create/sell, unless they offer a Developer Edition, in which case you just need the one license.
If your website is popular, you might have people who would like to be included in your directory – a service that you can be paid for. Build up enough of this and it can be a handy residual income, alongside your main website.
There’s no doubt at all that Directory websites can be great residual income and passive income generators, that you can run alongside any other business with minimal input.
Premium : WordPress Directory
Everything you need to build & manage a powerful directory like Yellow Pages.
WordPress directory turns your blog into a fully-featured custom listings directory ( reviews ,ratings,, payments & more…) and that’ll work while you sleep.
Key Features –
A full-featured custom directory
More Ways to Make Money – Charge options for add listings
-Powerful Navigation
-Fit with Any Theme
-WordPress & Multisite ready
-Options for Accept payments for add listings
-One-time, daily- monthly & annual based payment options (automated)
-Custom tags & categories
-Monetize and Integrate with any custom theme using shortcodes
-Listing options for user reviews & rating system
-Integrate with different Affiliates platform and also by WPMU DEV & pay affiliates for referrals
-Customizable pack of Directory theme
-Create user permissions
-Complete Yellow Pages-style design directories options
-Customized for advertisement revenue
Free: Business Directory WordPress Plugin
Business Directory enables you to run an online “Yellow Pages” from your website, and invite local groups, businesses etc to post a small advert advertising themselves.
If all you need is a searchable directory of links and short ads, then this would do that, but it’s certainly not got features businesses will be expecting, such as a Google map embedded to show where their business is.
Listings simply include the company name, a short description, basic contact information and a live URL. From the WordPress admin section you can choose to accept them automatically or approve them before they show. You can also edit or delete listings.
Free: WordPress Link Directory Plugin
WordPress Link Directory is primarily a reciprocal link plugin. Other websites can submit their website address to your link directory – but they have to have a link to yours on their site. This plugin periodically checks that they still have a link to your website – and alerts you if they’ve removed it.
This isn’t really a WordPress Directory solution at all. It’s not actually a directory in the way that I was looking for.
Free: WP-Business WordPress Directory Plugin
This is a free WordPress Directory plugin that comes with lots of features.
Features included
- Free listings
- Configurable search field & sorting bar for listings
- Post and edit listings options without access to dashboard
- Display locations of any business
- Allow all users to upload attachments
- Allow users to upload their images
- Google Map
- Search Result
- Pagination
- Send Message to listing owner
- Category Listing
- Social Media icon
- Comment to listing
- Inline help
- Search Widget
- Upload Logo
- Category Widget
- Listing Analysis(Graphs,Tables etc)
- Admin can add new category
- Working on multisite
This Directory plugin enables you to run a simple directory, but they don’t even supply a link to a working copy, or any screenshots, nor any information on what it does/how. There is a support forum, but it’s written in Greek and hasn’t had any answers to questions since late 2014
Download WP-Business WordPress Directory
Premium: WP Directory Pro (do not buy)
WP Directory Pro is no longer supported. So if you’re considering this one, forget it.
Support stopped working back in early 2010 and the developer/owner has ‘disappeared’. It was a great product, with a few bugs – and I’ve heard that he had some personal tragedies to deal with, but this isn’t really on at all.
Problems have occurred with some users since the WordPress update to v3.1.x and people are now having to hire programmers to integrate it into their site and get it working again. This isn’t a good way to be running your business.
Directory Press: Best WordPress Directory plugin and directory script, complete with themes.
Free & Premium : Geo Directory
GeoDirectory created by GeoTheme is the new address and location based wordpress business directory plugin.
Features
- Allows you to create single and local location like street and neighborhood
- Provides a fantastic front end customizable form that lets users to edit through a drag & drop form-builderto submit listings autonomously.
- 12 widgets & 12 widget areas.
- Two different Google Maps widgets
- Built in user based review platform
- Default search widget
- 100% WPML compatible for multilanguage directories.
Premium: SabaiDirectory
SabaiDirectory is a premium business directory to build a community based local business directories like Google+ Places, Yelp.com, or Yahoo! Local.
- Display listings in list, grid, or map view
- Fully responsive and flat design
- Comment on reviews & photos
- Filter listings & reviews by custom fields
- Fully interactive map
- Add new listings
- Post reviews of listings
- Upload options for photos of listings
- Multi-location support
- Vote reviews
- Vote up photos & comments
- Bookmark listings, reviews, and photos
- Show directions on map
- Featured listings
- Display reviews, bookmarks andphotos by user
- Unlimited hierarchical categories
- Custom map-marker
- Multiple directory format
- Paid listings options
- PayPal & Stripe recurring payment
- PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net,Stripe payment gateways
- Flexible permission system
- Manage orders
- Schema.org micro data support
- Contact listing owners via contact us form
- 10 widgets
- Geolocation
- Share listings
- CSV Importer
- OpenStreet Map support
- RTL support
- BuddyPress user profile/activity integration
- Customizable e-mail notifications
- 11 shortcodes
- 16 custom Googlemap styles
Premium: WP Directory Press
WP Directory Press is a premium WordPress directory plugin that’s been around for a few years now. It’s part of a stable of similar software, developed by a professional software development company who are generating great WordPress all-in-one solutions.
Directory Press is a WordPress directory plugin and theme and directory all in one, with nearly 30 current templates to choose from – and a new template is added every month. The software is fully open source, which means you, or somebody who knows web development, can change/move things around as much as you like – and they also provide you with the full PSD image files each month, meaning you can instantly brand it to suit your needs. Or, you can simply use what they give you as it comes, as it’s a great looking directory script as it stands.
Directory Press is used by thousands of companies and website owners worldwide – and it is very well thought out – DirectoryPress is the best WordPress Directory plugin if you want to use it to generate an income. Some of the features include:
- Lifetime support and upgrades.
- Nearly 30 templates to choose from, with a new one added monthly – and you have full control over the templates, with the PSD files, so you can make your own changes if you wish.
- You can install Directory Press on unlimited domains you own – this makes it a ‘no brainer’ for me.
- Built in payment gateways, so you can easily take payment for listings if you wish.
- Users can create an account and create their listing themselves – and they can edit it later if they wish – freeing you up from monotonous and time-stealing changes.
- Built in Google maps, perfect for business directories.
- You can create unlimited categories, with an unlimited number of listings. Having no limits puts you in control, rather than you having to work round a limited system.
- Full ad-management system, so you can choose how to display adverts round the edges of your directory pages. Ads are controlled on a “per category” basis.
- You set the price for listings. You’re not paying an overpriced service to provide this for you.
- You can set a price for advertisers to be listed, or you can set it up so they have to bid for position, this is a great feature as it means you don’t have to decide how much an advert is worth on your website, the market decides!
Directory Press is the best WordPress directory solution. Perfect for running an unlimited number of directories across your website/s. Full support and upgrades. Run your directory to bring in website traffic, or set it up to provide an income.
Making Money Online with a Business Directory
So, now you have the tools, you might be interested to know just how you can make money using a directory listing. It’s widely considered that there are some types of websites that are simply unprofitable.
Running a Directory website can create a great residual and passive income either as a website on its own or as part of your existing website. You can make money with a Directory website in a number of ways:
- Charge people to place links in your directory, especially if they keep renewing the ad
- Place adverts round the directory listings, e.g. Adsense, or even selling your own ad spaces
- You get traffic to your website, meaning more potential for sales of your core products or services. In this way you can make money from your directory because it exists, rather than it providing an income in itself (you could bring in the traffic by offering free directory listings)
The options are there – and if you pick a directory script that you can install on unlimited domains you own, then it really works out as a low price investment!
