Kupatana.com is one of the best online classifieds websites in Tanzania where consumers can sell and buy used and new products. It’s a marketplace for both consumers and sellers.

What is an online directory website?

A directory website is a website that lists products and services you can browse through. It is one of the best techniques of online marketing where business owners compete to get listed online so that users can find their products and services.

Purpose of the online directory website

Basically, the online directory businesses serve the three-fold purposes:

• Business owner – This one is for the directory business owners who create websites and provide an opportunity for the product and service owners to get listed on their directory websites.
• Listing owner – Another purpose is for the listing owners who want to get listed and promote their expected products and services.
• End users – This category is for the visitors who visit the directory site and search for their preferred products and services.

How to monetize your directory website?

There are many ways you can start making money through your directory website, Crefati suggests the following ways:

• Charging for Listings – once you start bringing valuable traffic to your website, which leads to conversions for listings, companies and business owners will start to take notice and will want to submit more content for your website. This is when you can start charging them for that privilege.
• Sell advertising space – Given the (hopefully) large numbers of visitors to your website, you will be able to further monetize it by providing relevant ads.
• Membership/Subscription-based – Once your directory website becomes a reliable source of listings in a particular field, you’ll be able to charge both listers and users to access your information.

Listers will want access to the large number of potential clients visiting your website. Therefore, they will be willing to pay for benefits such as listings without an expiry date or featured listings which appear at the top of searches.

Similarly, customers may be inclined to pay to see the best deals on your website. Alternatively, you can allow users to see all of your listings but only provide access to contact details if they are a paid-up members.

• Sell premium listings –  for listers to get featured or their products/services to get more visitors, you can sell them premium listings (so that they can be seen first before others).

Crefati designs and builds directory websites with the following features:

• User friendliness
• Mobile-friendliness
• SEO Optimized
• Front-end submission – This is one of the most crucial features of any type of directory website. A quality directory website should allow its users to submit a listing to the directory from the front end. It makes the way of adding a listing easy as compared to the back-end submission.
• Online payment gateways (paid exclusively)
• Opportunity for customers to rate and review businesses
• Booking (Reservation & Appointment)
• Location-based features
• Free-listing feature – allows business owners to list their services and products for free.
• And many more features.