I clicked around a bit in deciding where to post this. I didn't want to post it in the Announcements area because it's not strictly a Seniors Only Club project, although if it brings in any income beyond the cost of running the site itself, it will go towards supporting this site, as well. Plus, I don't expect that it's something that many, if any, of you will be interested in.
I've brought it up a few times here, but spoke of it more often in the first iteration of this forum, so you might know that I have worked on web directories since 1998, and am currently working 50 hours a week for one. While the days of general web directories being wildly profitable are over, we're seeing more traffic from people who are tired of the garbage that appears in SERPs (search engine results pages), as well as the growing implementation of AI suggestions rather than actual search results. However, niche directories have always had a place, and have a greater potential of being relied upon and being profitable.
I just registered the seniorsonly.guide domain for the purpose of housing a web directory focused tightly on seniors' issues, not just things that seniors might enjoy, but things that are intended for seniors or particularly helpful to seniors, as I think there's a market for that. I am open to discussing directories themselves here; if you have any questions, but they might also be answered by a directory itself, beginning on this page.
I began working on directories near the beginning of the Open Directory Project in early 1998, although it wasn't called that then. I met my wife there when we were both among the first meta editors for this volunteer project, which grew to involve hundreds of thousands of editors from all over the world. I have since worked for several other directories in volunteer and paid positions. IMO, it can be a fun project, and one that gives me the excuse to look into all sorts of things that I might not otherwise take the time for. In a general web directory, these would involve pretty much every imaginable topic, while the SeniorsOnly Guide will involve those that are closely related to seniors' issues, but that will still involve a wide range of topics.
Anyone interested in becoming involved in it is welcome. There is a slight learning curve, but there will be pretty much nothing that you could do that couldn't be undone, so that shouldn't be too intimidating. While I was working at the ODP, I did something wrong that I wasn't even sure of, and ended up deleting Texas, but the staff was able to restore it in a couple of clicks. Do not feel obliged to volunteer if you have no interest in it, and there's no need, actually, to even mention that you have no interest in it, because I'm not expecting you to. But if you do, you're welcome.
It will be a while before I get it set up because the setup involves a lot of work, and I have to have a lot of things ready to go before I activate the directory site. The success of a directory is largely dependent on being indexed heavily by search engines, and search engines tend to place a lot of emphasis on first impressions. I have learned that if a website has very little content when it's first visited by a search engine spider, the search engine tends to classify it as having low content, and it's a lot harder to gain interest later. So, I will have to do a lot of the work offline beforehand, such as deciding on which categories to include and writing category descriptions, although adding the actual site listings can come in their own time, and I won't be setting every imaginable category beforehand, just enough for it to have content.
If you have any questions, you can post them here, and you can let me know if you're interested, but I'd rather this not become a thread about how uninterested you are. If you're uninterested, as many of you will be, then there's no need to mention it; I will assume that as the default. Please be assured, however, that I will not use your work for personal profit, and I don't anticipate a great deal of income coming from it, anyhow.
I've brought it up a few times here, but spoke of it more often in the first iteration of this forum, so you might know that I have worked on web directories since 1998, and am currently working 50 hours a week for one. While the days of general web directories being wildly profitable are over, we're seeing more traffic from people who are tired of the garbage that appears in SERPs (search engine results pages), as well as the growing implementation of AI suggestions rather than actual search results. However, niche directories have always had a place, and have a greater potential of being relied upon and being profitable.
I just registered the seniorsonly.guide domain for the purpose of housing a web directory focused tightly on seniors' issues, not just things that seniors might enjoy, but things that are intended for seniors or particularly helpful to seniors, as I think there's a market for that. I am open to discussing directories themselves here; if you have any questions, but they might also be answered by a directory itself, beginning on this page.
I began working on directories near the beginning of the Open Directory Project in early 1998, although it wasn't called that then. I met my wife there when we were both among the first meta editors for this volunteer project, which grew to involve hundreds of thousands of editors from all over the world. I have since worked for several other directories in volunteer and paid positions. IMO, it can be a fun project, and one that gives me the excuse to look into all sorts of things that I might not otherwise take the time for. In a general web directory, these would involve pretty much every imaginable topic, while the SeniorsOnly Guide will involve those that are closely related to seniors' issues, but that will still involve a wide range of topics.
Anyone interested in becoming involved in it is welcome. There is a slight learning curve, but there will be pretty much nothing that you could do that couldn't be undone, so that shouldn't be too intimidating. While I was working at the ODP, I did something wrong that I wasn't even sure of, and ended up deleting Texas, but the staff was able to restore it in a couple of clicks. Do not feel obliged to volunteer if you have no interest in it, and there's no need, actually, to even mention that you have no interest in it, because I'm not expecting you to. But if you do, you're welcome.
It will be a while before I get it set up because the setup involves a lot of work, and I have to have a lot of things ready to go before I activate the directory site. The success of a directory is largely dependent on being indexed heavily by search engines, and search engines tend to place a lot of emphasis on first impressions. I have learned that if a website has very little content when it's first visited by a search engine spider, the search engine tends to classify it as having low content, and it's a lot harder to gain interest later. So, I will have to do a lot of the work offline beforehand, such as deciding on which categories to include and writing category descriptions, although adding the actual site listings can come in their own time, and I won't be setting every imaginable category beforehand, just enough for it to have content.
If you have any questions, you can post them here, and you can let me know if you're interested, but I'd rather this not become a thread about how uninterested you are. If you're uninterested, as many of you will be, then there's no need to mention it; I will assume that as the default. Please be assured, however, that I will not use your work for personal profit, and I don't anticipate a great deal of income coming from it, anyhow.