Back in February of 2011 I wrote a blog post about how it’s hard for Domainers to make money with directory websites. The big mistakes I’ve seen many people make is to think that just putting a directory website on a domain name will suddenly inspire people to start paying for listings.
The reality is, when you launch a directory website, nobody wants to pay for a listing. If you have a healthy marketing budget and can built-up traffic then there’s some hope. However at a time where sites like Yelp have massive market dominance the stand-alone directory website is nothing more than a dream for most people.
My question is, how has this changed in 2016? Is there still hope for people who want to run directory websites or has that ship sailed?

Having tried local directories before (and failing) I still couldn’t resist to start building “Voice As Computing” website.
This time however, recognizing the fact that this is a very new development, I’m choosing to create an authority site rather than a directory.
My earlier experiences plus the fact that right now there are very few players in the Voice As Computing interface technology, give me some advantage.
Summing up: instead of a directory site, try building an authority site, preferably in a very new niche.