It is imperative that a advertising directory be popular and highly visible in order for it to be a reliable search tool for products and services. If a advertising directory is not well known then not many people will go there to search for products and services. Advertisers will then find it not effective in helping to direct customers to their business premises.

In an effort to improve traffic and visibility maybe we can try out an innovative idea to draw traffic to the site. We can make use of the network marketing concept which has proven to be very effective in MLM around the world. Network marketing is simply spreading the features and benefits of a product or service by word of mouth. In its simplest form it just means that we tell someone we know about something we have just enjoyed. Perhaps it is a good meal. Perhaps it is a good movie. There is no monetary or other benefits here, just sharing with someone you know or love something that you have just enjoyed.

From there we proceed to give incentives for spreading the word. Lucrative compensation plans are then drawn up to provide incentives to customers for helping to tap on their network of friends or business associates. Here, we can improvise and make use of this concept to draw traffic to an advertising site.

First, we remind customers that the primary objective of the advertising directory is to provide friendly listings for advertisers where they can be found easily. A simple commission of a percentage of the sales of each advertising space will be given to advertisers for referring new customers. We will have to make sure that advertisement costs are not deterrent to the entrepreneur. We do the proper research to identify the market segments and the amount they are willing to pay for advertising.

On top of that give overriding commissions to customers who in turn recommend other customers to the directory. We can afford to give quite a bit of commission because memory storage space is cheap nowadays due to the continued advance in technology resulting in smaller hard disk storage space with larger capacities and lower costs.

This sort of compensation scheme should work to stimulate and popularize the site for the benefit of all especially the advertisers, the prospective customers who search for products and services, as well as the owners of the site who are content to settle for a very small margin in exchange for traffic.

It may be the way to beat free sites which up till now have not really been attracting the desired traffic due to many other competing free sites. Although most people believe that customers will automatically gravitate towards free sites, with too many people having the same idea, advertisers are then at a loss as to which free site they are going to advertise in. Of course, they may choose to put up ads in all the free sites but this might be too much of a hassle. Most advertisers then resort back to their familiar Yellow Pages for their advertising needs, or lately, Alibaba.

With a new plan to offer incentives to advertisers new sites may stand a better chance in winning the traffic game and in the process help advertisers do more business and improve their bottom line.