[mh0825]

Site name: eCuffo
Site URL: http://www.ecuffo.com
Site Owners: mh0825 and Sir TVDinner
Site Launched: January, 2008

Who, What, Why?

eCuffo is a free online directory for website owners and just general internet users to submit their favorite sites. eCuffo was created after searching for a site that offered this service and none could be found (at least what we were looking for).

eCuffo doesn't require any registration and is 100% free. Other sites say free but then require you to give a backlink to them... that's not really free now is it? We understand that a backlink to eCuffo may not be ideal for your site and we honor that.

Startup Cost

The cost was minimal comparatively speaking.

Domain - $7.15
Hosting - Already had package
Software - $68
Design - Free
Total: $75.15 startup

Marketing

We are still in the process of marketing the site as the site was launched on 1/5/08.

Our main marketing plan is to submit reviews and post the directory in all webmaster forums and high PR web directories to start. We have googled "webmaster forum" and "admin forum" and are still in the process of going through all of these sites and submitting to these sites.

Some of the major players that have been used already are:

DigitalPoint
SitePoint
V7N
Webmaster-Talk
Ozzu

We shelled out a marketplace listing on SitePoint to promote as they don't allow to show your services for free. So the only advertising costs associated so far have been this. We listed as a featured listing.

Additionally, we have been using StumbleUpon to help promote. The goal is to stumble one page a day that would make sense to Stumble. We have stumbled the homepage and the web directory homepage as of now. This will grow and we will stumble the main categories and sub categories as time goes on.

Traffic

Analytics 1/05 to 1/13

Ads

We offer several ad spots on the site to help pay for the cost of eCuffo. While we would like to make money off the site, we wanted to make sure it didn't look like the directory was only made to make money. We wanted to make sure we kept the integrity of the site concept without making it overloaded with ads and still pleasant looking to the website user. We feel we have accomplished this with our current layout and style.

Goals

To become a major player in the web directory field. We're not trying to take on DMOZ but to just be used on sites like DMOZ is. We feel that the no backlinks and free submission will set us apart from other directories. We would like to be discussed by members of other sites without having to promote ourselves. Word of mouth is either the best advertising or the worst and we plan to utilize this to it's full potential.

Summary

We obviously have high goals and this will be a project that will take time and effort to start. Eventually, it will become a low maintenance site and it already requires very minimal backend time consumption. The main category for time spent is on marketing and advertising.

We will update the traffic results and marketing updates once a week to show the progress as well as any marketing costs that we paid.

We look forward to hearing any suggestions to make the site better and more user friendly to the average user while keeping it's elegant design. Please let us know any thoughts, comments and suggestions in how we can improve any part of the site.

eCuffo - Free Online Directory

[Sir TVDinner]

With 2 of us working on this we are trying to spread out the amount of promotion we do and attack more locations at the same time. We think this project/site has real potential to grow beyond just the normal forum directory.

Site UPDATE: We have decided to also add a forum so the "eCuffo Community" can discuss common interests and common goals. We honestly feel that there could be an "eCuffo movement and community". Will add the forum this weekend as an extension of the directory.
We think that this also could potentially provide additional advertising opportunities for us if both the directory site and the corresponding forum take off (advertise on the directory and/or the forums, etc)

[lafsunlmtd]

WOW, this is exactly what i had hoped for. I think that maybe in an effort to make this more clean, maybe you can update the actual first post with new findings so people don't have to search through this entire thread. so like next update you make maybe just go to the end of your first post, put the new date and some dashes and take it from there. Why not put a link up top in case your sig changes in the future.

I am curious to see how the sitepoint marketplace ad worked out. Please report your findings on that.

How did you come up with that name and what does it mean.

Do you have google analytics installed? If not it would probably be awesome for this in tracking your progress.

[mh0825]

Put link in there. I was thinking updating might work best as well. Is there an edit time limit?

The sitepoint listing worked ok. We actually got a higher response from the free listing at DigitalPoint (lesson learned).

How did you come up with that name and what does it mean.

It's in our FAQ's:

What does eCuffo mean?
Well the term "cuffo" is a synonym for the word free and the "e" stands for online. Thus, the use of eCuffo. Not as creative as you thought it was!



Yes we have Google Analytics. I don't start a site without it anymore It's only been a couple days so I didn't want to put out pre-mature data yet.

[lafsunlmtd]

if there is a time limit i will fix it for you. i am very eager to see how everything goes. this sounds like a very exciting project especially from two experienced site owners

[mh0825]

Thanks for the support. I hope the automatic post exchange link will help out AF as well.

I haven't felt this good about a website since my claims website.

[Sir TVDinner]

Originally Posted by lafsunlmtd

WOW, this is exactly what i had hoped for. I think that maybe in an effort to make this more clean, maybe you can update the actual first post with new findings so people don't have to search through this entire thread.

Thanks for the kind words lafsunlmtd. hopefully this will be a success in the long run.

[Jolteon]

I don't get it. Isn't it just a posh google that doesn't use spiders, you have to submit to it

[mh0825]

I'm not sure what you mean.

We are building a search engine (eCrambler) that if it gains popularity, submitting your site will benefit tremendously. Ultimately it's to help you gain backlinks and for sites to gain PR on a high PR site without any conditions. Obviously our PR isn't high right now as it's a new site but will gain quickly we think.

Already 80 + sites in just the past 5 days.

[Frank]

Cool .. good luck with this.