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To start off I have arranged a interview with Syed Balkhi. Syed know by a username smub is a very good designer known for his quality phpld templates. He runs IDK , a quality directory which won the phpld ‘Site of the month Contest’.

# For our readers please introduce yourself.
My name is Syed Balkhi, or many may know me as smub. I am a phpld template designer and have done some other script designs as well including wordpress, newstopica, and phproxy. I have released tons of free templates for php link directory in the past. I am the owner of Genuine Paid Directory (IDK.in). I like to call it Genuine Network. I am 16 years old. Yes many will wonder how can a 16 year old do all this. Well, in today’s world it is nothing new. It is my hobby to play around with photoshop, and i learned html by mistake. If you see grammatical errors in my writing that is because English is not my first language, and i learned it in 4 years when i moved to United States. I am originally from Pakistan, and i am in this directory business for over a year now.
#Now that idk.in has gained popularity do you have any new plans
Well Idk.in is no where close to be popular. It is just a little baby about 6 months old now. It does have a bright future, from the things it have accomplished in the mean time. When i started this directory, i want it to be one site with all the resource webmaster needs. Lets see what do i have and what do i need. I have a blog for advices, freebies area, free templates, and an arcade along with the directory. Which is basically no where close to what i dreamt off. I am going to expand idk.in further by adding many more new sections to make it really a Genuine Network. As of starting another site, i believe i will stick with one as long as i can because i believe in 1 quality site rather than 15 just Another Dir. Site. I have released several free templates on behalf of Genuine Paid Directory and will continue doing so in the future. Same with the blog posts. I have written many articles to help the users improving their website, and i will keep writing the articles. I didn’t describe the ideas i have for the additional sections because you know how easy it is to get ripped, so i would prefer it to be ripped once it is on IDK Site rather than when i am working hard on making it, someone do a quick job and put it up because with the competition between the directory owners these days it is going to be ripped one way or another. My other concern with idk.in is making it as strong as I can, so I can provide quality backlinks to all my submitters.

#Many say to run a directory one needs to work hard; can you explain this for new directory owners ?
Well when many people including me say that running a directory requires hard work. What it means that it takes time, and you must be willing to put in the effort to make your directory quality. Because it takes time to add all the categories to make your site have a unique category structure, than it takes time to give each directory category a unqiue description with a meta description and keyword. Along with that, you have to spend a great deal of time on promotion. Accepting sites may not seem like a big deal when the site is new, but as it gets more popular, it becomes a hassle. Always thinking about something unique, it takes alot of time and hard work. You have to provide good support to all your customers which also takes a huge amount of time and effort, so this is not a game and you must have some motivation in you to keep you working this hard.

#If some one wants to start a directory where should they start and your advice
If someone really want to start a directory, a good place to start would be from SCRATCH. I give this advice to everybody who have asked me so far. Trust me many have. I told them all one thing and that was to start from scratch. There are several advantages when you start a directory from scratch. First of all, you have the ability without any fear or restrictions to change the things around the way you want to do so whereas in a high pagerank site you bought, you cannot just change everything. You have to be very careful and cautious about the pagerank as well because you have to maintain it at that level, but if you start from start, you can go about any direction you choose to. My advice to all the new owners are that if you start a directory bring your A Game in because like any other business, this one is time consuming as well. Also don’t let money be your motive to start a directory because that will not get your site anywhere, and you will not be successful. I don’t recommend you start a directory if you are not willing to work hard on it because than your site will be added to a list of Just Another Directory out there, and I am certain we don’t want that.

#2. If one has a budget how can he/she spend this and grow the directory ?
Every business have a budget. It is good to have a budget so you dont blindly invest too much. If you have a budget i think what you should do is atleast sponsor one template because that $100 or however much will get you tons of backlinks. Now when i say sponsor templates, don’t just go about and sponsor any crappy template. Evaluate the design first, and think would you want to use it if you were the free user. Than submit to directories because these owners will submit back to your sites. Not all, but most will that is a way to get some revenue back so you can reinvest. If you buy sitewides be very careful. Buy some at the big directory lists because they will send tons of traffic. Other than that, just submit to directories. Free and Paid.

#With the entry of many directories isn’t the going tough !
Will it be tough, it is hard to say, but i know it is possible to get your site up to the top among all these directories which are coming in the market every day. The key to that is Innovation. The boundaries of the Limit expands when innovation occurs, and you want to be the one to expand the boudary, so you can take the most area and be the bigger land lord.

#with many directories coming into existence submitters are looking for more value than just a link ; your comment on this
Yes when competition increases it is hard to get your product to the top. Eventhough many directories are coming up every day half of them are JUST ANOTHER DIRECTORY which uses a free category dump from one of the resource websites. Well to say they dont bring a competition will not be fair because these sites easily obtain upto a pr 4. But to distinguish between those and quality ones is not hard. Because most quality directory owners have something to offer above and beyond others. Everyone have unique ideas. Like Forplex Directory to offer Directory Owners Index (List of all directories) You can see something like that (Unique) and say that the site have potential. Even look at IDK.in (Arcade / Freebies) adds so much to my site along with the look. It is all about innovation in business and those who makes them will go far. Well as for submittors looking for more than backlink, that is why many quality directory owners have other stuff to offer such as a Blog, services, More than 1 page of site listing such as Wow Directory where you get listed in 4 categories, or by mod Dagre created which allows multiple category submissions. I think they all are worth it and people should use it. Not to mention the alphabetical listing and listings by pagerank are another great way to offer more than Just a Link. Besides I believe more in quality rather than quantity. Because if a site like Aviva Directory is giving me a strong backlink, i’ll rather have that than having a pr 3 (weak link) from 4 pages. The reason why i mentioned pr 3 weak link is because i do see every now and again some extremely strong pr 3 sites.

#What do you think about the competetion between directory owners ; is it healthy ?
Competition is sometime healthy, but what directory world has been turning to is unhealthy for this business. I see users taking personal rage out on others, Revenge, and such. Yes it is good to be on the top but you can’t always stay there, you have to accept 2nd place sometimes. You can’t just have the monopoly. As i see these days, users on one of the popular forum (Digitalpoint) has formed alliance and are making gangs. This business which was like a good running system a year ago, now is like a mafia running system where the stronger gang wins (Not always the right one). If you open your eyes and look at the forum, all you see is one time two people got in a big argument. From then on this person and his so called (friends), and the other person and his so called (friends) always have a rivalry. This competition is not healthy because it is not getting the industry any where. It might give some an unfair advantage over others as they have better resources, but this is not a competition which i saw a year ago because it was peace and every body competed but in their boundaries, and if they ran in a race, they ran in their own track rather than going in other person’s track and pushing them so they fall, and you win. I say this have to stop, and the sooner this will be the better for the industry.

“Thanks for this interview, it was my first one, so won’t sound very professional. But how you sound does not matter, what your site got does :)”

Many thanks to smub for answering the questions that came in my mind; Hope this turn out a good read.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 9:43 am and is filed under interviews, tips, phpld, directories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.