The challenges of making money with Directory sites

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?