How to get business owners to list their information for a start-up local directory?

: How to get business owners to list their business information for a start-up local directory?
I am thinking of starting a local online directory. I saw some directories which are able to get businesses to list their business in the directory. How do I start? How do I promote or encourage businesses owners to list their info in the directory? Thanks

Answers and Views:

Answer by Miss_K
Not another one!! We get telemarketer calls every single day from one online directory or another wanting to sign us up. Most of them seem to be scams or people looking for some way to rip you off. If I were you, I would look for another type of business to start. Most businesses have had bad experiences with these types of companies and won’t even listen to your sales pitch anymore.

Answer by Jake
Competing with the many Yellow page, Super Page, Yelp sites can be tough,

Populate the site with standard phone book data scraped from yellowbook sites.

Add some community articles to help search ranking.

You might create original photos of each venue to make your site stand apart from the more basic database directories.

Work on SEO to get decent search visibility

Offer paid “featured” listings

Answer by Dhiraj
To get placement on these directories does not comes for free, if you are searching for free then you should do maximmum SEO and Link Building by yourself, if you are looking for paid, then I would recommend you to choose the google adwords tool, for advertising your website/ business for the start-up local directory.