1. Featured Listing (Free).
2. Using Pricing Plans (Extension) for public submission,
3. Offering Claim listing (Extension) feature.
4. Reservation / Appointment (Extension).

You can use all of these ways to monetize your site for higher revenue, or you can choose any of these monetization features on your site. We recommend using all of them to maximize your earnings.

Featuring Listings (Free)

The Featured Listings option allows you to highlight specific listings so they appear more prominently across your directory.

When Monetization is enabled, you can charge users a fee to mark their listings as Featured.
Users can choose this option during submission or upgrade an existing listing through checkout.

Once payment is completed, the listing gains Featured status and will display in priority positions.

Place an order

After configuring all these settings, let’s submit a listing by using the add listing page. The submission will be redirected to our checkout page like below screenshot.

Manage order

Admin needs to control the status of the order depending on the user’s paying status. Once admin changes the order status to complete the ordered listing will have the predefined new listing default status. Please note that every new submission will have a pending status until payment goes to compilation.

Before you start charging users, you need to enable monetization and set up the required pages for handling payments.

1. Go to Directory Listings → Settings → Monetization → General Settings.
2. Turn Enable Monetization to ON.
   This activates the monetization system, allowing you to accept payments for listings and earn through submissions.

Setup Required Pages

To process payments properly, Directorist requires the following pages:

• Checkout – Displays payment information such as amount, product, and available gateways before charging the user.
• Payment/Order Receipt – Shows the order confirmation and transaction details after a successful payment.
• Transaction Failure – Redirects users to this page if the payment or order fails.

To access these settings, go to:
WP Admin Dashboard → Directory Listings→ Settings → Page Setup

These pages ensure a smooth user flow during the payment process.

Configure Currency Settings

Next, set your preferred currency and formatting under the Currency section.

After saving changes, your selected settings will apply globally to all paid listings and order pages.

Featured Listings

As mentioned earlier, Featured Listings option allows you to charge users for promoting their listings to gain higher visibility in search results and listing pages.

How to Configure

1. Toggle Monetize with Featured Listings to ON. This enables paid featured listings on your directory site.

Available Settings

Once all settings are configured, click Save Changes to apply.

Payment Gateways

Directorist allows you to manage payment gateways used for collecting payments during checkout. By default, the core plugin supports only Bank Transfer (Offline Gateway).

To process payments through PayPal (or any other online gateway), you’ll need to install the Directorist Payment Gateway Extensions.

Supported Gateways

Bank Transfer (Offline Gateway)

The Bank Transfer gateway allows users to make manual payments directly to your bank account. This method is included in the Directorist core plugin and does not require any additional extension.

After a user completes the checkout process, they are redirected to the Payment Receipt page.
This page confirms the order details and provides the necessary bank information for completing the manual payment.

1. Created: When an order created, it will have a “Created” status by default as an initial status.
2. Pending: You can set this status manually when the payment for an order is pending.
3. Completed: An order will have this “Completed” status when payment for an order is completed. However, only online gateways like PayPal or Stripe will update the status of an order to “Completed” automatically when the payment is made successfully, but you need to update the order status manually if the gateway is an offline gateway like the bank transfer gateway.
4. Failed: An order will have this status when a payment fails. You can also set this status to any orders manually. Keep reading to know how to change order status.
5. Canceled: When an order is canceled, it will have this ‘Cancelled’ status. You can cancel any order manually.
6. Refunded: When you refund the money of an order, it will have this status. An online gateway will update the order status to refunded automatically when a refund is made. However, you need to update the order status manually if you make a refund manually.

When a listing submitted using a plan, the user will land on the checkout page. The user can pay for the plan using an online or an offline gateway. Of course, you need to have one or more online gateways like the Directorist PayPal Gateway or Stripe gateway installed on your site for your users to be able to pay using an online gateway. However, the default gateway available for free with the Directorist is the Bank Transfer gateway which is an offline gateway.

An offline gateway like the Bank Transfer Gateway will create an order and set the status of the order as “Created”. Then once you receive the payment in your bank account, you should mark the order completed manually. 

How to change order status manually

Please go to the Directory Listings → Order History page and check the orders you would like to change the status of and select a status from Bulk actions box and hit Apply. The order will have a new status.

Online vs Offline Gateway:

An online gateway like PayPal or Stripe can mark the order completed if the payment is successful during the checkout. The purchased plan gets activated upon order completion. All the listings submitted under the activated plan will be visible to the website users.

An offline gateway like the Bank Transfer Gateway will create an order and set the status of the order as “Created”. Then once you receive the payment in your bank account, you should mark the order completed manually. See how to change the status of the order below.