I submit to a lot of directories, from
Yahoo! and
Umdum to
DMOZ and
rlrouse.
I don't submit to BOTW, and haven't for a while now, because of the annual listing charge.
But now it seems a lot of web directory owners are going the annual listing route. I have held off saying this for a while now, because I consider most of these web directory owners friends. But it needs to be said:
Yearly renewal fees are beyond stupid. The spirit of annual renewal fees - well, it feels like greed to me.
And the "review fee" is bogus, a lie. If a website is listed in your directory, you should be reviewing it on a monthly basis anyway.
Now, let's do the math. Say a directory charges $69.95 per year. That's $349.75 for five years, and $699.50 for 10 years.
Now, for arguments sake, compare that to Umdum's $40.00 one time fee. I can say without a shred of doubt that Umdum sends me more traffic and more link juice than 90% of annual-renewal directories out there,
and at a discount of $659.50 over 10 years.
But more than that, it is a matter of principle for me. If I pay for a review, it should be a review. If it's accepted, it's accepted. But with these BOTW type directories, these clowns actually remove your link if you don't pay the fee.
Even Yahoo! doesn't remove links, but these people do, making it obvious that they are
not in the directory business, but in the link-leasing business.
Why remove the listing if you aren't in it for the money. I have two full time and one part time editor ADDING sites, searching for and adding sites on the basis of heir merits. So the idea of removing a site just seems absurd.
I mean, was it removed because it did not add value to your directory? If so why the hell did you approve the listing in the first place?