Advice on paid submission

**jl255** · 03-21-2007, 03:41 AM

Quite new in this area, so ask for your patience.

Is it worth the $$$ to pay others to submit your site to free directories with high PR?

Which is a better use of $$$? The above or to use the $$$ to add site in paid directories?

Any advice or insights will be greatly appreciated!

**jaguar-archie15** · 03-21-2007, 04:09 AM

you can generate PR without money, not all directories have the quality to ask for payments, you should consider the possible benefits it brings to your site.

**jl255** · 03-21-2007, 04:24 AM

eerr....ok, but somehow i've no idea how to apply what you have just said. Can elaborate further?

How abt the 2nd question?

**jetbrains** · 03-21-2007, 09:21 AM

It depends on how many links will be approved

**ADAM Web Design** · 03-21-2007, 10:39 AM

Personally, I wouldn't pay for anything that I could do myself for free, but that's just me.

If you do want to pay someone, what you need to find out is where they're submitting and if there's a reasonable chance that you'll get some ROI for your investment in that person (my rule of thumb would be 20%, but others may differ).

For example, if you paid $10 to someone, you'd want to get at least $12 in profit back from the directories. Divide $12 by your profit per visitor to figure out how many visitors you'll need, and see if the list will generate that level of profit or more.

You should also make sure you're not submitting to any directory that requires a link exchange. Those are just a cheap attempt to gain search engine rankings, and don't do anyone any real good.

**chrishirst** · 03-23-2007, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Is it worth the $$$ to pay others to submit your site to free directories with high PR

No!! ....

**Learning Newbie** · 03-23-2007, 02:21 PM

It might not be worth submitting to the directories at all ( that's a subject of ongoing debate ), but it's certainly not worth paying someone else to do for you!

**WebSavvy** · 03-23-2007, 02:28 PM

* cough * sputter * I feel faint ...

John, not all directories are bad (or not worth submitting to). Some of us work damned hard on our directories. I know I work very hard on mine. Every script on it, is one I have written myself. Plus I did all of the design work, wrote the editor's dashboards, the syndication system, our bot, and our ads system.

I spent 11 months just doing the taxonomy for it while listening to my partner yell "Get on with it already!"

**Learning Newbie** · 03-23-2007, 04:12 PM

Here's a cleanex and some tea.

It sounds like submitting to your one directory is probably better for a site than submitting to a list of 300 of them.

I personally don't think backend stuff has that much value, except I'm half wrong. When everybody uses the exact same directory script, and users can't tell one apart from the other, all clones seem like crap. Design is even more important. And it sounds like you have some really nice extras.

Most people throw up a brand-new directory with all of three links, charge people to list it, run ads up the wazoo, and then have the nerve to be dishonest with web masters. They talk about their wonderful traffic, but 99 % of it is just other webmasters submitting their site, who will never return.

Those are the directories I'm suggesting are almost worthless. It sounds like yours is the one in a thousand with real quality, and a nice interface to boot. In other words, the exception that proves the rule. Of course, I'm also basing this on the wisdom and insight you've demonstrated in your other posts here. Someone as intelligent as you obviously are, isn't going to take the half-@$$ route.

**WebSavvy** · 03-23-2007, 04:23 PM

Thanks, John.

Mine started out as a webmaster directory 8 years ago. For 3-4 years, I had requests to expand the scope of the directory and just wasn't interested.

Then, after seeing so much garbage just everywhere I thought it would be nice to have a "family safe" general web directory. So, I went to work making the transformation.

At the time I didn't even know PHP yet (but already knew Perl, JavaScript, Java, DHTML, VRML and Delphi). So, I learned PHP as I went along.

After we launched the new digs (we didn't even have editors yet), we wound up with 5,000+ submissions in 3 days time. That's not a joke.

Doug Heil over at IHY put up a forum for the directory, and Robert Clough ran a blurb about it in his newsletter and suddenly between the two, we were swamped.

So, I quickly put together some dashboards and we gathered up some editors and went to work on the submission pile.

The directory has always been free to submit to. We didn't move to paid format until just a few months ago.

Running it as a free directory for 7 years is a long time and in that time it never earned a dime.

It went to paid format with this last update, and is earning money now. I work hard on it, and our editors work hard too -- so it's nice to see others appreciate it.

Chris Hirst has been one of my editors for a few years now. He knows what kind of a ship we run there and there's zero tolerance for spam. If we find it, it doesn't make it to Live queue.