There are many directories some offer free submission others paid. Our directory with search engine capabilities and lots of other extras is free. There is an option to upgrade to premium account but that is DISABLED. Would it be better enabling this option ON and promote the site as paid directory? Of course, the basic account would still offer Free submission.
It's always good to get into free directories, because when they get some PR and start charging people, your link is already in the directory
There are some directories which I seen such as this one combine free and paid method. I think it can work.
It just doesn't make any sense. If you: promote the site as paid directory then how free submission is fit in? Sure you can have both but then is won't be paid directory but one that have paid option. People are doing that all the time because free directory is more appealing than paid. So, what was your real query if you had one to begin, because I'm honestly missing what you are trying to find? fastreplies
If you are planning to making it a paid directory in the future, make it paid now too! It'd be hard work but free to paid could be harder
Don't start with a free directory and make it paid later. You will only be disheartened by the fall of traffic. Paid directories are not easy to promote, but once they are popular, they can make a packet.
The answer to your question really depends on ones perspective and reasons for building a directory. Some will shout out that free directories are best, saying only a link is a link and one is as good as another. However those directory owners are typically using their free directory to make money in other ways as branding for their other sites which do make money or using the free directory as a means to route traffic to their money making sites. Some will build a directory to be a directory. The thing with that is it is extremely time consuming to build a directory of any quality and asking any directory owner to build a quality site offering listings for free with no means of monetizing it is asking a heck of a lot. So you need to decide for yourself which way to go and that decision should be tied into the reasons you built the site. I would say to those who say that a link being a link - well then it should make no difference in having a link on the index page of Google vs the index page of a brand new auto content blog. Right??? Then they would come back and say well google gets more traffic so google would be better right? Well lets exclude traffic from consideration and then the links should be the same right??? No - links are not all the same. Not even close. Having a listing in a quality, well edited directory is much more beneficial than having a listing in a crappy, poorly edited free directory. If your using it in a branding effort for other sites maybe free is worthwhile. If your building it to be a good quality directory in itself well paid may be the best way to go. However I would not advise to try and mix the two together. In other words do not offer a free directory with a paid option. Go either free or paid. Some will say that you should not start a directory free that you intend to make paid in the future. They may say this because your traffic will drop substantially when you go paid which is very true. However there are some advantages to starting a directory as free and later going paid. There are also some disadvantages to doing so and each must weigh them to decide on their own. It would take too long to list them all here.
Keep in mind that the biggest differentiation between free and paid is "VOLUME". The larger the volume of listings, the less the quality typically. By quality, I mean quality of the web sites listed, quality of the descriptions used and quality of the organization of the directory. People paying to list are generally more apt to take time to insure they are listing a quality site, placing that site in an appropriate category and assigning good descriptions and titles to their listing. The directory owner is also generally more apt to pay special attention to insuring they review each listing and make any corrections, and or approval/rejections where necessary. The problem you find with a lot of freebie directories is they tend to be saturated with tens of thousands of bot listed sites that are just simply auto approved without any real intervention or approval process by a human being. That being said the links tend to be equally spammy as the bots that listed them.
Free would provide the users with some basic stuff. Paid or upgrade would include some extras that would make the account superior to the Free listing. Some people might be put off by FREE directories as most of them have many third party ads and banners, on the other hand some people say that paid directories have better quality websites. I am interested to find out wether one chooses to submit a website on a Free directory rather then paid and possibly pay for an upgrade or stay listed for FREE. I trying to figure out wether to go for combined Free and Paid directory.