Great statement and something to always be considered. It's exactly the same outlook I take on things when any of my sites are not considered to be a fit for a directory. I accept it and just move on. Rob
What you pay for is "Guaranteed review of your site within only 24 Hours." "Terms & Services" states "Skaffe.com Express Review is a fee-based service provided by Skaffe.com to expedite review and consideration of your website for inclusion in Skaffe.com's directory" Why would this give you a lifetime ability to change your url at any time? Why is it outrageous for a business to protect itself from scammers by not allowing you to manipulate your link however you want? How does Skaffe recognize that this is not an attempt to manipulate them, but an honest business-deal-gone-wrong? Maybe it's just unrealistic expectations.
Always the best way to deal with directories. The best advice I ever got about DMOZ came from a moderator at webproworld.com - "submit it and forget it!" He advocated spending our time working on our sites' content instead of worrying about any particular directory or search engine. A well-built site full of relevant content designed for the user is still the best goal.
And you would expect your friends to notice the ads? Sorry, this just made me chuckle. My friends would say nice things no matter how bad my site was ... that's why they are my friends Personally I think your site is pretty good quality. It does what it says it's going to do in a reasonably attractive way. As I said, ads are a subjective thing. Editors are asked to watch for sites that are heavy on ads, and 3 ad blocks on 1 page meets that criteria for me regardless of the placement. But if your site is successful and does what you want it to do, then my opinion is not relevant. And in many directories, if you get a No from one editor, you can request review by a different one ... Differing opinions is part of that whole "human edited" thing
Believe me, that is exactly what I do.Yes, I know, it can get extremely frustrating, but I just concentrate on other things, because when the time comes things will eventually fall into place and as an added bonus I just 'might' get a notification that it's been accepted into 'xxxxxx'.com.