No offence taken - Taj is the name of my dog. If you read the About Us page more closely you would have seen that I have directories in the niches I am interested in - Travel and Pets. So I wasn't interested in another niche. I have noticed that the most successful things in all industries have come up with unique names and I am in it for the long haul not just getting in and getting out. And no, I don't care if people think I have no imagination - not that this thread is about me.
I agree with most of this. Building the categories from the top down is the way to go and splitting the category when it has more than 1 page is my intention. To get the initial listings you can open up free submissions and get hammered for a few weeks by spam before closing free submissions down. Gradually work your way through the rubbish picking out the best websites and only approving them gradually. Deepyalla still has free submissions being approved 11 months after being submitted! Also use other directories as a source of websites. Well edited ones like DMOZ, botw, and Romow (before it died) and change the descriptions. Over time your directory will fill with the very best - that's not to say they never get dropped or neglected but the chances of the listings staying active and informative and not dead links has been reduced. All of this means time. Good directories aren't built in a few months or a couple of years. They take many years. Good luck to all - except those who put directories on dropped domains that usually crash and burn in a few very short months.
I was doing a bit of directory seeding and have to say that I was a bit shocked by what the "top" directories had listed. Many of the listings were for domained sites, sites with new purposes or ones that I would never have accepted. Ironically, most of the listings I was using came from links on sites included in DMOZ (not the listed site itself generally) and Google (as in one of the weak sites gave me an idea for tighter keywords to search for). I would strongly urge anyone at the seeding stage to ignore most of what everyone else has and do original research. It will take a lot of effort but you will at least have a core set of listings and categories that no one else will have.
The internet constantly changes of course. I'm amazed at how many of the free submissions I received have disappeared in less than a year after they were submitted. YMC is correct with the seeding. If you receive a submission for a shonky real estate firm in Fido, do a search for Fido and add the local government website instead or a local firm that appears at the top of the search. It's unlikely they will ever submit to your directory so why not.
Great advice, that's what I did and it's an education in itself. You'll find great sites which you'll need to make a new category for, you'll find categories you need to delete or change to encompass more sites, etc.
I have a web directory too. I shall definitely make the above changes to my directory to make it best of the best.