You are wrong on both accounts. There are many ways to make money with a directory. Charging for submissions/reviews is only one. Backlinks and traffic for free directories is not hard to achieve.
Becouse this is not my business it was make to provide something for people and make a little income to cover hosting
JIM4767 is absolutely right. Free link offer is a bait for a while and as soon as they have over 1000 links and PR3-4 they switch to pay directory. That's the whole game. It' as simple as that.
actually i'm still stumped why people that way... wouldn't it be the reverse? when you have over 1000 links, a person wouldn't want to pay for links that 1000 other people got for free. also, the best spots would have been taken - and for free at that.
My experience is I tried make my directories Reciprocal only. The only issue is no one submits to the directory. What is the use of a Directory when no one submits a site. So, I went back and make them Free. Finally decided to run them for free so, I get some links. I go and pay for a sumit service to submit to other sites. Not sure where we are going, other than makeing Google and Yahoo more money. Thanks
Most free directory offer paid featured link and free regular link, they should build link building to promote their directory. For example, I have paid $1000+ for my free directory Submission4U
I just launched my directory and it's free because it will be part of my link building experiment for my soon-to-be launched website. But the very best part is,I'm really happy to see people do submit their links to my simple directory. Maybe I'll consider to charge when it achieves PR5 or when I don't really afford to pay hosting fees.I'll consider it later. peicom
To get lots of high quality submissions. Paid and reciprocal directories tend to be more exclusive. Plus, as the owner of a free directory, you have no incentive to list a poor quality site.