I never considered hiring an editor, but it wouldn't be a bad idea what mikey is doing. Maybe PM me the details of this person mikey. I might be interested in that.
I can do 100 in an hour, "We are very good editories!", "if one of my parents in home Im ask asistance" - eek. Of course, the more directories run with these sorts of editors and standards should make those of us who actually do visit the sites, go beyond the homepage and edit the submissions stand out even more. I should have known better but I recently asked a low-cost, Indian writer to write up a Photoshop tutorial for me (don't know PS for crap and figured I could clean up any bad English and SEO it in less time/money than if I wrote it myself). His idea of unique article was to use his own examples in someone else's ripped content. And instead of using the images I wanted him to he used text which just happened to be the name of his own site. Oh, well. He wanted payment upon delivery - fat chance he's gonna see that $. That'll teach me to try and farm out a little work. Thank goodness it was for my own site and not a client. If you want quality, do it yourself or stick with referrals from people you know who know what good work looks like or hire folks via Googling (meaning they have an established site/business). Perhaps instead of hiring editors, temporarily suspend submissions? I would post it on your site with maybe even a daily/weekly update of pending and approved numbers to show that you are actually going through the queues.
I’m one of these strange folks who whenever possible try to keep employment of people or services in the community I live.
I agree with you 100%. I have been replaced by foreign workers who were neither cheaper or better despite their advertising and fancy resumes. A dear friend of mine lost his house after being replaced by an Indian Visa holder who did not know the work and had to be coached via phone in Farsi (bosses didn't believe us when we told them). So, believe me I'm not a fan. My thinking was a bit of, if you can't beat 'em, why not try and make it work for you? I have to constantly explain to potential writing clients why I'm worth my rates and why they shouldn't hire cheaper Indian writers. After this experience, it just makes it more clear that I am actually not charging enough.
Way to go *adsenseindia* and *SEO2Indians*. !! I wonder if they even know what 'editing a directory' means YMC: Not all Indians are cheap and bad I guess you already know that.
you said its free directory, so i think people who submitted their sites are willing to wait till you have time to validate their link...don't hire... validate the links yourself whenever you have time.
Problem with that is in a free niche directory 95% of submitted sites are off topic or fail other submission guidelines. To make it a useful resource quality sites need to be submitted by yourself or editors.
What niche are you working in? I'm averaging more like 70% crap on my more well-known site and significantly less on the other.
Blogs I assume. So its actually a site-type niche rather than site-topic. I get so much off topic crap in my health directory. Too funny that "professional SEO companies" are trying to list themselves in "Internet Addiction" category.
hey maybe they are addicted but I know what you mean in my one niche health directory I get al kinds of junk unrelated
>> Too funny that "professional SEO companies" are trying to list themselves in "Internet Addiction" Haha that's hilarious, mikey1090! Seriously though it's strange that people would spend the time to list in a directory that's obviously not their niche - I'm yet to cop that as I'm still in development with mine, go-live is fast approaching, but thanks for the great thread - food for thought.
i decided to to the approval myself for the time being.. With plans to hire editor sometime in the future.. Right now I am working on a editor guideline that whoever I hire can follow.. I am also working on modifying phpld(i have the free version) to leave some sort of audit trail that i can refer to so that I can track which sites the editor approve/disapprove and on what grounds...
Its one of the best things you could ever have is an audit system as you call it. A bit like vbulletin's moderations system. We have this type of feature built into the script I use for our directory and may one day release it to the gen pop, who knows. Good luck on your plans you really do look as if your putting some thought into things.
Since you are doing it yourself (great idea!) perhaps some of the others who have general directories could share some common spammer keywords. You could search for them among the pendings and delete batches of spammers that way. Of course, that partly depends on what you are willing to accept. i.e. If pharmacy sites are out, you could probably search for the more common pill names and delete those; same goes for porn, casinos, etc.