if you do a search for best directories you will find 1000's of threads on what people think are the best to submit to
Looking into the list it seems to be a very expensive way of promoting your website. ALthough, when we talk about SEO we should include all ways of website promotions I will stay the free way instead of spending thousands in directories. At the end the best links that are going to help you, will be niche related ones.
Not really. If I submit a blank page and it gets approved, it hardly makes it a good directory. Free or paid - those that are full of decent sites are the best. So we have dmoz - free, yahoo - paid etc.
I SECOND THAT!!!! I spend a lot of money submitting to quality directories myself and it pays ! I can do a search for my sites and find those links from the directories that I have submitted to. These are the ones I submit my other sites to. Mark