" I keep 50% ad review fee if rejected " - my experiment for 1 month

nice experiment John.

 

An interesting experiment, but as others have said the traffic is too small to really see what effect it's having, and the timing is bad. Although you can get over the bad timing element by changing the policy back and seeing whether those 3 or 4 submissions return.

I think there's an issue over guidelines, and declining to return review fees if you reject a website. You can only plan for so many scenarios in your guidelines, without writing thousands of words that no-one will read. So if you're going down the route of not returning a portion of the review fee, make sure you specify that it will only be kept if the website violates any of your specific guidelines. So when a website comes along that's iffy for a reason you haven't thought of before, you're not obliged to include it.

This is a fairly easy one to pin down: a UK address in the contact details, currency in sterling, British English used rather than American, .uk domain, content about a place in Britain. You've got to specify which of these points are essential, and which are just preferred. Because in theory a website about the history of Croatia is relevant to UK people who might be interested. But most people would agree that you wouldn't necessarily expect to find that sort of website in a UK directory.

 

That would get you an IMMEDIATE credit card dispute. If I submitted to anyone and this happened, I would make SURE that person would NEVER be allowed to take payments from credit card companies-EVER!

 

I will stick on full-refund policy anyway.

 

There are a lot of other factors you should also take into account. The company you keep for example. Another one is what you say and how you conduct yourself online. As a buyer I wouldn't be putting any money on your long term future right now. But if you have started rejecting "those type of sites" and even if you are only keeping half of the listing fee you are charging, you are on the right track. I also liked what you had to say about content stuffing even though that was cut short before you really got going. What happened there? Did the paymaster click his fingers? Why not try going the full distance? Set up guidelines, make sure your mates from the bad old days understand that you mean what you say and pocket their money if they start pushing the envelope.

 

Thank you all for all your opinions.

I think I'll keep it that way -

Regarding some of your questions--

** I hardly promote the directory- besides few targetted ads that send me good traffic. I have it also listed on some big directories.

** The keywords it rank for - (according to Google webmaster tool's top search queries)

Directory related --

web directory , web directories, best web directory , best web directories, the best directory

Others - sofa bed mattress, wedding shopping , directory dump, uk wholesale pages, la bella flora boutique and more for sites listed on the directory.

** About bots hitting the submit page - I am not really sure how can I differentiate -- but it has 4941 page views in total so far during October.

What I am trying to do is - experiment and I plan t keep the experiment permanent. I reckon - I can do without generating revenue by this site

I also think - submitters are having problems with my # 7 & 9 submission conditions that says

7. Please do not use excessive keywords on the title.
9. Sites found with keyword stuffed anchor texts on title will be outrightly rejected.

Code (markup):

They are against SEOing of a site and submitters pay to do just that. So I'll remove those two conditions - but keep the other one (#10) thats says we reserve the right to modify the submission.

@ CReed - sorry I don't yet have TOS page and I am working on it. Plan to have it soon.

Edit: - the price was the same when I used to get 3/4 submissions previously.

 

As I said I don't purposefully optimize any of my directories - as I want my to help my clients rank- not myself - That has always been my view since I became a directory owner 10 months back.

So it took me some time t heck the categories and many of them rank good --inside top 100. Some even rank top 10

 

I doubt you had that many human visitors to that page so far this month.

You can look at your latest visitors or raw log files and see how many were direct requests for that url only.

 

I went to analog-->Directory Report-->/submit.php/ has 21 requests for the month October while /Computers_and_Internet/ has 10238 requests

Is this you are talking about? Sorry about this - but I always make it clear how Dumb a webmaster/directory owner I am when it comes to site management/technialities

 

Let me add one more comments which I wrote in another thread related about the refund policy.

One basic problem that exists with directories are the guidelines and as of now there is no standard rule or objective factors to decide who qualifies as accepted or rejected. Most directories if not all use a very subjective decision. Is not like saying that 10+10=20, abc, or any other objective method.

I think you must provide an answer to the following question in order to implement your "No Refund Policy"

How do submitters know if their site qualifies or not before paying any fees?

As of now I have not seen a single directory that could answer the above question.

I think most people are not willing to waste their money if you cant provide them with something in return. Why take the risk when there are thousands of directories? Let's remember that in some way we are competing and submitters don't have enough money to submit to all paid directories. So they will go with the better options (100% refund policy).

 

You might have a point if you had the balls to call it a listing fee. But I think you are wrong. Buyers are looking for long term value and that roughly translates into honesty and integrity. We refund because we don't have any guidelines but I think a no refund policy will become a big "selling" point in days to come and that's the way we are going. If the industry demonstrates that we can and are willing to pull the plug on MFA, links litter (directories excluded of course), scams, spams and pills we all have a bright and rosy future.

Think about it. How many directory masters are really going to reject a listing unless its patently obvious that its unsuitable and unless there is a chance they are going to get called for accepting it. After all they can always claim that the web master changed the site after their review.

 

Funny thing is that I did similar experiment just a few days ago and to be honest I am yet to see any difference in submissions. I had a bolded line stating that no money will be refunded if submission is rejected.
Since submission rate is generally lower than before I do not have really big sample, but so far, since I removed that line, I haven't seen any changes in the number of submissions. They have not increased.

 

Considering that most people that are submitting are propbably paid to submit 50,000 links to 50,000 directories, I doubt they will care what the refund policy is.