if you ever asked yourself if it is worth to pay for a backlink from a certain site than you have the answer. always depend on your site the site you wanna get a backlink and the content. so for some site the answer will be no and for other yes. but you are the only one who could answer it.
Usually it's not worth it. You could pay for a submission to botw.org and some other high authority directories and also directories specific to your niche, however there are usually better ways to achieve rankings than submitting to a paid directory.
The question is: if people start submitting to good general and niche paid directories that are well maintained and whose owners actually care, how would You make money out of your directory submission service charging almost $80 for "submitting" to thousands of directories more than half of which would become parked page in matter of weeks?
Depends on the niche and the competition and yes they can give a boost. If all your competitors on page one are listed in DMOZ and Yahoo and you cant seem to stay on page one well you may have to spend some bucks or effort to get into those. If only a few competitors are in those directories you are likely wasting your time and the effort or money would be better spent on other things such as competition analysis software or services.
A newspaper ad. Usually not worth it. Direct mail. Usually not worth it. Cold calling. Usually not worth it. TV. Usually not worth it. Just about every form of advertising of a product and or service is USUALLY NOT WORTH IT! Doing all of the above? That's where the worth comes in. In any form of advertising its going to be the collective culmination of a number of various forms of media and advertising to not only reach your target demographic, but to also re-enforce your presence in the market. By itself, nope. As part of the larger picture? You betcha!
No it's those who have sites that don't believe they have sites worth wasteing money on, the sort of people who know about SEO, directories are not worth what you pay for them becuase of where your link will sit. you can do a more towards ranking with $300 than the yahoo directory will do for you for example
see it short term? if ur a link builder for some else, i see ur point because most SEO companies charge monthly to "keep you ranked"...however, if you're seeing it long term...those strong backlinks actually serve as your "anchor" on the web.