It's common to hear directory owners complaining about receiving submissions for Featured Listings and not the payment. I'm sure a few of those were from wishful submitters hoping you'll just approve the submission without checking, but I'll bet the majority aren't. I just ran through a short list of older directories with the intent of purchasing some Featured Listings and I found a number of directories do not post the term or duration for their Featured Link option. If I see just a price, I can only imagine that it is a one time fee. (<---Big hint ) I'm sure others do as well. You really should make a submitter aware of the term/duration of the listing for the fee before they get to the PayPal payment page and find out at that stage of the submission process that it's monthly, yearly or whatever. By the time I reach the PayPal payment page, the listing information has already been submitted so yes, you'll receive a submission without the payment when I close my browser and move on. There are a few directories that offer a $5.00 Featured Listing. Sound good? I thought so too. That is until I got to the payment page and it's a monthly fee. Of course I'm going to bail. The main page PR was 1 or 2, and the category page was PR0. Make this simple change and I'll bet your Featured Listing non-payments will drop.
Good points. I get annoyed by the pricing not being stated completely on the submit page of directories. I like permanent links but will do yearly listings sometimes for featureds. If I get to a payment page and it is a monthly price, then I out of there.
Thanks for posting that CReed because I find it very annoying to go to the trouble of preparing my submission and think I'm about to support a good directory by paying for a featured link--- only to get to the payment page & find it a monthly rate rather than annual or permanent! Just like you I bail at that point & don't go back. Besides-- up until the latest version of phpld the program wasn't actually able to keep up with recurrent terms was it? Now it can handle subscriptions though... but all the same, I'd rather offer permanent regular links & featured links at a fair & reasonable rate rather than have to bother keeping up with recurrent renewals etc...
That should be from manual submission people listing it for other people for a fee and not looking at all the options just trying to get the no. of submissions to 100 or 200 or what ever sold to the client.
Never gave that one a thought! Looking at my submit pages for some of my directories, it does not state how long a period a featured or paid link stays on the directory. So, adding another project to my long list. Putting in each submit page a nice sentence about how long the paid links will stay on the directory. Thanks for the great suggestion CReed!