Here on this forum, and on a bunch of other forums, plus websites...are lists of directories to submit to. The majority of those lists have only free directories. Which is great for free directories. BUt what happens when a free directory becomes a paid directory? How does one let all those list compilers know to change or remove a directory? Should there be a list of only paid directories that were once free? I have a directory that was free, changed to paid only (or free with recip). It still gets a bunch of submissions each day, and usually I can see via the name and/or email that it is submitters. Those I can find, I send an email and say, hey! This is no longer a free directory, remove it from you submit list. I had someone submit one of my sites to 100 directories. Looking at the emails I got, seems a few of them no longer accept free submissions. Meaning I paid to have my site submitted to a useless place.
This is very good point you have raised. Sincerly, this is big problem for submitters like me. For me....so far so good. Because I am doing continuous submission to the directories in my list, so I delete the dir from list if found paid. In general, the submitter have to do what I am doing. i.e continuous check for directories. What else can be done....please let me know. Sure, I'll do it.
That is why directory lists such as SEO Friendly Free Directory List that are continuosly improve the maintainted directory list are so important. These are few and far between with many lists simply adding new free directories and irregularly, if ever, reviewing the content. Often these reviews are stolen from others. In my opinion all manual submitters should be using lists that are actively maintained by a group of directory owners, manual submitters, and SEM's. When they find a change they can also submit an update, thereby assisting the continual improvement of the list, and ensuring that directory owners that have changed terms from free to paid are not bugged by spam submissions.
Some of the directories that were once free have become bigger and trusted already, thats why they have changed to paid directories - this is actually a great way to earn some income, nevertheless there are so many other links submitted that when the search engines cache them it is already hard to find the better links and poor ones, so try to submit in categories that only have small number of other links as this will be better for your link to be recognized by the search engines and especially by Google