olddocks, Well, I have a directory that has been running for well over a year now, with much of that time as a free directory (currently offering free submissions still). I will tell you that it is alot of work to review all those free submissions, and if you have pretty high standards of what gets listed, then you will reject almost all of what gets submitted. I spend alot of time manually adding quality sites on my own, since you rarely get an "authority" kind of site submitted. As far as whether to stay free or switch to paid, it's entirely your call. I wouldn't say either is better or worse than the other. Best of luck with your directory.
I am one of the ones that charge $30 at Ask with pr0 and people don’t mind, because I get a loot of submissions probably more than other more established directories. PR is important but not all you should look at, directory integrity is probably more important. Also these PR updates take to long my site should be at least pr5 by now Alive and Aviva only now are PR7. I don’t need the pr value I look at backlinks and know exactly where the directory is going. On a free market you charge what you think is fair and then the market decides if you are right or wrong.
Personally I failed miserably of keeping my directory free, too much time needed and if you have lots of sites plus a day job it becomes almost impossible to keep up with the submissions as the directory grows in popularity.
If any of you guys have been selling directory submissions for any period of time, you'd realize that most buyers don't care at all about Pagerank. As to free directories: isn't your time worth anything? Sorting through 500 link submissions a day takes a ton of time.
Yeah well having a free directory is a kind of spare time i you just have 1. You will get enough money to pay back your hosting for a year with that directory and you'll get noticed by most of the webmasters arround there. The only hard thing is you will have, like all of the dudes here, to fight against SPAM. Sometimes there are soem big spam parties where you receive 20 websites starting with the number "1" like 1traveleurope.com, 1travelasia.com, 1travelafrica.com yada yada... In that case you apply the "Mass Deletion and Ban IP" strategy. Good luck.
I don't like free directory...because they are full! So your listing goes for example at pag10...maybe a page not indexed because too deep!
It's bit hard to run a directory accepting free submissions, i have had running free directory, at the start it was getting over %80 of quality submissions, but by the passage of time, more than %50 for submissions were by robots, spammy sites. I always keep the free links in the directory after turning directories into paid, coz i believe users took time to submit their sites even though for free.
I offer both free and paid spots in my directory. All get reviewed the same. I like to give options. Paid listings can be placed in the top main categories and of course have much better position than free submissions. I don't ever plan to go 100% paid or free.
yeah! i have seen people submitting to directories come from different backgrounds. PortProphecy, i have seen your site. it looks nice. keep up the good work.
I have paid directory and I reinvest most of the money back promoting my web sites. I am currently paying lots of other directory and therefore I will more bak link and PR. If it was free I will not able invest on promotion.