This is probably the most accurate remark and because of this fact there are a lot of webmasters who would gladly pay $100 to be in the directory if they were gauranteed a quick review. Sad but true.
If it's a gravy train for senior editors, I am more upset that they are be ripping off webmasters charging them for near-worthless links, than their being corrupt by DMOZ's guidelines.
If a link from DMOZ is worthless then so should be link from any other directory or web site. You can also post in these sections and tell them that they don't know anything and the whole forum section is worthless. Solicitations & Announcements Directories Link Sales I am not giving any opinion about your removal but if the links are so worthless then why did you add your own sites to DMOZ to cause your removal as editor?
Why not add my own sites? I had three. Not exactly an evil empire. Non-competitive stuff. Annie can back me up on that. ...But! Let me tell you what a good link is. A few minutes ago, I was checking out my rankings. Out of the blue, my Google Co-Op categories come up at the top of the page with a "refine your search" notice. Lo and behold, you click on the "refine your search" links provided, you see my annotations. Now, that's GOLD BARS GALORE. And I'll tell you something else. The results are much different, and much better than the "un-annotated" Google results. No MFAs, not trash. All 100% good and legitimate resources. One thing you can do at the Co-Op is to assign a value to how good you've covered a subtopic. For instance, I know 100% of the spinning widgets sites. So I can code such that ONLY the sites I have annotated will show up. Conversely, there are too many widget stores for me to know them all. In that case, I coded it to allow the Google organic results to dominate my annotated sites to a much greater degree. You just can't do that with DMOZ. DMOZ = 2002 Google Co-Op = The Future
Link Sales $3, $5, 20 directories for $30, $2, $3, $2, $5 Solicitations $1, $5 Seems like it is just the labour rate for adding a link. And presumably you can keyword stuff with no problems. Trouble on DMOZ is that a keyword stuffed listing is going to stand out and is likely to attract someone along to remove it. A paid DMOZ listing is going to have to "blend", and is therefore not such a great move - remember all those people who want their listing removed because it was damaging their marketing? A fast DMOZ editor will list maybe 6 an hour, $12/hour labour = $2.
Or if you take the case of people who are ready to pay $100 or more for a DMOZ listing then 6*$100= $600/hour, not a bad compensation for "senior" editors "volunteer" work.
at best, a backlink from dmoz could be equivalent to two PR5s, which in effect doesnt mean much... well atleast for me.
People! You are missing the point, a link in dmoz eventually makes it's way into other directories including the google directory. So it's not just one link that's at stake but many links and several of them quality links from authority sites.
I do not understand these people responding with comments like a DMOZ listing is friggin' gold. [sarcasm] "OMG! DMOZ is the best, brings gazillions of visitors, raises PR, gets SERPs to beat your competitors, ushers in the Age of world peace, ends global warming, teaches me to play the ukelele, naturally increases the size of my <insert whatever> by 2 inches, ...." [/sarcasm]
... what? It doen't do all those things and more? Gosh, Billy Bob, what are we going to do now? I guess we better put those plans for the new swimming pool on hold.
If we look at it just as a link buy I would pay more than 100$ I don't know where people get their links from (the paid ones I mean) but if you have found a source that sells permanent links on aged and trusted domains for less that 100$ please let me know. On the other hand I wouldn't pay to get into DMOZ simply because I don't like paying "volunteers"
LOL. As I said somewhere else had that been the going rate I would have made a very modest $800,000 from DMOZ over 3 years. As an evening hobby. Not bad at all. But one offer in all that time, in goods not cash. Hardly worth the effort if you were in it for the money. The level of demand simply is not there even if you could advertise openly. And you could imagine the senior editors squabbling over what little trade was available. Frankly it wouldn't remain a secret for long. I have yet to see a credible and senior editor come forward and say publicly that yes corruption is widespread and commonplace in the senior ranks across all the commercial branches. When that happens I'll believe it, but in the meantime it would not surprise me if the odd meta or editall was up to no good and evading capture by some means. It wouldn't surprise me because some have been caught and ejected in the past, it would be foolish to think it won't happen in the future.
I would pay around $100 for a dmoz listing. I have 3 sites I would like to list. PM me if you're an editor. This is serious too. DMOZ is king - no matter what they say. If there is any directory you want to be in it's the DMOZ.
$100 is definately worth it for a PR9 backlink and directory submission to the Authority Directory. Also if you are a website trader (buying, selling) the value of a site may be worth more if submitted to DMOZ. Hell some people pay $25 or more to be submitted to a PR6-PR7 directory. Just MHO.
You do realise that DMOZ hunters are tracking down any and all sites associated with you and banning them right now. Don't you... They're not bad at it either, the techniques have been honed over 8 years. How many DMOZ pages have PR9? And a crooked editor couldn't keyword stuff the listing or it will stand out very quickly and the site and the editor will get caught. Please do go check listings in the Google clone (which have been listed in DMOZ for a while to have been picked up) and note that quite a few have PR0, illustrating the PR impact that a listing has. Then do some experiments and notice that sites without a listing regularly get higher positions than DMOZ listed ones. Then check out the anecdotal evidence from people who have periodically posted the results of being listed - generally it is negligible, certainly not enough business to repay the $100. But hey, it's your money...
If the sites meet DMOZ guidelines, how exactly would you prove that an editor has received funds for the listings. It seems to me that many webmasters don't pay to get unfit sites listed, but rather pay to speed up the process of getting listed.