Well said. I tried to rep you, but apparently you've got too much from me already... It's a matter of perspective...a directory owner sees his or her work differently than other people see it, even other 'webmasters.'
Well, I'm guessing the author got paid to do the review? It's not unthinkable. Was it worth it for the webmaster? Maybe. What I like is the site rank tool. Makes my own sites look bad. Makes any of the top sites look too good. Actually, it said my site could be worth 5 digits, but I seriously doubt it. I'm kind of amused that one mentions the "John Chow" effect. I wonder how close or how far it would be compared to a slashdot or digg effect. As for directory submission in general, you normally should submit to a few hundred every month. In a couple of years, you'd have exhausted most of the good ones and there's little point in submitting to the not-so-good ones. Then every now and then you find a new directory and you submit to that too. That's why I like reviews, but I like the listings better (I mean, the directory of directories and all those free spreadsheets you get from other directory collectors.)
Yeah. $450. Its good but not as good. My alexa ranking went to 9000 the day of the review which was pretty good, although I don't fuss over alexa too much. many other webmaster/seo blogs picked up the story so I gained many other backlinks as a result of the initial review.
Hey Fellas, Just wanted to comment on the John Chow review of www.idk.in and let everyone know my initial thoughts: 1. The review has generated plenty of traffic, but that will probably be very short lived. 2. I am quite disappointed that Mr. Chow did not bother to write his own reviews, given how much he charges! I know that if any of my fellow webmasters paid me to review their site on any of my own sites, I would take the time and do it myself. 3. As expected, they panned the "paid directory" feature on the site; nobody could honestly expect a glowing review of a web directory these days! 4. We are going to take Michael Kwan's advice with regards to restructuring the site around the SEO tools we have developed, which do offer more value to users than the directory at this point. 5. Overall, this was probably not the best promotional value for $450, but we decided to try it since the Site Rank tool is somewhat sticky and we are seeking to get more exposure for that and the other Genuine SEO Tools we have been developing. We selected JC's site because the readers there fit our target demographic for the tools. So, we will continue to try various promotional avenues for idk.in and the other sites in our portfolio since, as the saying goes, "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained!" Cheers, Steve
Yeah, but you will still notice trickles of it coming in for a few weeks. I was too at the time, but when you're making 30k a month from a blog I guess he can afford to pay people and outsource the work. Michael is a pro writer and probably just as knowledgeable as John. hehe yeah, we spent most of this thread discussing that! Cool. Don't neglect the directory too much though....just push it to the side so it doesn't own the homepage. A bit like romow.com Yeah $450 is a lot, but in the long run it may work out cheaper than adwords or banner advertising.
Thanks for the kind words of encouragement Mikey! BTW - I found this today: http://www.blogherald.com/2008/02/21/genuine-site-rank-tool-for-bloggers/ Nice that the story was picked up ;-)
nice Steve. This is what I was talking about, the chain effect - much more exposure from the initial review. The comments in that blog post slate your tool a little though. Like many things in life, it isn't perfect. People will always hunt down the negatives in websites. Especially webmasters.