TOS and rules would probably be considered somewhat the same. As I see it, both are a form of contract. Jamie could probably provide a legal opinion on that. If it were mine, I would come up with some additional benefits for submitters as part of your site redesign and simply not provide them to the old free listings. Perhaps send those folks an email explaining that you value their help in getting your site going and will not be removing their listings now that you are going paid. However, their listings will remain as is and not enjoy x, y and z that all paid listings will now include. Their listings will have less but you won't actually be giving less than you agreed to give when they submitted. I just think it's such a slap in the face and perhaps more than a bit of bad karma to thank the folks who risked their time to submit to a new directory by dumping their listings when the directory goes paid. Without them, your site wouldn't be what it is today.
The rules could be considered a contract as its an offer and acceptance, the two principles of forming a contract, they don't have to be in writing either. Your offer to accept a site providing they adhere to your rules, they accept, the contract is formed. The only saving grace is that you don't put any time scale down and don't charge so you'd likely get away with dumping free listings even if it is immoral. Move to paid listings and its a different ball game.
I'll still go through and delete the sh!t listings. I'll probably also go through and totally remove all of the deeplinks on the free listings. Should I add nofollow, or what? I may follow some of the feature additions that MasterMOZ has found to be cool...that's a really neat directory site. Then, I'll totally disable free deeplinks for freebie listings....well....I hope this all works out. I may as well start doing a link campaign for my site, eh? Get up to 5k to 10k backlinks, etc...besides buying some submissinos here, what's the best way? I'm already in various directories for directories.
If I moved the freebies to free.tiptopdirectory.com and didn't allow new submissions, would that be ok? Would that kill me on SEO? If so, I could just put them on a new directory, and mass mail the users to tell them to submit their other sites, to the new free dir...whatever.
- Remove adsense ads - Update PhpLD - Remove free or reciprocal submissions - It must be a pay-only directory. Make it cheap but not free. - Add your directory to other directories, forums... List goes on like this, good luck !
I would also agree to make it a pay-only directory. One other thing, I wouldn't make it too cheap if I were you, mainly because if your site is quality (which hopefully after the re-design it will be), then there is no reason to charge it like an average spam-filled $3 directory. I would put it up over $10 per year at least. You will then at least get quality sites to sign up and may end up making more money in the long run.