Suggestion to Free Directory List Maintainers

I would like to offer a suggestion for those of you who maintain the many excellent free directory lists. I know all the reasons why this happens but I am looking for a remedy.

Too often when perusing a free list I come across a site, track down an appropriate category and waste my time until I find out that "free" listings have been "temporarily" suspended. This is annoying and in some cases I think it is simply bait-and-switch. I would guess a not insignificant percentage of these directories do this intentionally and are mis-using your lists in order to get traffic and hope for people to upgrade.

I would like to see some lists institute a rule that if a "free" directory ever suspends free listings or fails to provide them within a reasonable amount of time, they are ineligible from ever being described as a free list again.

I don't mean to tell anyone how to maintain their lists, I am just making a friendly suggestion as someone who uses them and finds them less useful when 20%-30% of the sites are not free at all and actually require you to pay to get listed.

As for those of you with directories who do this.. I don't really care what your reasons or motivations are for doing it.. But in a lot of cases you did advertise yourself to these free lists, so think about your responsibility for making sure you are no longer being listed on free lists when you only charge for listings.

I don't begrudge anyone for charging for listing sites in their directory. However, when I come to your directory which is advertised as a free directory, and I am offering to provide you content in exchange for a listing, I don't like being tricked. So either charge for listings or don't charge for listings. Stop with the game playing. I can't think of anything that rings more bogus than the temporary suspension of free listings.

Thanks.

 

The problem is that people start out with the best of intentions... only to realize days, weeks, months or even years later that maintaining a directory is hard.

I maintain just one niche' directory and I feel overrun with submissions. I can't imagine attempting to maintain a general purpose directory.

They also discover that CTR and CPM for directories is very poor.

These two factors motivate them to change their strategy and try to charge for listings. It isn't where they planned to go, but it is where they ended up.

 

Good points Will.

For some reason people think running a directory is easy. Okay difficulty-wise it is. But if anyone gets half the submissions I do to just one directory they will struggle to maintain that directory unless they invest time every day (Hours rather than minutes) reviewing/editing/accepting and rejecting sites and listings.

I also agree on the adsense, it's not massive, and the directory I run dwarfs any of my other sites. Because the adsense click throughs are a trickle rather than a river, directory owners are converting them to pay-for-inclusion models in order to make their time spent on the directory viable.

aeiouy I have started to do what you've suggested. The bait-and-switch that did it for me was Little Directory. I won't ever re-add that directory to my list. I think I mentioned to you in a previous post that it is difficult to have the lists perfect (unless I spend even more time on them, and I spend too much already) because directory owners wait for an update, then as soon as its made they change their policy from free to paid.

 

I agree with you silencer !!
I started 4 directories, absolutedirectory, flexengine, 4do.org and ru7.org
I just converted 1 to paid, and other 3 are free (although 2 of them are not owned by me any more, but are still free). I agree to your points completely. I converted one to paid model just to cover the costs and time. One of the paid directory makes me a couple hundred $$ a month and that is enough for me to dedicate a person to review free submissions 2-3 times a week.

I hope that helps other directory owners as well.

 

That's an awfully nice list you have there silencer.

It makes me want to stop updating my list.

 

I appreciate your list, and I am not asking for perfection. I realize that these lists really are not a money-maker for anyone in anyway shape or form... Just if you become aware of an issue to do something is fine by me.. I think if site designers learned that such practices were highly frowned upon it might reduce their occurence.


Will, I understand the best intentions... I think that got explained to me fairly well in another thread.. I would just ask that someone who makes the switch to a pay site at least contact those lists they submitted themselves to and ask their status to be changed.

After I wrote this original post last night I came across another site that was temporarily halted, and I realized that the site has halted submissions for like 4 months now. Another site had halted free submissions because they 86 submissions that they said would take 2 days to clear out.

I just want people to be upfront and clear with their intentions. At the very least I think ANY site that has suspended free submissions or changed to a pay only submission service needs to disclose that in big bold letters on the front of their page in neon pink stating so. I try to be mindful of directory owners so I look through their information, their structure, and try to find the most appropriate category for my site(s). This can sometimes take several minutes, then I am told I can't actually submit my site. I just had my time monumentally wasted for trying to be mindful to the directory owner. I respect some courtesy in return.