Watch out for people trying to get free featured listings. These people submit a link as featured, then simply skip the payment step. Now this link is sitting in your pending queue, and it becomes a featured link if you approve it. So how can you easily check for this? In phpLD, before approving your new batch of sites, always first go to "Featured Links" and scan the list for "pending" links. Here you can check if its a real pending featured or a fake. Then you can go back to your normal approve links screen, and not have to worry about one slipping through. A similar scam is the website owner trying to submit your directory URL as the reciprocal link. This is easy to spot on the normal approval screen.
Yep, good tip for those who are new to the directory game. I get one or two a day in my directories that are unpaid features. Just people trying to scam the system and hoping the directory owner/editor does not look carefully. Also check if you have a paid directory with free no-follow links allowed.
I have 2000 pending submissions in one of my paid directory.. I don't bother to approve them till my email tells me that a payment has been received.
Clear them out! What if someone has paid, and not approved yet? All directory owners should stay on top of submissions. To me, to wait more than 24 hours to approve/delete submissions is the only way to go.
You get a email that a payment has been received.. open up the admin panel and approve that link. There is noway that someone has paid and not approved.. And I don't think there is any need to wait for payment for 24/48 hrs coz when a link is being submitted there is a option for payment, no payment made and process skipped means the submitter is fake.
So why leave it in your pending queue? I delete all of the Sponsored listing submissions that skipped the payment stage.
Yup you are right creed... i'l sit one fine day and delete all of them. 4-5 directories.. I total of 4000-5000 submissions to delete...Painful
yup.. I think I need to do that. Acutally 3.06 phpld has 1 check button to delete so not painful. But there deleting submissions is in 2.0 version.. I need to manually click one by one n delete..
i have paypal email me with transactions.. this includes a link to the site in queue i have had a couple of people miss payment step for general reason such as paypal timing out, or paypal doing maintanance.... i email all non paid non spam featured submissions
Nice tip. I wrote to phpld about this, but never get a reply. I then customized the script, where visitor have to pay first and then fill the info.
Received a few scammers trying to skip the payment. I always check for payment for my regular & featured links. Thank You, Michael.
nice tips indeed. but this will be less of a problem for purely paid directories, because we approve only those listings for which paypal notification was received.
I have a few more suggestions. I have said them elsewhere, but since this is a thread for new owners, might be good to mention here. Of course, as the owner of the directory, you can do anything you want, but keep this in mind. If you expect to make money from submissions, make it as easy as possible for people to submit. Don't use image validation or ajax category selection. These methods slow down submissions. And a lot of the larger directory submitters won't waste time on a directory that uses these method unless it is a major site. Try to remember that there are A LOT of directories out there. So, unless you make it easy for people to give you money, they are very likely to put it elsewhere.
Ya ive already had 3 people try and claim paid regular listings on my site and its only been live for 3 or 4 days. Cheeky buggers Also here is a small blog article that can provide some little tips on building links for directories etc. Not sure how often its updated, but worth a look. I got a heap of directory related bookmarks, but I dont wanna spam this thread with it all http://www.directoriesblog.info/2006/07/05/link-building-for-directories/
I hate the damn captchas! Some are so darn hard on my old eyes. Is it a zero (0) or an o (O)? I put them up on my directories once in a while whenever one gets bombed with spam. Once that stops, in a few days, take the captcha off. Okay, off to sell some automatice submissions to directories (got the script updated and it is now working).