I am thinking about getting some listings at Yahoo and Botw. A few years back I tried BOTW but was rejected. My listing never violated any of their policies but was rejected anyways. They did refund my money immediately though. Now I have read that they won't refund money for rejections. I want to try them again along with some others I have updated my website since then and I believe I know why I was rejected the first time. It's a big gamble for that kind of fee. Has anyone who has been rejected and not refunded their fee, ever tried cancelling the payment with your credit card company since you really didn't get service? IMO charging that much, rejecting and taking someone elses hard earned money for an employee to take a 2 minute look at a webiste isn't much of a service. In any other business nobody could charge for this and reject the customer and keep their money.
I am not saying that I agree with it but the main reason they are doing it is to distinguish themselves in the eyes of the search engines. They are not selling paid links, they are selling reviews.
I'd imagine those listing there typically make sure they are listing a site and or sites that are not only appropriate for the category, but are content rich and non-spammy. Not many people with crappy sites spend $150 listing them in a directory, so I would gather very few sites are rejected. I will agree that $150 is a pretty steep amount to lose if it is rejected. I really cannot imagine they would charge the entire $150 if they rejected your site. Review takes time, but if you're gonna reject something (in my own experience) you've figured it out long before it's cost you $150 of your time.
Thanks. Both of you have mades sense. I realise I made a mistake in my earlier post, I was rejected from dirjournal.com not botw. I did have my eye on botw at the time. I searched my email and found out I was rejected due to lack of content. I was refunded. I have absolutely no complaint with them. I checked the wayback machine to see what my content looked like at the time and I believe there was one page that had very little content and it was one of the deep links I tried to submit. Therefore their rejection seems just and fair.
I think you answered your question... before submitting you have to be impartial and evaluate it. Make a decent website (not even a great one) with good content and you'll be accepted. I used BOTW and Yahoo and got accepted both times. Didn't bother to pay for BOTW renewal though.
Try keeping it natural, the text of the content should not be overly promotive of your site it should be like a review instead of only praise.