For me, it depends. I have a large amount of sites. For sites which I think it is very important in the future, I like to do everything myself. directory submission, link buliding, everything done manually. I even scared to use ad network for some of my sites since I have no idea what kind of pages those links will appear. For many other sites, paying other people to do things might be much easier. You need to have focus.
It always takes too much time for me to submit my sites myself. So I prefer paying other people to do it rathan than doing it myself. Manual directories submission service is better.
Yep! I have 22 new sites that has been online since February. So far I had advertised them a little at first and had something like 10,000 pageviews from them all in total and had about 5 - 15 sales from that. I will not say what sites they are, but I can say that I have had no time to advertise any of them anymore and the traffic has gone down so much that I am getting about 2 pageviews from each on on a weekly basis. When I first advertised them I had only put a link for each site on about 5 other sites at most. They have probably gone deep into the web now and the search engines probably can't see them anymore or follow them or something giving my sites a very poor or none existant ranking. So I think it is time for me to pay for a web directory submission service that is done manually. At least this way I will get the work done for me as I have no time what so ever and if it increases my sites PR a little then at least these sites should be seen in the search engines a gain with rather good or alright rankings. If I get something like 5 - 15 sales from doing this then I would have paid back a little of the cost so I guess it works out alright.
I agree, It is not about the short term benefits. It is more about the long term benefits that you will get from these submissions.
We concur also outsourced submissions enable you to continue with your focused work, while at the same time the linking is being submitted. We have used a number of services like this in DP
I think the manual submissions are the way to go if they are affordable or you can find a good routine for it. Doing multiple sites can become cumbersome though. I'd be interested in hearing peoples results on multiple site directory submissions.
I have around 27 sites and I just don't have time to do submissions on them all. Infact I don't get time to do any of them hardly. How I see it is that if I want to make money online then I have to design the sites and update them all while someone else is doing my web directory submissions. All of this money that I will spend on directory submissions will pay of in the end.