Majority of directories are General in nature and aren't connected or backed by big corporates. You need to know who you're dealing with and who owns these directories:
Firstly, its easy to set one up (although very time-heavy), as you can pick up the scripts for £50 - £100, so being cheap, the kids of the world see something like Dmoz, and figure its a sure money making opportunity, and that's exactly whos behind these things.
Their poorly promoted, and just swap links and pagerank, so they can flog listings to each other - basically its a racket and unworthy of someone's time and energy. Besides, they do the world no good at all, as they are well-know and got devalued by Google some time back.
Nowadays its rare to find one thats recognised by Google as a useful resource, and the majority don't make a penny, never promote themselves and have a waiting list of submissions that'll likely never see the light of day. The rest charge outrageous fees for very little.
But there is some Gold, in the General directory offerings, but will cost to get a link. Unless a directory gets at least 2000 visitors a month, I'd forget it as it won't get the traffic to pass on to any site that submits itself.
The verticals or niche, are the successful ones and some ARE backed by investors, or have good press behind them. Its all about research, rather than chucking money at a bunch of links.
There's gold out there, you just gotta invest some time and look for the targeted links.
I'd suggest getting some general directory links, but dont waste too much time on it, as a lot of general directories have shut down, including some niche ones and a couple of big name ones too eg: MSN Small business directory..
not good. So is it not worth doing? Not even for the link juice?
