"and where is the directory results? I paid many $299 to be listed on Yahoo and used to get alot of results and I get nothing or very close to nothing right now." Yes, Yahoo obviously don't really want their directory any more, but they have had the decency not to remove it or "upgrade" their listings to Overture PPC accounts. It is still there and still being used, but to a much smaller extent. Are people annoyed about that? Yes, but no where near as much as if Yahoo had dropped the directory.
"Looksmart was never profitable until this year. Where is Yahoo making their money..(PPC maybe) not from the $299 that you paid about 5 years ago"
And when does this become our problem? Yahoo manage to be profitable without screwing their customers.
"If you can't effort to pay for the traffic...you are not going to be in business anyway so what's the point."
You appear to be living in a weird world where all webmasters run online shops or affiliate businesses. In the real world, webmasters run all sorts of sites, many of whom don't make money at all, or perhaps make a cent or two per visitor. For some areas of the sites that I run, if I paid more than $0.02 for a visitor I would be making a loss. Other areas I can afford to pay $0.15 for, but any more than that doesn't make sense.
"Plus you recieved planty of traffic for your $299"
er... define plenty. Especially to those people who paid $299 the week before Looksmart swapped.
"and where can you find traffic for $0.15 a click? I'll bet you we will have to pay much more for this traffic on MSN in the future."
What has that got to do with it? Having paid for something, I don't expect to have to pay again just because the company has become greedy.
"Changing world and always changing business model..if you are in a business for yourself you know that"
And the golden rule is to look after your customers throughout.
"But we are making money with this traffic (i know i am) so they asked you to share a bit of your profits. I know it's better to get it for free but still... "
Hahahahaha! Now you are taking the mickey. I wasn't making money from the LS listings in the first place... and certainly not after they "upgraded" them.
As a couple of people have already mentioned in this thread, it is very hard to make profit through Looksmart.
One of my listings is so badly placed in Looksmart (for completely the wrong keywords) that it costs $0.75 per genuine click through.
I think that we need to watch this growing movement of "Looksmart Denial". Let's stop pretending that it didn't happen, or that it was a good thing, or that profits justify treating people like dirt. It was one of the ugliest and most callous business moves I have ever seen. It left a lot of people feeling ripped off.
I really do hope that LookSmart can get some new management and start again, using the good variety of tech that they have. We could do with more competition for the big three. They have much of the same in-house tech as Yahoo - they could be a miniature Yahoo if they started to play the game properly. PPC + Directory + Crawler = potential success.
