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Would people pay the same price as at Yahoo!
Is the only real benefit now that DMOZ is free?
Is the only real benefit now that DMOZ is free?
No.
There's comprehensive too....Which is partially a bonus spin-off from not obsessively adding every affiliate with USD299 to spare.
eg arts/history:
Yahoo: 1747
ODP: 2407
Another thing, is that DMOZ directory is duplicated all over the net. There are companies specialized in software that help on doing this.
So, when you get listed in DMOZ, you'll get listed in several hundreds of other directory copies as well. I guess they also count as backlinks.
To get into Dmoz will often cost you years of time, stress and headache.
It only takes a matter of minutes to submit a site - how does that equate to "years" - you must be doing something really wrong if its taking up this much of your time. If you are getting years of stress and headaches from DMOZ, suggest you seek help :-)
Could you explain it?
Suggesting a site to DMOZ takes <15 minutes (have good site; find category; write guideline compliant description and title; submit once to the one best category) - after that there is nothing more you can do.... time to move on and do other things to promote the site --- but so many appear to make DMOZ an obsession.
As a result - for some reason we see lots of posts about things like "DMOZ nightmares" etc and the one above of "years of time, stress and headache" .... I really don't understand how that simple 15 minutes can equate to "nightmare" and "years of time, stress and headache" - if that simple 15 mnutes is causing all these problems then help is needed for these people...
If you pay for Yahoo! - then why not pay for DMOZ. Maybe one of the Editors who post around here could give us the value of their experience and would love to hear their opinion.
Acting as a DMOZ editor for 1 hour a week for 50 weeks, you could reasonably expect to add or edit about 500 sites.
If 1000 people waiting to have their site listed acted in that way, that'd be a 500,000 additional sites added in the next year -- add those to the around 400,000 added by existed editors, and you are talking a large nunber.
You'd be unlikely to add your own sites as it is unlikely to be a candidate for a starter category. But by taking the load off other editors, you free them up to work in the categories where your sites lie.
And of course, your site would only be listed if it meets the guidelines, regardless of hours contributed.
But you come out of it with an invaluable education having reviewed many hundred websites and seen their good and bad points.
Paying DMOZ money is never going to happen. Waiting for the existing editors to get around to any one particular site can be a frustrating process. Why not try an alternative?
Many complaints start "my competitor is a DMOZ editor" and then goes off-beam with "and that's why my site isn't listed".
Stick with the first thought: why are so many people who are doing well DMOZ editors? I reckon its the education.
USD300 is about 50 hours work at US Federal minumum wage.Acting as a DMOZ editor for 1 hour a week for 50 weeks, you could reasonably expect to add or edit about 500 sites.
If 1000 people waiting to have their site listed acted in that way, that'd be a 500,000 additional sites added in the next year -- add those to the around 400,000 added by existed editors, and you are talking a large nunber.
Your math and logic completely baffle me.
If 1,000 people each pay $300 for listing 1,000 web sites that's $300,000. You could easily hire 4-5 full time US workers for that - or a small village in India. If 500,000 sites wanted to get listed and paid $300 each that would be $150,000,000 next year and you could IPO DMOZ in a heartbeat. No wonder Yahoo has fancy offices and a parking lot jammed with porsches while DMOZ slaves away over computers balanced on teetering card tables.
But hey, who needs money.
The internet is free, give it all away and make it up on volume.
The new economy :)
I could be mistaken but I think victor's point was that, instead of paying $300 for an ODP listing, you could just join and do a fairly minimal bit of editing yourself that would help other editors get that much closer to reviewing waiting sites, possibly including your own.USD300 is about 50 hours work at US Federal minumum wage.Your math and logic completely baffle me.
Acting as a DMOZ editor for 1 hour a week for 50 weeks, you could reasonably expect to add or edit about 500 sites.If 1000 people waiting to have their site listed acted in that way, that'd be a 500,000 additional sites added in the next year -- add those to the around 400,000 added by existed editors, and you are talking a large nunber.
With the subsidiary points that:
OK, possibly, it was late, I'll give him that.
My experiences with my customers anyway, is the current system of volunteers just doesn't work so well. Two customers got a run around because the person working on their area was a compeititor. I know, you've heard that one before, but it was true.
But as I also posted yesterday, I don't think I'd pay a nickle for DMOZ in it's current configureation.
IMHO impartial dedicated employees is the only way to make something link DMOZ responsive and grow. If you knew your listed would be addressed in 7 days, GREAT!
As it sits, it's a big black hole.
Victor makes an interesting point, but the dollar per hour figure is untenable if one has a family to feed.
I think a better way to cost that out is,
That's two hours and thirty five minutes. Now plug in the Currency per hour you normally charge and that's how much it will cost you to get into DMOZ.
Is that dollar/euro/peso/pound etcetera amount worth it to you?
also a few months? Or do you only get a response if you get accepted?
I have rarely, if ever, seen any DMOZ clones produce any PR.
I hate to say it, but the best way to get into the ODP is the same as the best way to rank well in Google and the best way to win "best of" awards and the best way to get unsolicited links from strangers: have a really, really good site, with a lot of links coming into it, so that people tend to find it when they go out looking and be impressed by it. As spam and mirrors and made-for-Adsense crap gets more and more prevalent, "suggested sites" become less and less useful to ODP editors. They look elsewhere for good sites to list, and they find them the same basic way that anyone else looking for good sites does.
Be both noteworthy and noticed, or pay someone. Those are the only two ways to get links to you. And Google doesn't really think very highly of the latter kind of links, so I don't think an ODP listing would help you very much with Google if that was the kind of directory it was.
However, there's nothing to stop DOWNSTREAM users doing something similar. For example, Google could use ODP data to build the bulk of its directory, but if you want a faster submission or improved listing you could pay.
That would certainly be an innovative idea; if Helleborine's taste is very good, people might even like to use it or compete for a spot in it.
If that would be a breach of the ODP open-source agreement, there would certainly be nothing to stop Helleborine from putting together a directory of the 'best' ten sites on every topic all on his/her own, either. There's nothing inherently wrong with that idea. There are several such sites in kids' education and they're very popular. I didn't mean to be horribly dismissive of the idea; just that I don't think it's at all what any of its users want the ODP to be. I don't think it's even vaguely viable for a site with multiple editors (each of whom has their own opinions about what looks good and what doesn't), either.
