Pay $300 for Yahoo inclusion

And another $300 annually!

[ggrot]

Yahoo Tos [docs.yahoo.com]

Looks like new submissions now require that you pay to be re-reviewed every year. Haha. It's still worth it for some sites, but thats a little much IMHO. For most, its money better spent on goto. And as soon as next year's renewal fees come in, they'll probably change the entire SERP's to PPC. Lol.

[EliteWeb]

hmmmm i dont like the whole yearly payment thing, maybe if it was 10.00 for yahoo employee to make sure the link is still useful then sure, but 300.00? Id like to know how much their editors get paid a hour ~(;

[ggrot]

I'll definitely no longer recommend yahoo to smaller businesses. In fact, if they ask about it I will probably try to talk them out of it considering the investment. Yahoo used to be a great investment for smaller sites since the budget for a 1 time expense could be swayed. Larger sites and larger markets will still be worth it, but not nearly as much.

I mean, we are paying $300 for the POSSIBILITY of getting listed for only 1 year and POSSIBLY getting good copy in our description and POSSIBLY getting a ranking somewhere that will bring in more than a hit or two a day, less likely now with a half dozen overture results on each page. Alternatively, I could spend $300 on some 30c listings on overture and be GUARANTEED a full 1,000 click throughs with better targetting as I pick the title and description and a wider range of distribution. For smaller markets, this is a no-brainer decision. Just depends on if you're expecting a few dozen or more hits a day from yahoo or just a small handful.

[mivox]

10.00 for yahoo employee to make sure the link is still useful

They have a robot to check for 404 links (morgue.corp.yahoo.com, I think), they could hire 1 or 2 people to constantly run through the directory looking for bait & switch sites and other no-longer-relevant ones, and I think they could pay them a fine salary by charging $10-25/year renewal fee.

$299/year is (IMO) an obvious sign of Yahoo! scrambling for cash... but I wonder how much more of this cash-grabbing will have to happen before their latest scheme becomes the provebial back-breaking straw? I think a boycott could be a perfectly viable idea, if professional SEOs made a concerted effort to explain to their clients exactly how uncertain Yahoo's future really is, and how their constantly changing SERPs (Hello Overture!) and fee schedule make it a very questionable investment.

The Yellow pages haven't changed the way they worked in years. Everyone knows what they're getting with a yellow page ad, and while the fee schedule may change from year to year, you're GUARANTEED a listing in the Yellow Pages as long as you pay the fees. None of this pay-for-review crap.

This latest fee change may very well be the straw that convinces me to work around Yahoo for my own sites.

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Continued in Part Two [webmasterworld.com]