Is there a way of challenging 'commercial' sites

[bateman_ap]

I have a site that I want to get into Looksmart through zeal. It is a hobby site and there is no way I can spend £200 on submitting it, and therefore I can't get any decent non google traffic. However the place it belongs is considred a commercial cat. Restaurant guides and directorys. Does this mean the free sites out there such as mine, run with nothing but a desire to learn can't compete. Is there a way of saying, well it isn't really a commercial catagory, no-one in that cat is really selling anything (they aren't, jsut a few sites make you register) so can you stick me in!?

[IanTurner]

I think the problem you have is that you could very easily make the site commercial once you were in the listings.

If I were LS that is the way I would look at it anyway.

[bateman_ap]

Couldn't you say that about any site though. And the point really is that none of the sites are that commercial in nature, zagat and squaremeal are the only ones and they are more of a support for their printed versions. There are loads of personal sites that must have been added before looksmart went fully commercial?

[IanTurner]

Yes you could say that, I heard an interesting story about a C++ info site that changed direction once it was in LS and caused significant consternation to the LS team.

This is why LS are really very wary of non-commercial stuff.