fatinfo.com

Image verification is NOT a must if the directory is well maintained. It is seriously an unfounded fear that a directory will be flooded with spam that most directory owners have simply because the feature is included into a directory software package.

If a webmaster does not care about making their submission entry as guideline acceptable as possible, then you the directory admin should just hit the one click bulk ban button. Their ten second entry will always lose out to your quick glance reviews over their ill written descriptions.

If you are operating a directory and want to grow it very fast; then give submitters the benefit of the doubt by instantly approving and listing their submissions. Who cares if you are giving them a good pagerank listing as long as your directory continues to grow at a rapid pace. This is a win-win situation for both parties, the submitter feels happy that they are getting a solid backlink while the directory gets one more entry. It works better than holding them in pending review mode where it can build up to a few hundred entries at a time (where every entry after the first ten begins to look like spam). Then as you review them a few days later, you can knock out the listings that do not meet the directory guidelines.

Auto confirmation emails of their submitted sites being listed also help in marketing your other affiliates or programs that interest webmasters. It is a very soft sell approach, but if they had submitted ten entries then they will see the confirmation message ten times and eventually click on them. Now imagine getting twenty thousand entries per month, your confirmation message gets viewed twenty thousand times and you did not have to do anything except increase the size of your SQL database by one row entry.

If you seriously want to grow your directory, make it as painless as possible for the submitter. Turn off the image verifications and the directory will grow at astronomical levels.