Move to Paid Submission

No… it is not an April Fools joke! Shortly after the 1st April 2014, Come On Aussie is changing over to a paid submission model, ditching the free submissions which have been the norm since we started in this game way back in 1997!

Why are We Switching to Paid Submissions ?

The volume of free submissions has grown tremendously in the last few months… along with a huge increase in the number of mistakes being made, particularly by those people “outsourced” to submit listings.

When the amount of simple corrections that need to be made approaches 2 hours of unpaid work every week day… it makes me wonder why I offer the service for nothing, especially considering the many SEO agencies using our services are getting paid very good money 🙂

I’ll also add that the ongoing email requests to remove links is driving me crazy as well… considering most of these are coming also from third party services (who are also charging money to “clean up” someone’s link profile by asking for ALL links to be removed – which is a tad stupid – but that’s another story) yet they do NOT provide any degree of authentication to PROVE the request is legit! Each request received is sent the stock standard reply telling them to verify properly before we can delete.

Many “freemium” service like Come On Aussie, bases their model on offering a free option for entry, and hope that there is sufficient ongoing response to such things as

  • the offers (cheap domain names, hosting, etc) made to our “list”, or
  • the specially crafted (and priced) advertising opportunities offered on our sites
However, this has not developed to the level I had hoped for.

Since costs and time spent now outweigh the return, it’s time to make the change to the paid submission model.

Granted I can see a huge reduction in the number of submissions made. Last week for example, there were close to 500 new sites submitted. After the paid model is introduced, that will definitely drop off quite significantly.

It will however, have three important results that should flow on to all involved:

  1. the overall “quality” of the submissions received should improve tremendously… which will
  2. reduce the time involved in the maintenance of the site itself… and also
  3. generate an actual “income” to help recover costs
all of which will ensure I can continue to provide an authoritative, human edited Australian web site directory 🙂

The price will be extremely reasonable for small business operators (think under 5 bucks/submission) and I am also looking to develop a range of “packages” for agencies – depending on the volume of submissions they anticipate making.

More precise detail coming real soon… 🙂

If you’ve got any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you. Please add them below or contact me.

Cheers
Stephen Spry

By Stephen Spry · Filed Under Uncategorized 

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