Hmmm…remember I was talking about John Scott’s post about annual fees for directories being for greedy directory owners? Well, it seems that the owner of Aviva Directory, Jeff, responded by saying that Annual fees is the correct way and one-time fees are for Quick Buck Crew (fly by night directory owners). Exactly opposite of what John Scott said. Break out the popcorn, looks like we have one big catfight in our hands.

John’s post: No more annual listings

Jeff’s post: Annual Fees Rock; One-Off Fees are for the Quick Buck Crew

Jeff’s argument is that as a directory gets more listings, the cost to maintain such a big directory increases. And if directories don’t have annual listing fees, then it will not be around for the long run. Why? Well, as Jeff puts it, they can’t sustain themselves and did not plan ahead. So they are “Quick Buck Crew”. Yes, big directories will cost more to run. It will make use of more bandwidth, more webspace and more server resource. Good point. But seriously, how much more webspace or resource will a directory need? It’s not a search engine for god’s sake! I mean, even if it cost more to run, the fees you received from the listings should have covered it. And the bigger you get, the more popular you will become, which actually ensures it’s survival.

Ironically Jeff’s Aviva Directory once offered one-time listing fee too. It only recently changed to yearly fees for it’s listings. Hmm….so what was Jeff thinking when he wrote that article? He was once a “Quick Buck Crew” but now he has tranformed to a beacon of hope for directory owners? I doubt so. I believe that it all boils down to making money. The more the merrier. No, no, I myself have no problem with people making money, but in all seriousness, charging another fee to retain a listing is just not right. In fact, from a outsider’s perspective, it feels like downright extortion.

But then perhaps I should be looking from the directory owner’s perspective? Annual fees are a common business model for many offline directories like Yellow Pages. Annual fees also ensures that the listing is still active and around (for the time being), thus keeping the directory fresh and up-to-date. Furthermore, annual fees provides incentive for directory owners to keep on working hard on their directory.

But please, let’s not stop here. Let’s see how these two big directory owners would respond to each other. Will we see hair pulling? Or clothes ripping? Will there be name calling too? We can hope!