Business.com Promo Codes for Business's Web Directory - Save $50 Today

Updated 5/13/2013 + a few other times

For the $299 recurring that business.com charges for links that are nofollowed (thus not counted by search engines) & hidden in the sidebar (thus rarely seen by end users) on pages that are sometimes not even indexed (adding invisibility to the further lack of visibility), there are far better options BOTW charges a $299 one-off (non-recurring) listing fee. Some other good directories that do not charge recurring fees would include: JoeAnt, GoGuides & Gimpsy. Curlie is free, though it is hard to get listed in promptly as it relies on volunteers.

Update on 4/15/2013...Be Careful!

Since Business.com has been bought out by Resource Nation, I get the sense that things have went downhill over there in terms of customer service.

In the past there was a feature in the interface where you can set renewals to manually or automatically renew. That feature disappeared. When that feature disappeared & I wanted to cancel a few listings (client projects we were no longer engaged in, sites that were sold off, sites that were not performing as well as hoped, loads of things change online over the years, etc.) I was told that feature would be coming back soon.

That feature has not come back.

I manually emailed listings I did not want to renew & that was that, or so I thought. Yet some of those that had a 9-month lead time asking that they not be renewed were still renewed!

Recently there was the second round of automated renewals on listings I previously asked to be canceled. Being frustrated with repeated recharges on our credit card (in some cases for sites that were sold off or client projects we were no longer engaged in) I put a gift card in the place of my credit card. I was willing to let all our listings expire rather than be consistently charged against my will on listings I no longer wanted to be active, have no automated way to disable them, have them often still renew even after sending an email asking they not, then having to catch the charge & wait weeks to months for a refund sorting things out through a customer service solution that is so bad that you wished you had a telecom oligopoly on the other end.

They finally did send a refund for that second round of charges, but they sent it to the non-rechargable gift card. And so that was another hour of my life they wasted.

Anyhow, exercise extreme caution when giving your credit card number to Resource Nation. Only do so on projects you think you'll will be aggressively push marketing for 5 years down the road, or give them payments via gift cards or disposable credit cards.

If/when they fix their listing management interface to allow you to manually cancel listings I might recommend them again, but I can't in good faith recommend them without the above warning until they do that.

Below is the old post I wrote before I had this "charge you forever" experience. It no longer reflects my current view of what they are doing.

The Old Post

I generally do not do too much affiliate promotion on the blog here, but when there is an offer that I use that saves our readers money I am all over it. Why not share it? Just as I once promoted the Microsoft adCenter coupon (which has since went away) I am glad to have come across another sweet promotional code - this time for Business.com directory inclusions.

Google Approved Links

In 2009 there are few places where you can buy links without making a Google engineer frown. The Yahoo! Directory, BOTW, and Business.com are 3 of the most trusted web directories that have rigorous enough editorial policies which Google likes. They have been around a long time and Google trusts them.

For our community members I scored a Business.com coupon about a year ago, and surprisingly, Business.com just recently got on CJ offering public discount codes. I have not yet bought any of their PPC product, but I have been a BIG buyer of their directory listings...we literally have dozens of them! It is part of our SEO process for the sites we care about most and really invest in.

So if you have not yet submitted to Business.com, now might be a good time to submit your site while this coupon is still available publicly. This link is a great link, especially for new websites and websites that have not yet reached the top of the search results. And for larger businesses you can also submit key deep links as well.

$50 Directory Listing Coupon

link removed

Published: October 10, 2009 by Aaron Wall in marketing

Comments

October 10, 2009 - 3:31am

I just got asked via email if that coupon works on existing listings. I believe it only works on new listings in Business.com.

We sold one of our sites that was listed in Business.com and let that listing lapse (since we no longer owned the site), and based on that Business.com sent us a direct mail piece. That mailer had a coupon for $50 off, but the listing was expired for a few months already, and for our sites that we are serious about we prefer to have them listed 24/7/365 because the link is so affordable if the websites are targeting the right markets.

WebMarketingArt
October 10, 2009 - 7:11am

Aaron, earning money from this post? Where is the disclaimer? These F.T.C. guys are giving us a headache.

October 10, 2009 - 7:15am

Did you not see the words affiliate promotion in the post. Please read before commenting.

WebMarketingArt
October 10, 2009 - 12:31pm

Aaron, it was more of a joke ;-) I had read it. But these guys (FTC) have actually gone into a very dicey territory.

There are hundreds of thousands of posts coming each day that are either paid or have affiliate links. Many webmasters are in disguise. And further there is a very thin line between a paid post for a product, and a real post on a good product.

How on earth are they going to police each and every word remains to been seen.

Anyways again - it was just a joke.

October 10, 2009 - 1:48pm

But the problem with your joke is that some people might not get it, and some of those people might think think negatively about my brand based on a joke. It is sorta like walking over to your neighbor's house and taking a crap in their living room, then talking about how fecal matter is funny. IMHO

Geordie
October 10, 2009 - 4:29pm

The internet needs a /sarcasm tag:)

d marks
October 10, 2009 - 7:53pm

Aaron,

Interesting timing, just got a coupon in the mail for a site that I sold as well, I have not put many of my new sites in business or botw...curious if u still think these carry value thru with the caffeine update...also can u update the status of opening up the forum...thxZZa

October 11, 2009 - 8:31am

Yeah I certainly believe those links are well trusted and count.

In the forums there is a case study testing some such links that showed amazing results. If you are a member you can access it here.

And we might open up the forums in a few weeks. But when we do the price point will likely be closer to $300 a month, as the site was way under-priced (as reflected in demand exceeding supply even when I would work 15 hours a day).

AndrewL
October 12, 2009 - 12:59am

I signed up to business.com via your link Aaron - have pondered on whether it's worth it or not for a year or two now. I've had good results from listing in the Yahoo! directory - I only hope business.com has as much influence as Yahoo! does. If so, then it's worth the money each year.

Yeah the money is extortionate but I guess it works because of the price too - spammers and disreputable websites aren't going to risk $300 just to be turned down. In fact, not even threadbare or "marginal" sites would bother I guess (sites that aren't exactly featuring honed content, but have been cobbled together). I suppose if you have honed your content, have built up a good site etc, you can go for such a payment knowing it MUST be included because of your efforts. That's got to be a good signal to the search engines.

BTW Aaron, I'd sign up as a member to your site for around $50 per month just if I could read the forum (not contribute), so I wouldn't be hassling you - you get $50 per month from me and all I use up is a bit more of your bandwidth, not your time :)

October 12, 2009 - 4:14am

Thanks for signing up via our business.com discount link Andrew. :)

We were thinking about having a level of membership that had read only view of the forums, but we have not done it for 3 reasons thusfar:

  • some of the members who are paying more to access it might not like it (and we wouldn't want to upset our core members...though we might ask on this front because it seems like a way to add value without creating tons of additional work)
  • there are a lot of membership websites that are of far lower quality that are far less interactive that charge more than $50 a month...so anything that gives any access to our forums should be at least $100 or $150 a month because there are threads in there about how some of us did abc or xyz - with some of those tips yielding 6 or 7 figures of profit.
  • we feel I tier of membership without asking questions would lower the perceived value of the forums (especially as we are likely going to increase the price to $300/month when we re-open)

After we re-open with a couple tiers we might eventually test running with that idea though. We recently improved the forum's search capabilities and with over 10,000 threads and nearly 100,000 posts in the forums almost any SEO question you could think of has been answered already.

Wezley
November 1, 2009 - 10:06pm

Hi Aaron,
I just signed up for a business.com account using your affiliate link. Figured it was the least I could do for taking all of your free advice. :)

Not only that, it is also a good promotion code. Thank you.

November 2, 2009 - 2:31am

Danke...I was surprised at how few people have used it so far...seems most of our readers were likely already listed in Business.com ... but the nice thing about that coupon is you can use it to list a second or a third or a thirtieth website...I have been a fan of it in our link building efforts ;)

Nilwon
November 30, 2009 - 2:56pm

Aaron,
I've looked at this post a few times. Where you say "Click on the following link" there is nothing for me to click on.

Help? I'd like to get a new business in and I want to save that money. :)

December 1, 2009 - 5:46am

can you try it now Nilwon? here is the URL
http://www.tkqlhce.com/hm122r09608ORXXQWWYOQPWPRYPW?sid=blog

andrewstolpe
April 16, 2010 - 4:25am

Hey,

Just wanted to say thanks for the business.com coupon code. Just saved myself $50 and helped you out in the process. SEOBOOK is awesome and thank you for providing that and some of the other tools for free. You're awesome!

April 16, 2010 - 11:45am

thanks a bunch Andrew :D

OSHA Guy
October 26, 2010 - 5:52pm

There seems to be a lot of debate among the experts in the SEO world as to whether or not a business.com listing is worth the $200 price tag. I will say, however, that if you have an on-topic page, a high authority site like business.com could prove valuable, but is it $200 a year valuable? The obvious answer is, if it contributes to you making at least $200 that you wouldn't make without the listing, then it is worth it... if not... not so much.

October 26, 2010 - 8:54pm

For what it is worth, I currently have over 50 active listings in Business.com :)

creativeonion
April 27, 2011 - 9:13pm

great resource, Aaron - wasn't sure if it would still work, but it did! I've seen business.com pop up in a lot of competitor backlinks, especially for larger sites and ecommerce stores. will see how the listing goes, but I'm thinking business.com listings are going to become a must-have for larger campaigns I run.

April 27, 2011 - 11:59pm

we list all our big stuff with them as well.

mountainhome
August 1, 2011 - 8:13pm

Coupon code o page doesn't work now we need a new one

August 2, 2011 - 5:40am

I asked someone from their team to look into it.

jaysongbsn
May 31, 2012 - 5:43am

Aaron, you just saved me $100! Promo code works great for $50 off each listing. Thank you!

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