Paid instant listings bought a launch-week burst. Free slow directories bought one followed link.

Three paid instant listings cost $118.11 in total and returned 14 first-touch signups and 5 sites created. Measured in the public directory register.

Every one of those 5 sites arrived in the listing’s first days: Uneed returned all 3 signups and both sites in its first 5 live days and none in the next 16. Measured.

There’s An AI For That is the exception to the title: it kept returning signups after launch week, adding 4 in the last 7 days of the window, but none created a site. Measured.

Thirty days in, the one followed link in the cohort is still the SaaSHub primary “Visit website” link, re-read on 2026-09-08 with rel="" (followed), unchanged since 2026-08-09. Measured on the SaaSHub listing.

StartupBase launched on 2026-09-18, 40 days after submission. We read it on 2026-09-19: live, with a “Visit website” link that is rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer". Measured.

This is the D+30 sequel to “Four directory submissions, one followed link”, the two-week record we are extending. We are separating three outcomes that are easy to blur together: how quickly a listing appears, whether it persists, and whether its link makes discovery measurable.

What the directory register shows

Five listing pages were read on 2026-09-08; StartupBase was read on 2026-09-19. The public directory register records listing state, cash, first-touch signups, and sites created. “Unmeasurable” means attribution could not identify the channel. It does not mean the channel sent nobody.

Channel Plan Submitted Live since State at the read Outbound link SaaSHub free. Measured. 2026-08-06. Measured. 2026-08-09. Measured. live, persistent. Measured. Primary “Visit website” rel="" (followed); secondary links rel="nofollow". Measured. AlternativeTo free. Measured. 2026-08-09. Measured. 2026-08-13. Measured. live, persistent. Measured. rel="nofollow noopener"; the form rejected our tracking parameters. Measured. Uneed paid skip-the-waiting-line, list price $29.99. Measured. 2026-08-08. Measured. 2026-08-18. Measured. live, persistent. Measured. rel="noopener"; tracked link preserved on the call to action. Measured. There’s An AI For That paid listing. Measured. 2026-08-18. Measured. 2026-08-20. Measured. live and rendering; the page shows a 20% discount that we honour at checkout. Measured. Tracked link preserved on “Open” and “Get deal”; rel not readable from our capture. Measured. PeerPush paid standard launch, 40% off a $39 list price, no boost. Measured. 2026-08-24. Measured. 2026-08-25. Measured. live, persistent on 2026-09-08, day 14 for this listing. Measured. Primary “Visit site” rel="noopener" with our tracked link preserved; secondary link rel="sponsored nofollow noopener". Measured. StartupBase free. Measured. 2026-08-09. Measured. launched 2026-09-18. Measured. live on 2026-09-19. Measured. “Visit website” rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"; the directory replaced our tracking parameters with its own ref parameter. Measured. Fazier free tier requires a permanent reciprocal badge on our homepage or footer. Measured. never submitted. Measured. none. Measured. retired from the pilot. Measured. none; see the two-week record. Measured.

What each listing cost and returned

The table below uses the cash, first-touch signup, and site-creation readings from 2026-09-08. StartupBase was read on 2026-09-19 for listing state; its outcomes are not credited. Every row is sourced to the public register and the relevant listing page. Measured.

Channel Cash (USD) Signups Sites created Cost per site Cost per signup After launch week PeerPush $23.40. Measured. 4. Measured. 2. Measured. $11.70. Measured. $5.85. Measured. none observed in 14 days of exposure. Measured. Uneed $36.89. Measured. 3. Measured. 2. Measured. $18.45. Measured. $12.30. Measured. none: 0 signups and 0 sites in the 16 days after the first 5. Measured. There’s An AI For That $57.82. Measured. 7. Measured. 1. Measured. $57.82. Measured. $8.26. Measured. signups continued, with 4 in the last 7 days; sites did not. 6 of 7 signups never added a site. Measured. Blended, three paid listings (public register) $118.11. Measured. 14. Measured. 5. Measured. $23.62. Measured. $8.44. Measured. Measured. SaaSHub $0 and 61 operator minutes. Measured cash. unmeasurable. Measured. unmeasurable. Measured. not applicable. Measured. not applicable. Measured. Measured. AlternativeTo $5, founder-attested and without a receipt; excluded from the blended row. Measured. unmeasurable. Measured. unmeasurable. Measured. not applicable. Measured. not applicable. Measured. Measured. StartupBase $0. Measured. not credited. Measured. not credited. Measured. not applicable. Measured. not applicable. Measured. Measured.

One tagged signup and one tagged site arrived before StartupBase had any public link, so no public path could have produced them and we do not credit them to the directory. Measured. Total pilot cash was $123.11 across four channels: $118.11 receipted on three paid listings plus the $5 unreceipted payment. Measured in the register.

Speed and persistence are different outcomes

The paid listings went live on the day they were booked: Uneed on 2026-08-18, There’s An AI For That on 2026-08-20, and PeerPush on 2026-08-25. Measured. The free directories took 3 days for SaaSHub, 4 days for AlternativeTo, and 40 days for StartupBase. Measured.

Every listing that was live at two weeks was still live on 2026-09-08 with the same rel values. We observed no removal, edit, or downgrade in the window. Measured.

A paid instant listing buys a date; it does not buy a link that behaves differently afterwards. A free slow directory buys time in a queue. The one that paid off did so with a followed link, not with speed. Measured.

What the paid listings returned

Sites created arrived in the first days of each paid listing and then stopped. Uneed produced both of its sites in its first 5 live days. PeerPush produced both of its sites inside its 14 days of exposure. There’s An AI For That produced 1 site before the two-week read and 0 sites after it. Measured.

There’s An AI For That is the exception in the signup pattern. The register records 4 signups in the last 7 days of the window through the directory’s featured surface, and none created a site. Six of its 7 signups never added a site. Measured. We treat that as an activation gap on our side for that audience, not as a defect of the channel.

Uneed’s free queue was scheduled into 2027, as recorded in part one. The unpaid path would have produced no listing inside this window. That is the counterfactual behind our rule. Measured.

These are 14 signups and 5 sites from one product in one month, as the register records them. They are a record of what happened here, not a rate to plan against.

What “unmeasurable” means here

The SaaSHub and AlternativeTo links send visitors to our bare homepage. SaaSHub’s outbound link carries no tracking parameters, and AlternativeTo rejected ours at submission. StartupBase now does the same with its own ref parameter. First-touch attribution therefore cannot see these channels, and we did not pull a session-level analytics read for this pilot. Measured.

Unmeasurable is not zero. Do not convert a missing attribution bucket into “these directories sent nobody”. The register records these rows as unmeasurable, and so does this post. Measured.

A followed backlink and measurable discovery are different outcomes. A link that remains present is not proof that it is still crawled or indexed. We did not run a trusted index check. Measured.

The decision rule we now use

From this one pilot, our rule is: pay for a skip-the-line or instant listing once per channel, at or under about $40, only when the free queue is longer than about 90 days and the listing carries a permanent tracked link. Measured.

Judge the price per site created, not per listing bought. Do not buy boosts, a second listing on the same channel, or a listing whose free tier requires a permanent reciprocal badge. The first-days pattern did not extend in this cohort, and the badge is a price you keep paying. Measured.

Apply the rule to your own queue dates and prices:

1. Record the free queue date and the instant-listing price.
2. Check whether the paid listing carries a permanent tracked link.
3. Confirm the rel attribute and tracking after publication.
4. Decide once per channel. Do not buy a boost or second listing.
5. Judge the price against site creation, not merely the existence of a listing.

Fazier’s retirement is the badge half of this rule. This is a decision aid, not a directory ranking or a promised outcome. Measured.

Submitted is still not listed

StartupBase was submitted on 2026-08-09 and launched on 2026-09-18, 40 days later. We read it on 2026-09-19: live, with a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" “Visit website” link, and its own ref parameter replacing ours. Measured.

We are keeping the listing because it costs nothing and spending no more time on it. That is a dated operating decision, not a claim about future discovery. Measured.

What we are not reporting

We are not reporting any conversion from a signup or site to a paid plan. The pilot measures site creation and nothing after it. We make no conversion, revenue, ranking, or traffic claims. Measured.

We are not classifying the There’s An AI For That link as followed or nofollow because our capture could not read its rel attribute. We are not reporting search-index or backlink-tool results, because we did not run an index check we trust. We are not reporting referral sessions from analytics; the unmeasurable rows stay unmeasurable. Measured.

Where this could be wrong

Seven channels on one product are a sample about these listings on these dates, not a rate for directories as a category. The counts are small and first-touch only; someone who found us on a directory and signed up later through another path is not in them. Measured.

PeerPush had 14 days of exposure at the read while the other paid listings had more, so its row is not a like-for-like 30-day figure. A tracked link that is still present is not proof that it is still crawled or indexed. Measured.

What we do next

We will buy at most one more paid instant listing, chosen with the rule above, and report its date, rel, tracking, cash, signups, and sites. We will also look at why signups from There’s An AI For That did not create a site before buying another listing of that type. Measured.

Last measured

Five listing pages and all cash, signup, and site figures in the register were last measured on 2026-09-08. StartupBase was last measured on 2026-09-19.

Check the rel attribute and the tracking parameters on your own directory listings, then run a free TrustGrowth scan at https://trustgrowth.ai/.