I am going to tell you something that most startup founders will not admit publicly. I spent close to $500 on AI directory submissions, and I still cannot give you a clean conversion number.
Not because I did not track it. I did. But because the relationship between paying for a directory listing and getting a paying customer is far messier than any "submit your startup to 100 directories" guide will tell you.
My name is Kevin. I co-founded Apatero Studio, an AI generation platform for images, video, audio, and 3D. We have been bootstrapping the entire thing from Albania, two developers working day jobs, building at night.
When we decided to invest real money into getting our product in front of people, startup directory submissions seemed like one of the smartest plays available.
Seemed. Past tense. The reality was more complicated.
Why We Started With Directories
Before I get into the numbers, let me explain the logic.
When you are a new AI tool with no brand recognition, no PR budget, and no VC backing, your options for getting discovered are limited. You can write SEO content and wait months for it to rank. You can post on Reddit and hope you do not get flagged for self-promotion. You can make TikTok videos and try to crack the algorithm.
Or you can pay to get listed on product launch directories and AI tool aggregators. Sites where people actively go looking for new tools.
The appeal of startup listing sites is straightforward. They already have the traffic. They already have the audience. People visiting these sites are specifically looking for products like yours. You pay to get listed, and theoretically, some percentage of those visitors click through to your site, sign up, and eventually pay.
The pitch from most of these directories is compelling. High domain authority. Thousands of monthly visitors. Featured placement. Dofollow backlinks. Some of them even show you screenshots of their traffic stats to close the sale.
So we pulled out the credit card and started submitting.
The Total Spend
Let me break down the actual money spent, because I want this to be useful for anyone researching AI directory submission ROI.
Our total directory spend came to roughly $500. That covered submissions to about half a dozen paid directories, plus a bulk submission service that handles around 50 directories at once for a flat fee.
Some of these were specific to AI tools. Some were general startup directories. The prices ranged from about $25 on the low end to just under $300 for the bulk service.
We also experimented with some of the bigger-name directories, the ones you see recommended in every "where to submit AI tool" list. Two of those did not deliver what they promised, and we got full refunds.
That was frustrating, but at least we got the money back. The refund process was straightforward in both cases, which made me think they are used to people asking.
Not every listing was paid. We also submitted to a bunch of free directories. Those are worth doing, but the free tier usually means you are buried deep in the listings with no featured placement, no priority review, and sometimes you wait weeks just to get approved.
What Actually Happened
Here is where the honest part of this breakdown kicks in.
The directories that are live have been running for several weeks now. One listing in particular has been surprisingly active. It allows you to "relaunch" your product periodically, basically bumping it back to the top of the listings. We have relaunched nine times on that one. Every relaunch creates a small spike in referral traffic.
Another listing on a smaller directory has been steady. Not a lot of traffic, but consistent. A handful of clicks per week that show up clearly in our analytics as referral traffic from that source.
The bulk submission service, which was our biggest single expense, is still processing. Fifty directories is a lot, and they do not all go live at the same time. Some require manual review. Some have queues. As of writing this, we are still waiting on many of those to go live. So the full picture of that investment is still developing.
One high-authority listing we paid about $99 for is on a site with a domain rating of 73. That one is pending too. If it delivers even a fraction of the backlink value that its DR suggests, it could be worth the price on SEO impact alone, separate from any direct traffic.
The Domain Rating Story
This is the part that surprised me the most, and honestly, it might be the most valuable outcome of the entire directory strategy.
When we started submitting to directories, our domain rating wasn't the best. We were a relatively new domain with not a lot backlinks, no authority, nothing I think we were at around DR 12 or something like that.
After our submissions went live, our domain rating climbed to 27, and as re-reading and making edits to this article we have raised to DR 28.
For people who do not follow SEO closely, domain rating (DR) is a metric that measures the strength of your website's backlink profile on a scale from 0 to 100. A DR of 28 is not going to make you competitive for "best AI image generator" anytime soon. But going from 0 to 27 is a meaningful jump. It signals to Google that your site is real, that other sites link to it, that it has some authority.
That DR increase has downstream effects that are hard to measure directly but are probably more valuable than the direct traffic from the listings themselves. Our blog posts started ranking faster. Our branded searches got stronger. The overall SEO foundation got more solid.
If someone asked me right now whether the $500 in directory listings was worth it, I would say yes, primarily because of the DR impact rather than the direct traffic.
That's why we also decided to launch toolindex.net, which is a directory listing. At the moment we are listing tools that we like and we enjoy for free, but we have the possibility of allowing you to list your tool as well.
It can be free, or paid you can check in the website. We are thinking of launchuing the listing directory bulk programme too. Cause we saw the trouble it was to go to and do everything manually.
The Conversion Problem
Now for the part where I have to be really honest.
I cannot give you a clean cost-per-acquisition number from our directory listings. And I do not think most founders who do this can either, even if they claim otherwise.
Here is why. A user sees our listing on a directory. They click through to our site. They browse around, maybe generate a free image. They leave. Two weeks later, they Google "AI video generator" and find us again through an organic search result. They sign up. A week after that, they subscribe.
Which channel gets credit? The directory that introduced them? The SEO that brought them back? The product experience that convinced them?
If you use last-click attribution, the SEO gets all the credit and the directory looks like it did nothing. If you use first-click, the directory gets credit for a conversion that happened three weeks later through a completely different channel.
This is not a problem unique to directory listings. It is the fundamental challenge of startup directory submissions as a marketing channel. They are almost always top-of-funnel awareness plays, not bottom-of-funnel conversion drivers. They put you in front of people who might not be ready to buy today but now know you exist.
Measuring that kind of awareness accurately requires either a sophisticated attribution stack or a lot of honest hand-waving. We went with the hand-waving.
What I can tell you is that our overall signups increased during the period when our listings went live. Some of that is attributable to directories. Some of it is because our SEO content was also improving during the same period. Some of it is because we launched an affiliate program around the same time. Untangling these threads cleanly is not something a two-person team with no dedicated marketing analyst can do.
What Worked and What Did Not
Let me get specific about the categories, without naming every platform.
High-DR directories with active communities were the best value. Even when the direct click-through was modest, the backlink from a DR 70+ site is genuine SEO value. If you are evaluating where to submit AI tool listings, prioritize sites with high domain authority over sites with flashy landing pages.
Directories with relaunch features were surprisingly useful. The ability to bump your listing back to the top every few weeks means you are not paying once for a listing that disappears into a graveyard of old submissions. You are paying for ongoing visibility. One directory let us relaunch nine times, each time generating a noticeable blip in referral traffic.
Bulk submission services are a gamble. The concept is appealing: pay once, get listed on 50 directories. In practice, the quality of those 50 directories varies wildly. Some are legitimate, well-trafficked sites. Some are barely maintained aggregator pages that nobody visits. You have no control over which ones you end up on, and the timeline is unpredictable.
The two directories that refunded us both had the same issue. They took the money, but the listing either never went live or went live in a way that did not match what was described on their sales page.
One charged a premium for "featured" placement that turned out to be a small text link buried at the bottom of a category page.
The other simply never processed our submission after weeks of waiting. In both cases, a polite email explaining the situation resulted in a refund.
The Real Math
Let me try to put numbers on this, even though they are inherently fuzzy.
Total spent on directory listings: approximately $500 (net, after refunds).
Direct measurable traffic from directories: several hundred clicks over the first month of listings being live. Most of those came from two or three directories. The rest contributed a trickle.
Direct measurable signups from directory traffic: around a dozen that I can confidently attribute to directory referrals. There are probably more that I cannot attribute because the user came back through a different channel.
DR improvement: 0 to 28. This is the number I keep coming back to because it has the most lasting value.
Cost per attributed signup from directories alone: roughly $40. That is not great, but it is also not the full picture because it ignores the SEO value and the users who discovered us through directories but signed up through other channels later.
If I factor in the DR improvement and the ongoing SEO benefit, the effective cost drops significantly. But I am not going to pretend I can calculate that precisely. Nobody can.
What I Would Do Differently
If I were starting from scratch today, here is how I would approach startup listing sites differently.
First, I would front-load the free submissions. There are dozens of directories that accept free listings. The approval time is slower and the placement is worse, but they cost nothing. I would submit to every relevant free directory before spending a dollar on paid ones. We did some of this, but we should have been more systematic about it.
Second, I would be more selective with paid listings. Instead of spreading $500 across many directories, I would concentrate on two or three with the highest domain authority and the most active user communities. A single $100 listing on a DR 70+ site is probably worth more than five $20 listings on DR 15 sites that nobody visits.
Third, I would set expectations correctly from the start. Directories are not a growth engine. They are a credibility builder and an SEO accelerator. If you go into it expecting directories to drive your monthly signups, you will be disappointed. If you go into it expecting them to build your domain authority and put you on the map, you will be satisfied.
Fourth, I would time it better. We submitted to directories while simultaneously launching our affiliate program and publishing new blog content. That made it impossible to isolate the impact of any single channel. If I did it again, I would stagger the launches so I could measure each one more cleanly.
Fifth, I would negotiate more. Some directory prices are fixed. But others, especially the higher-priced ones, have room to negotiate. We paid list price for everything. I suspect we could have saved 10 to 20 percent on some listings just by asking.
Also for anyone new that wants to try the directory listing method they can test out ours at toolindex.net.
The Honest Verdict on Directory Listing ROI
Is spending money on product launch directories worth it for a new AI tool? My answer is a qualified yes, but only if you understand what you are actually buying.
You are not buying customers. Not directly. You might get some, and that is great, but the conversion path from directory click to paying customer is long and messy.
You are buying backlinks, domain authority, and discoverability. You are buying the right to show up in more places when someone searches for AI tools. You are buying credibility signals that help your other marketing channels work better.
For a brand new product with zero domain authority, that is genuinely valuable. Our DR went from nothing to 27 in a few weeks. Our blog posts started ranking. Our overall organic traffic improved. Some of that would have happened anyway through our own SEO efforts, but the directory backlinks accelerated the timeline.
For $500, I got measurable DR improvement, a few hundred direct clicks, a handful of signups I can attribute with confidence, and an unknown number of users who discovered us through a directory but converted through another channel later.
Was it the best possible use of $500? Maybe not. The same money spent on content creation or paid ads might have delivered more traceable results. But directories gave us something that content and ads do not: permanent backlinks on high-authority domains that keep delivering SEO value long after the initial listing.
Advice for Other Founders
If you are an early-stage founder wondering whether a directory listing is worth it, here is my framework.
Start with free. Submit to every free directory that is relevant to your product. Do this before you spend anything. It costs nothing but time, and the backlinks are real.
Research before you pay. Look up the directory's actual domain rating on Ahrefs or a similar tool. Check their traffic on SimilarWeb. Read reviews from other founders who have submitted. A pretty sales page does not mean a good directory.
Budget realistically. You do not need to spend $500. If I were doing this with a tighter budget, I would spend $100 on one or two high-DR directories and put the rest into content creation. Quality over quantity matters more with directories than almost any other channel.
Track what you can, accept what you cannot. Set up UTM parameters for your directory links. Check your referral traffic in Google Analytics. But accept that you will never have perfect attribution from this channel. It is an awareness play, not a performance marketing channel.
Be patient with pending listings. Some of our submissions took weeks to go live. One bulk service is still processing. Do not panic if your listing does not appear overnight. Follow up politely after a reasonable waiting period, but give it time.
Ask for refunds when justified. We got refunds from two directories, and both were processed quickly. If a directory does not deliver what they promised, ask for your money back. The worst they can say is no.
Where We Are Now
Our domain rating is 28 and climbing. Our directory listings continue to drive a slow but steady stream of referral traffic. Some listings are still pending, so the full impact of our $500 investment is not fully visible yet.
Was this a silver bullet for growth? No. Directory submissions are one piece of a much larger puzzle that includes SEO, affiliates, content marketing, and product quality.
But for a bootstrapped AI startup with no PR budget and no VC connections, paying $500 to go from invisible to indexed on a dozen high-authority sites was a reasonable bet. The DR improvement alone has probably paid for itself through better organic search performance.
If you are building something new and nobody knows you exist, directories will not make you famous. But they will make you findable. And for an early-stage startup, findable is a pretty good place to start.
You can see what we are building at app.apatero.com. We are still two developers, still bootstrapping, still figuring it out. But at least now, when someone searches for AI tools, there is a chance they will find us. That chance cost about $500 and a lot of spreadsheet-staring.