Maybe a better way of saying it is, we don't list commercial content, period.
But, but, you say, there are many business sites listed?
Yes, but they aren't listed because they are business sites. They are listed because they are also something else.
What else can a business site be?
There's only one thing that ANY site, personal or business, CAN be. It is a source of information, often unique information, always uniquely authoritative information, about the entity who provided the content of the site (whether that entity is a person or a business, a government or a religious community.)
So the site answers questions about that entity: "who are you, and what do you know? what happened to you? what have you done now, and what would you do for money?"
Seen from this perspective, there's no question about affiliate sites. "Joe's VStore" CLAIMS to be about what JOE will do, but actually JOE has NOTHING to do with it (except a desire to receive money from someone ELSE'S work.) It is actually all about what SMC (or whatever they're calling themselves THIS week) will do. It is MISinformation, deceit through and through. It is deceptive, whether or not Joe takes the order you send, and gives it to VStore; it is aiding and abetting internet fraud, because it pushes people to buy from someone whom they cannot even identify (and thus, it is absolutely indistinguishable from pure-fraud plays that take orders and just keep the money.)
That's evil, that's pure evil, and anyone can see it. Furthermore, if Joe had told the TRUTH, that he WASN'T going to provide any products but was just advertising SMC's catalog, the site would have been obviously non-unique, obviously non-listable.
Somewhere in between Joe just flat lying about who performs the services, and Joe telling the truth about who performs the services, is what WE call a "lead generator" site (which, as has been said, may not be what you were thinking of. In this case, Joe tells the truth: that is, he tells you that he's NOT going to tell you who will provide the services rendered. Is that unique? Well, conceivably it COULD be unique: maybe Joe knows that Richard is filling the orders, and Richard doesn't fill orders for anyone else. But more likely, Joe and Kerry and Lem and Moe and all through the alphabet are out taking orders also: all honestly telling customers that no, the customer won't know who will provide the service purchased.
Is that UNIQUE? we can't tell. We can't ever tell. We were plagued by hundreds of obviously non-unique cases: and we decided that (1) such sites might sometimes be providing a service to customers, but (2) since they weren't providing INFORMATION about the PROVIDER of the service, there was nothing that WE could REVIEW about them, therefore WE couldn't and shouldn't list them. THIS part is not necessarily an ethical judgment, it is simply our recognition that there's a limitation on what WE can do well, and therefore we should focus on what nobody can do better (which we haven't yet finished.)
From this perspective, the MADFADS sites ('more anonymous drivel made for ADSense") are also obivously not listable. There is no person or entity whose knowledge they represent: there is no way they can be authoritative; the information on them may be either unique or true, but it's NEVER BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.
Sites with affiliate links are judged by the same standard. There's nothing unique about affiliate links, any idiot can do them and it seems most already have. We ignore them (if we can), and look at the REST of the site (if there is any).
Directories also ought to be judged by this same rule. Sure, they CLAIM to be giving information about some OTHER group of entities: but their authoritativeness comes from the knowledge of the entity which creates them. So ODP editors have profiles, and the ODP gains its authoritativeness from the community that builds it. The Yellow Pages is authoritative, because the Phone Company KNOWS every business in town -- even the drug pushers have cell phones -- and you KNOW if there's a local company that wants your business, you can find it there. (Many people republish the Yellow Pages: that's fine, but as such it's not listable content because not unique.) The local Chamber of Commerce can (and often does) provide an authoritative directory of local businesses. And so on.
Now: what do YOU know, what have YOU done, that makes YOU the authority on whatever it is your website purports to be about? "I'm just another guy who'll take $20 to whack advertising stickers across the world's monitor screens" ISN'T a good enough answer--any idiot can do that.... "I have a business model" isn't a good enough answer, because this is a listing of websites, not business models. "I have a desire for money" isn't a good enough answer, because it really isn't a very significant fact -- any idiot could have figured that out already, because nearly everyone can find a use for more money.
I don't know what you know (which, in once sense, is what makes YOU unique, and, in another sense, makes me totally unqualified to guess what kind of unique website YOU could create.) But the trouble is, YOU may not yet know what you could create. I talked to one webmaster who THOUGHT he was creating a niche directory. His site was worthless as a niche directory, but he WAS creating beautiful mini-sites for people in that particular business -- and the ODP actually gave him more listings for what he WAS doing, than we WOULD have given him for what the THOUGHT he was doing.
So: local knowledge is good. Finding something not well represented on the net is good. (It's especially good if there aren't many people that CAN come up with that same information. But a, say, hand-compiled local phone directory is worthless, because the phone company and Google Local both do it better.) Highly-directed (i.e. local) advertising in moderation is tolerable (In fact, it's better than non-directed advertising, but the fact is, advertising CAN'T be unique information because, again, any idiot can do it.)
I haven't looked at your website, but ... that's how discriminating surfers people are going to look at all the content you ever publish. So if you're honestly interested in contributing to the sum of human culture on the net, this is how you need to look at your own site. If you can do this, you don't need to worry about the ODP editor's reaction.
