How Ben Peetermans cut 147 launch directories to 31, had an agent submit five products, and measured 90 days

The problem

In April he submitted itbroke to 18 startup directories over two days. Ninety days later his analytics showed three referred sessions for the whole site: one from Bing, one from Baidu and one from Facebook. The 18 directories sent zero. He published that as the finding, then wrote: “It was the wrong finding, because one product is not a sample.” He went back to measure across four of his products, and to work out why so many submissions never turned into live listings.

The blueprint (as he describes it)

Build a vetting database first. He keeps a database of 147 launch directories. Each is checked for domain rating, whether the submit form is alive, and what it demands.
Cut the padding. Of the 147 candidates, only 31 survived vetting. He cut:
- Paid-only listings presented as free. Futurepedia starts at $247 per listing and aiwith.me at $19.90.
- Sites that are not directories. TechCrunch appears on half these lists and has no submission form.
- Dead or hostile forms. Some return 404s on the submit page. Aura++ requires your backlink now and won’t publish you until 2027.
- Scanner-blocked but human-fine sites. G2 and StackShare block automated scanners, so automated services skip what he calls “the two most valuable B2B listings.”
Submit by hand once, then hand the repeats to an agent. On April 10 and 11 he worked itbroke through the list. On April 12 an agent ran the same three open forms for five more of his products in one sitting. Claude Code drove the browser, and he reviewed each submission.
Log a status row for every submission. He calls the statuses “the honest part”:
- Submitted and verified: StartupFA.me (DR 83) and Turbo0 (DR 78) confirmed the listing after checking the backlink on itbroke.dev.
- Stuck at needs_backlink: 4 of 18, including Fazier (DR 81) and Dang AI (DR 80). These won’t publish until you link back to them.
- Submitted into the void: Future Tools took the form and showed no confirmation. It later became his best-performing directory. He writes: “No confirmation email is not the same as no listing.”
Clear the backlink gate with one footer row. He writes that “The best free directories gate publication on a reciprocal link.” His fix was one code change, a single “Featured on” row in the site footer. That one edit unblocks Fazier, Dang AI, Toolfio, Twelve Tools and TinyLaunch at once. He calls it the “Highest ROI move in the whole exercise.”
Measure with first-party referrer data. He used get_referrers over a 90-day window ending 2026-08-29. He counted sessions whose first external referrer is a directory domain.
Keep re-checking the list. He kept adding candidates and re-checking them after the first pass. The published list now sits at 101 free directories. Each has a confirmed live submit form and a label for what it demands before it will publish you.

Stated results

itbroke: 18 directories, 90 days, zero directory sessions. He re-checked this and it was unchanged.
askbowtie: 34 directory sessions in 90 days, which was 24% of all its referred traffic. Future Tools sent 24 of them. He says that is “more than Bing sent, about a third of what Google sent.”
The other products: He says that for three of the four products measured, there was “not one session.” uxxray and serpdelta are two of them.
His reading: “The variable is category, not effort.” askbowtie is an AI tool, and he says the AI-tool directories are alive. uxxray and serpdelta are SEO tooling that went to “general startup lists that nobody reads.”
Caveat on the data: He says referrer data undercounts by design. “Every number here is a floor, including the zeroes.”
Domain authority: He has “no before-and-after DR data” for the claim that backlinks lift domain authority. “Treat it as untested here.”
Time: Eighteen directories took him two days. He says 101 is “days of repetitive form-filling.”

Caveats

This is his own site. launchwithben.com publishes the free Launch Directories list he built from this work, and the post links to his other Builders’ Notes. The post does not say it sells a product, course or kit.
The erratum dated 2026-08-29 retracts the original conclusion that directories are “worthless as a traffic play.” It also corrects the “One afternoon” time claim.
He re-labels his “Not worth $50 to $200” and “never worth outsourcing” lines as “Opinions, never measured.” His case against bulk submission services is an argument, not a measured result.
The agent ran forms for “five more of my products,” but the traffic measurement covers four products. The source does not name the five or reconcile the two counts.
The counts for listings stuck behind a backlink differ. The status list says 4 of 18. The footer fix names five directories. A separate line mentions “three of your highest-DR listings.” The source does not reconcile these.
The per-product results table and the “Do it yourself, in this order” steps are missing from the supplied source text.
The link text “futuretools.link” points to futuretools.io.
The post links to a Claude Code page on his own site. No sponsorship is stated.
Handles: LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/launchwithben and Threads @launchwithben (verified 2026-10-23, linked from launchwithben.com; the Threads profile is named Ben Peetermans). No X, Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok or Mastodon profile could be verified.

Sources

https://launchwithben.com/learn/builders-notes/what-directory-submissions-actually-get-you (primary: first-person Builders’ Notes post on his own site, with erratum dated 2026-08-29)

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