Is information becoming expensive?

[Artashes]

I remember times when most biggest search engines were accepting new submissions for free.

Now there are less and less engines that are ready to make you a favor of adding your site in their directories, indexes and catalogs. Is information and simple search engine exposure getting expensive and why?

I'm personally not ready to pay some second-sort search engine an impressive submission fee with no guarantees of decent exposure. Is it just me or do you also find there are less options of promoting your site through engines nowadays?

Best,