We get this question a lot. A lot of webmasters and marketing managers are generally confused about getting links from paid directories. Does Google see it as a paid link? Why do so many people add links to paid directories? Here is the answer from Google’s Matt Cutts in a video:

Think before choosing a paid directory. There are a few professional paid directories which can help you get backlinks and add up to your page rank. At the same time there are several paid directories which may harm your rankings than helping you out with them.