If you create a worthwile, useful site then sooner or later you will get picked up in directories like DMOZ. There are lots of benefits to these listings, perhaps the least of which is specific clickthrough traffic from the actual directory itself.

Although it is not considered as relevant in the current Google, it helps for your site to have others pointing to it. Also, lots of people may not use DMOZ, but people who are building sites or blogging or looking for encyclopedia lists of relevant material visit sites like DMOZ for a quick index of specific subjects. They in turn will include your site on theirs, mostly because they saw it on DMOZ, which gives you even more exposure.

I have tried designing and submitting websites. website areas, and stores to the directories, and more often than not they get ignored. Then other sites or pages which I didn't consider submitting get listed.

So build a good and attractive fish, and sooner or later a fishhook will come around.

For example, my cooking site's recipe for Pineapple Upside Down Cake was added one day out of nowhere. Then Yahoo saw that and added it to their directory. Now I rank number one in the search engines for Pineapple Upside Down Cake, and its now a very busy webpage.

So don't underestimate the power of these directories.

Steve