Yes - the paid submissions are BS - they are mostly to FFAs and other worthless link farms - not worth your time and can get you blacklisted by the real SEs - so can some of the submission software out there advertised for sale.
Most SEs will find you (instead of you having to submit) by having links from other sites - thats how they prefer to add sites.
http://searchenginewatch.com/links/ has a good starting list