Author fees are set amounts that the submitting author(s) must pay in order to be published. They occur in the following contexts:
Author fees range from $150 on the low end to over $5000.
As you can imagine, taking in author fees and running a free content management system in some offshore location where server farms are cheap is a great way to make a little cash for someone who's lacking in the ethics department. If they do actually put your article on their site, they're not even breaking the law. So what is the difference between that kind of shady operation and a legitimate Open Access journal, which is also taking author fees and publishing only online?
A legitimate Open Access journal:
All that labor is what your author fee is going toward, not sunscreen and umbrella drinks.