So I have been developing my first website. I have a cgi script that allows users to sign up for e-mail updates. However, I don't trust the security of cgi-bin with the api-key I am using to sign people up to a mailing list. So I put the api-key in another folder in home with chmod 711 on the directory (as opposed to 755 on the cgi-bin directory). I then import the api-key into the python cgi script. With something like:

sys.append.path("/home/otherfolder")
import apikeyfile

Does this actually provide any extra security to my script? Is there something else I should be doing instead?
This is a good idea. chmod 500 is better in this case.  The rule of th You have to have the most restrictive privileges as possible.  Keep in mind your app might hacked and then you don't want your app to write to its self. (unless it has too...)
Basic python cgi security question: Storing sensitive information in another directory