There was a big craze in setting up article directories amongst webmasters about a year and a half ago. They seemed to be popping up everywhere. This was in conjunction with the popularity of article marketing at the time – many webmasters had the experience of writing articles, and when the free scripts like Article Dashboard came along, everyone seemed to jump on the bandwagon.
Fast forward a year or so, and some have survived, some haven’t. Most of them haven’t carved out the authority of the leader in the field, Ezinearticles.com. But there are still some good ones around.
Should you start your own article directory? And if so, what can you expect form it?
One thing is certain – an article directory is not going to make you rich. And it still needs to be marketed like any other website. Because the articles are not originals, you probably need to do a little bit of extra work in some ways, to gain enough incoming traffic from the search engines. I think this is where a lot of webmasters fell down. They failed to appreciate that the payoff may come a bit later. And if they weren’t skilled (or semi-skilled!) marketers to begin with, they faced a lot of competition.
One of the mistakes I’ve seen is webmasters setting up a general directory. With many things, the best thing that could be done by a prospective article directory owner, is to niche it. This helps focus your site in terms of content, helps with LSI factors in the search engines, and provides a point of differentiation.
We already have a premier general article directory – Ezine Articles. And because of all the links from article directory owners using the free Article Dashboard script, that parent site has a very strong page rank. It’s actually a great place to submit your articles because of this.
So, rule number one, is to choose a niche.
Be prepared for the fact that an article directory will take some time to manage and promote. And be prepared to build some incoming links.
If you use article directory software like Article Friendly, you’ll have an advantage with content because you can set it up so that Article Marketer sends you all their articles in their database. You can pick and choose your topics too, so it’s possible to do this with a niche directory.
You can make money from adsense (or other contextual advertising), and from cultivating a relationship with your list. But it’s not instant riches. Like any web business, it does require some work and expertise to really succeed.
