what is most important to you in an article directory?

What else are they used for? =D

Personally, I like 3 things in an article directory - the time it takes to get content approved, the ability to check article stats, and the ability to set up an author profile page.

If it takes forever to get articles approved, I won't use a directory; it's a simple as that. I've seen directories that say it will take 3-4 weeks to approve stuff, and that's unacceptable. Remember, in this business, time is money. For every minute you're article is sitting in line to be approved, you're missing out on valuable readers and people who like your article enough to link to it themselves.

Also, I only use article directories that let me check the stats of each article. That way, I know what topics are doing well, and which ones aren't. And that's something that can vary from directory to directory. On one directory, my articles about SEO do great, but articles about blogging don't - but the opposite is true on a different directory. If I can track my progress, I can maximize views and click-thrus on each directory.

And, finally, I like directories that give you an author profile page. Not only does it give you a separate backlink from your articles themselves, but it also gives readers a chance to feel like they "know" you. Being able to look at your picture and reading a short bio can create a rapport that just might make them more willing to trust me and do business with me.

im completely agree with you nicole, time is money. Who wants to wait that long for their article to be posted to the site.

It's important if the owner(s) of the article directory
are doing something to get the article directory
promoted and get lots of good backlinks to it, rather
than just wait for the authors to only submit their
articles and do nothing else.

These days, if you create an article directory and
only wait for articles to be submitted and you "hope"
for the best, it's certainly not enough. If you spend
some time each day getting couple of high quality
(and even quantity) backlinks to your article directory,
this will surely help it to rank high and help the
articles that get submitted to also rank high,

That's why as an article distribution service I have
a team that does nothing but build backlinks to my
article directories and this greatly helps with the
rankings of the article directories and consequently,
helps to rank the articles submitted by my members.

By the way - great work you got going there with
your LucrativeArticles.com,


Kingsley

I like to use article directories that feature a way for authors to get paid other than the hope that someone may click on my resource box. Revenue sharing is important to me since the article directory wouldn't have content to sell advertising on if no one submitted articles.

There's only one thing that's really important to me at all: that webmasters and ezine/newsletter compilers should use it as an article directory, i.e. a resource for content for their own websites, ezines, newsletters and so on. That's what an article directory is: the stepping-stone to getting my work syndicated so that other people do my off-page SEO for me, and I get the gradually developing residual income from high quality, context-relevant backlinks and traffic coming to my site from other people's relevantly targeted authority sites, because that's where the real money is, in article marketing, and it's why I'm using article directories (i.e. to get beyond article directories).

By comparison, none of those other things really matters to me in the slightest.

Nice read. We are working on making phpLD more friendly as a stand alone article script, with an importer, better author pages, etc. We actually have a domain that ranks # 1 for article script, and never put it to good use. That will be changing soon.

I personally don't bother with article directories. I prefer submitting articles to other bloggers and website owners. This results in really strong backlinks if you submit to quality sites.

Lack of leaks to the sales funnel.