How lucrative is it to run an all new article directory?

Banned 13 years ago

Personally, I wouldn't dream of it.

Literally thousands of new article directories start off each year. I believe they have an average lifespan of about 3 - 4 months before their owners decide it isn't such a viable business model for most people, after all. Some sit around online, unattended, sometimes until their year's hosting or domain-registration expires, but many are defunct, don't accept or publish anything submitted, and some are no longer indexed anyway.

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tpw

13 years ago

Unless you are selling back-end services, then it is not very lucrative.

EZA and ArticlesBase have millions of articles to drive Adsense, but as a new directory, it will take years for you to reach anywhere near their level of article volume.

I have three article directories. The only one that is profitable sells back-end services. The other two are just a drain on resources to be honest.

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moykan 13 years ago

Originally Posted by tpw

I have three article directories. The only one that is profitable sells back-end services. The other two are just a drain on resources to be honest.

Sorry what you mean when you say "sells back-end services"?
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- tpw 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by moykan
  
  Sorry what you mean when you say "sells back-end services"?
  
  I sell article syndication.
  
  A buddy of mine owns an article directory, and he sells ghost writing.
  
  Another fellow I know who owns an article directory sells SEO tools to his users.
  
  Another article directory requires payment to put articles into his directory.
  
  EZA sells premium author services.
  
  When you are running an article directory, the profits are not with the people who read the articles -- and has never been, but rather the profit potential is with the people who submit the articles.
  
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  moykan 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by tpw
  
  I sell article syndication.
  
  Agree with you, today people make money selling services, and more creative you Are in your Service more u make $$ :-)
  
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  John Hocking 13 years ago
  
  I have article directories with thousands of author sudmitted articles that make very little ad revenue.
  
  My advice to you would be to study the trends (twitter, google) etc and create an original blog on the topic. You can use wordpress to connect the blog posts to twitter,facebook and other social media.
  
  You will get traffic and more responsive ad revenue or affiliate sells.
  
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  Daniel Harper 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by tpw
  
  Another article directory requires payment to put articles into his directory.
  
  I think this is insane.
  
  I can't imagine paying someone to publish my work. It's just so counter-intuitive and backwards that it boggles my mind.
  
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  tpw 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Daniel Harper
  
  I think this is insane.
  
  I can't imagine paying someone to publish my work. It's just so counter-intuitive and backwards that it boggles my mind.
  
  Maybe so, but people do pay him, and he turned his article directory profitable.
  
  I paid him too, because he gave me a marketplace with less competitors. And he spent the money to attract a loyal following of publishers looking for content, so in the end, he was able to syndicate my articles quite frequently.
  
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moykan

13 years ago

i just made a new article directory related to travel, i think first you have to find a good niche, then need to be sure that all articles submitted will be unique and all pages must be seo optimized and would be nice that are w3c valid too.

I don't know if will make some money, but i wanna try it to do some test too and see how the market respond!

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christopher jon

13 years ago

You'd have to flip the current directory model and try something new.

The old method of relying on a massive number of articles and traffic doesn't look very promising at the moment.

The problem with the EZA model. They took just about anything that was submitted. There was very little investment in quality control. It was great for the owner, he's rich, and it was great for those submitting low quality content but in the long run I don't think the site will ever recover.

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Mike McAleer

13 years ago

I don't think that you could make a good profit with it now because in my opinion it will take many years to make that type of money. Think of how long it will take to get submissions to a level of one of the big shot directories.

If you want to do it, you definitely could. I am just saying it will take some time and effort as anything does...

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O0o0O

13 years ago

It can be very lucrative if you find a way to get publishers to share the content on their websites at a faster rate than EzineArticles. Do SEO for about twelve months and you should be in the green.

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trishworks4u 13 years ago

UGG - don't go there.

I have one of those around here somewhere :p

The novelty of having my very own article directory wore off really quick and the drudgery of reviewing hundreds of articles daily took over.

If it's a "niche directory" (mine was), it doesn't matter if you limit submissions to just certain categories like "small business", "entrepreneur", etc. You'll still get hemorrhoid and dog whispering articles by the dozen.

as for monetizing, most small directories are being auto-submitted to and auto-pulled from so no one is really ever ON your site for you to monetize it. It would have to be very specialized, big and successful for you to start making any cash on it.
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- russells 13 years ago
  
  This isn't a lucrative area at all.
  
  Article directories aren't dead YET but it won't be long before they're not effective anymore.
  
  They're not half as effective as what they used to be.
  
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72K.org

13 years ago

If your talking 50-60 articles updated per day, why not just create a Google news website? Those are MUCH more lucrative than directories ... Get ranked on Google #1 every time you post an article you know how much traffic that is? @#*&loads!

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LarryHaywood

13 years ago

Originally Posted by theultimate1

Hello Warriors,

With the recent Google slap on content "farms", how lucrative is it for someone to now setup an all new article directory? The assumption here is the owner will ensure that the content going on the site is actually high quality, way higher than what we find on most EZA pages.

If you were to setup an article directory today and had about 50-60 new good quality articles being uploaded on your site everyday, how much would you stand to make? What methods of monetisation would you use? Would do off-page SEO as well, or just rely on quality content on the site?

Bigger Q... Would you take it up? If yes, what would be your biggest reason to take something like this up as your pet project?

I don't believe your question on how lucrative a new article directory is can be answered honestly. There are a variety of factors which will no doubt effect the outcome of any new site. I don't think anyone can realistically tell you how much you could stand to make by uploading 50-60 articles a day. Again, this would rely on a number of variables. And being a new article directory I wouldn't expect to make anything on it for some time.

However, there is no reason to not try. You have the advantage of being a new article directory and not having to worry about losing any rankings since you do not have any to begin with. Any rankings you get from here on will be rankings you did not have. What is to lose here?

Methods of monetization: I personally use Adsense on my new article directory that I just started in Feb. Amazon might be another ad network which could do ok. I'm sure there are plenty of other ways you can monetize the site.

Yes, I believe you will need to do off-page SEO as well as providing quality articles on your site to be a success. In my opinion you can never do enough backlinking for a site as long as it's natural and not automated junk links. Those may not all be all that bad though. More links the merrier.

Would I take it up? YES. In fact, I just started a new article WordOODLE.com which is growing so fast I cannot seem to keep up with submissions. The site already has over 2,000 registered users and is only a month and a half old. My biggest reason to take up this project was no doubt the potential a popular article directory has. If you manage to become one of the top article directories you will be sitting pretty.

In conclusion: I would go for it if you feel you are ready to dedicate yourself to the article directory as it will certainly take a lot of time and effort to get it earning and growing.

Hope this helps... .02

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theultimate1 13 years ago

Originally Posted by LarryHaywood

Hope this helps... .02

This absolutely helps a great deal. Thanks for your detailed response.

I also thank everyone who posted above. Certain factors I didn't consider have shown up by some of your posts on this thread, and that's the best thing about Warrior Forum. Just a thought here (and it's my 'opinion' of course)... too many cooks (in business) don't necessarily spoil the broth.

Let's take this to a new level... What about a site like Infobarrel? It's an article directory and offers revenue sharing. What about sites like that one?
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- tpw 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by theultimate1
  
  Let's take this to a new level... What about a site like Infobarrel? It's an article directory and offers revenue sharing. What about sites like that one?
  
  Most article directories that do revenue-sharing have one major problem to overcome -- an owner who has no idea how to build traffic to the website.
  
  Most article directories are a vacuum when it comes to the public viewing articles. As such, what revenue is available to share? Not much.
  
  Info Barrel is still new on the scene. Most of the other article directories I have seen do this have been out of business for some time.
  
  The problem is as I indicated before. Unless you can get the same kind of Google Love that EZA or ArticlesBase once had, their are no readers on your site -- there are only people submitting articles.
  
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  LarryHaywood 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by tpw
  
  Most article directories that do revenue-sharing have one major problem to overcome -- an owner who has no idea how to build traffic to the website.
  
  Good point. But for those who can build traffic it could be a very good way to go... IMHO
  
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- LarryHaywood 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by theultimate1
  
  Let's take this to a new level... What about a site like Infobarrel? It's an article directory and offers revenue sharing. What about sites like that one?
  
  That is how I chose to go with my new article directory. WordOODLE.com shares 50% of its Adsense revenue on all articles and blog posts created by publishers. There are FREE WP plugins to set this up.
  
  If you want to look them up then check out: Search for The Article Directory plugin and Author Advertising plugin
  
  Hope this helps.
  
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visimedia

13 years ago

article directories have a good leverage: creating unique content by using another people's time and energy. Now you need a creativity on how to monetize your traffic.

That way you can make article directories to be lucrative.

it all depends on you!

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howinfo 13 years ago

Our article directory is just over a year old and it took some time to get it going but after six months or so it was doing very well in terms of revenues and up to this January when lot of pages got dropped significantly and we lost about 80 percent of the traffic, it is getting slowly back to normal now and it was bit scary experience, but it did help us do change the direction slightly and expand the site and find some other ways to get visitors and unique content in.

I think if you where to star an article directory it will take some time before you can see some results, you have to be extremely selective what you approve and publish as at first it can be attempting to publish lot of content just to get the article count up but if you concentrate on quality instead of quantity then you could do very well.
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flexnds

13 years ago

Ya, not very lucrative. I've had two of them with a total of 40k uniques per month and only making a couple dollars a day. It's also much easier to say SUPER HIGH QUALITY AND THAT YOU WILL MONITOR EVERYTHING. However, that is much easier said than done with all of the spam you will get. And when you are not making any money from it but have to spend 3 hours a day cleaning up the site it's not very fun at all. Not worth the time, but if you wanna give it a try I've got some good templates ready to go that I can give you.

Also, for promotion all you pretty much have to do is submit your directory to directorycritic.com and it will get plenty of IM'ers submitting articles.

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Marketing Cheetah

13 years ago

I agree with Alexa's post. The only way to monetize article directories is Adsense. You need good amount of traffic to monetize them. Managing them also takes a lot of time and surely they are not loved by Google any more.
I also used to own few article directories and I can tell you they are not so attractive.

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clothears60

13 years ago

has anyone Used awebber for user signup? and will this be a decent list?

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Jason Perez O'Connor

13 years ago

I have one in the works :] But its more to fill the need to have somewhere to posts Articles on my hobby (which currently there are none). No profit wanted yet.

But have a think for yourself, the only way you can make cash with directories is either to publish Ads around your site with high CTR, without sacrificing the CTR of your publishers too much (makes them not want to even bother) or to offer some form of premium service.

Premium services could be:

Listed highly for a certain period in its category
Quicker Approval time
Choice of including your own 125x125 Ad within the article you make for a fee?

Or any other type of service that you may think others could use.

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drmani

13 years ago

Any article directory that can offer a winning deal for their writers
while still finding a way to be profitable for the owners has a chance
of surviving, even thriving, in this ever-shifting online environment.

Like most successful projects online, you've got to be UNIQUE and
SPECIAL in some way - no longer does the "bigger, cheaper, faster"
alternative work that well.

For YEARS, I've considered these ideas, but done little or nothing
with them, so I'll toss them out in case someone thinks it worth
trying out - and actually DOES anything with them!

1. Paid Article Directory - You charge a fee PER ARTICLE posted to
your directory (kind of like JoeAnt.com charges for directory listing,
or the Warrior Forum Article directory does per year). Figure out
what value addition can make it worthwhile for writers to submit.

2. Niche Article Directory with content re-purposing and revenue
sharing - You invite niche content submission. You re-purpose that
content in various creative ways (some ideas: bundle them into an
ebook and sell on Kindle store, create tighter themed niche minisites
and sell them on Flippa with a good domain and design, build a
private blog network and charge a fee for back-link buyers to
post on them) - AND share your revenues fairly with everyone
who contributes articles to them.

3. Niche Article Directory with a book publishing deal tied in.
Talk to an Indie publisher who will agree to publish a book on
a topic. Figure out a table of contents, and accept only articles
that fit that structure. The plus for writers is that they get
a book deal on the back of their article submission. Get a
bit creative with this, and you'll have a hit. (For those who are
War Room members, there's a report by Allen Says about travel
writing, which is based on doing the same thing using content
people share on forums, btw!)

4. Authoritative Articles Directory - Insist on only 1,500 word
plus articles written by someone with PROVEN expertise in a
niche - and leverage that into massive publicity for your article
directory by way of press, interviews and more - making it a great
deal for recognized experts to submit content to your directory.

5. Email/Ezine Article Directory - Accept only articles that
are scripted, formatted and suitable for use by ezine publishers
as content. Tie up with publishers in the Directory of Ezines
to accept a feed of articles on a regular basis. Make that
your selling point, with writers being sure of a syndication
opportunity for their work.

I have a few more written down in one of my notebooks somewhere,
but these are the ones I keep coming back to, thinking about for
a while, then shelving again for "later".

Well, "later" never came. Maybe it will - for YOU

Hope this helps.

All success
Dr.Mani

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Damani Tabor 13 years ago

I would ask...

What is the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of a new directory?

If there were some cool new features integrated, like a tighter nexus between article marketing and social networking, or something that would encourage a viral spread to beat the competition, then..... it would probably work.
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tpw

13 years ago