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Newbie Article Directory admin

by bcetin
5 replies
Hi,

I have been building an article directory website for the last few weeks which is a new arena for me as I have always been at the other side of the table as a writer. I have some subscribers and original articles. But as of last week, I get about 5-10 members and 40-50 articles to review each day, which are written in good English (no horrible spins), more than 500 words and contains at most 2 links to a related website as stated in my rules. The problem is I think these articles come from multiple automated posting tools. When I search a whole sentence from the articles in Google, there are multiple copies of it in different article sites or personal blogs.

I'm filtering out the registered accounts that do not post their very first article in 4 weeks of registration and delete them to prevent account spamming. If an account has at least 1 approved article, the account stays forever.

My team review every article before publishing but is this a problem or good for my site? Should I only accept original articles or is this what an article directory meant to. I see that an article in EZA has millions of copies over internet, too.

Thanks for any comments.
#admin #article #directory #newbie
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by bcetin View Post

    My team review every article before publishing but is this a problem or good for my site? Should I only accept original articles or is this what an article directory meant to.
    I promise that absolutely no impoliteness is intended here, but I'm seriously puzzled and deeply surprised that you've decided to build an article directory without first knowing the answers to these questions?! :confused:

    There's only one article directory that requires previously unpublished content, and that's "Buzzle". Not doing too well at the moment, after Google's latest algorithm update (obviously enough it didn't help them much), and it's the one that very few professional article marketers will use at all, and of course that's the reason.

    As it is, you're starting a business in a field in which the average lifespan of start-ups is only a few months: deciding that you'll accept only previously unpublished articles would clearly be nothing less than scheduling the funeral. Even EZA couldn't do that without losing all their top authors. Who's going to give a newly-formed article directory the initial indexation rights to their work?!
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    • Profile picture of the author Wonderful Warrior
      I'm looking at this another way.

      If you own an article directory that means you also have these writers email.

      Without spamming them, you can send out "The best original article of the week" newsletter to all your subscribers.

      Attached, of course, you can promote a separate business of yours, or charge for advertising space.

      I think if you run a contest like this and advertise the contest you will get a lot of subscribers.

      You can even add a vote system so people can vote on the best articles of the week.

      I know all this might sound silly but you will build a huge list and that is what internet marketing is about.
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      • Profile picture of the author PatriciaJ
        Originally Posted by bcetin View Post

        Hi,

        I have been building an article directory website for the last few weeks which is a new arena for me as I have always been at the other side of the table as a writer. I have some subscribers and original articles. But as of last week, I get about 5-10 members and 40-50 articles to review each day, which are written in good English (no horrible spins), more than 500 words and contains at most 2 links to a related website as stated in my rules. The problem is I think these articles come from multiple automated posting tools. When I search a whole sentence from the articles in Google, there are multiple copies of it in different article sites or personal blogs.

        I'm filtering out the registered accounts that do not post their very first article in 4 weeks of registration and delete them to prevent account spamming. If an account has at least 1 approved article, the account stays forever.

        My team review every article before publishing but is this a problem or good for my site? Should I only accept original articles or is this what an article directory meant to. I see that an article in EZA has millions of copies over internet, too.

        Thanks for any comments.
        A lot of article marketers use tools to submit articles, some will never or hardly ever actually visit your site unless they are new, or just to sign up and then add your site to their submission tool. The only way I know of to stop automatic sign ups is to split the code that goes out in your confirmation email and ask recipients to paste it complete into their browser.

        Most people write original articles that are still original no matter how many sites they are published on. I've seen a handful of sites including Buzzle that want unique to them articles, but if they are not paying a decent amount for uniqueness then they don't deserve them.

        Originally Posted by Wonderful Warrior View Post

        I'm looking at this another way.

        If you own an article directory that means you also have these writers email.

        Without spamming them, you can send out "The best original article of the week" newsletter to all your subscribers.

        Attached, of course, you can promote a separate business of yours, or charge for advertising space.

        I think if you run a contest like this and advertise the contest you will get a lot of subscribers.

        You can even add a vote system so people can vote on the best articles of the week.

        I know all this might sound silly but you will build a huge list and that is what internet marketing is about.
        Tried something similar when I first started my directory 4 years ago and no interest, even when I offered a £50 a month prize. The thing is that most of those who sign up to article directories want to submit articles to promote their business not interact or get emails trying to sell them something. Their email accounts are often started just for the purpose of article marketing, emails are deleted unread, that is unless the directory gets as big as EZA.
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    • Profile picture of the author bcetin
      Hi Alexa, thanks for your answer, I'm not that touchy, so don't worry

      Actually I did not mean to ask if "reviewing all the articles" was good or bad in that quote (when I read it the second time I realized it was open to misunderstanding). I tried to ask if "approving unoriginal articles" was good or bad and I have my answer. I think some autopublishers located my site and mass spamming articles

      @Wonderful Warrior

      Hi, these are indeed great ideas! I will be improving my site by integrating some voting as you say and contests are a good way to get subscribers. Thanks for recommendations.
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  • Profile picture of the author bcetin
    Also do you think I should implement an e-mail confirmation to my membership system? Currently I'm running an SQL script that finds the accounts with 0 posts and 4 weeks old to delete those accounts. Does an e-mail confirmation prevent these last week's 40-50 post per day which are I think auto-posts? They are generating a great deal of content currently and I started to like them after Alexa's answer
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