Starting Article Directory

Yes.

All the familiar things you should consider when starting any business. Literally everything.

I'd never start anything without at least figuring out where I wanted it to go. Consider everything. Why, what, how...come on, you're in this for a purpose, think like a business person thinks.

If you haven't gone down this route and you need to figure things out, step back, re-look and get yourself oraganised first, this isn't a cash machine.

Have you done the market research? There is a ton of article directories. Ask yourself how is yours going to stand out!

I'd try a niche directory.

If you're sure that you really want to start an Article directory (and it does take an awful lot of your time dealing with spammy postings etc), then make sure you use a dedicated server for hosting as a standard hosting package just doesn't allow for the traffic surge nor the huge database required...

Good luck.

Well, yes ...

You might want to ask yourself why so many Warriors, over the last year, have been getting out of the article directory business, and read some of their many posts explaining why.

And you might want to have a long, slow, careful read of the consultation-process that the owner of Ezine Articles went through, on his blog, with many of their successful authors, after the first of Google's Panda updates, to get a perspective on some of the difficulties involved.

And it could also help to check up carefully on the traffic figures for the leading article directories and have a think about why most of them are around 20%/25% of what they were until a few months ago (there was a big thread here discussing this exact subject only the other day - with charts in it, and so on).

I wish you very well, if you decide to go ahead with it, and I hope you'll excuse the observation that as business models go, in internet marketing, for me this idea is currently in the folder marked "Do Not Touch At Any Cost".

First of all, well done for doing something different in internet marketing, I think article marketing does need something new. However a few questions spring to mind for me.

How much market research have you done is the first question that springs to mind? Also, what are you prepared to do be different from the more established Ezine Articles, etc?

Finally, how do you propose to get other people's content syndicated across the net as Ezine Articles,etc can do? I'm sorry if these questions come across as vicious, but they are questions that in my opinion, need to be asked.

With that said, I look forward to seeing your article directory online in the near future.

Good Luck.

Rob.

You need to look at how you plan to monetize the directory. If you are planning to make income on traffic from search results then I would take note with the damage that the panda update did recently. Besides having to keep the submissions clean, and in the correct category, it could become a no income project for you.

Now if you were to develop a private network that would be paid so you know and can control better the quality you may have a viable idea.

Good luck, my attempt did not go so well.

Sorry if my respond will sound rude to you ... I just want to share my opinion... check your calendar... if it shows year 1999 then go for it and start your own article directory... in any other case, forget about that idea... that's my friendly advice, unless you are sure what you are doing and capable of doing it in the right way, which will still be hard these days, even if you are planning to start a niche directory, which is your only way to get somehow positive results, but still, there are tons of niche directories too, in almost every niche you can imagine...

Article directories have become synonymous with garbage, yet, people continue to advocate them as appropriate marketing channels.

Boggling!!

I suppose the 'best' of them are your more elite recycling bins.

Thanks all for useful criticism

But it is like, I wanna try this once and after reading all these comments. I'll go for free scripts available, if everything will go fine then I'll spend some more money on it

If I may give my two cents. I started an article directory, but I'm not sure you can call it that since I write all of the articles myself. I do not accept outside submissions at this time, because I don't want to spend my life reading/approving. Plus it's a side project that I work on when I have time.

I got the idea from another webmaster who operated a niche site that offered articles about personal development. He wrote all the articles hisself (or maybe outsourced some of them), but the resource box contained anchor links to other websites he owned.

Essentially, the article directory was a place for him to syndicate content in a particular niche to promote his other projects. However, he also made money via Google Adsense, affiliate links, and link sales. The site has been live for several years, and he has hundreds of articles on there.

Unfortunately, if you try to run an article directory as it is commonly known, you will run into all sorts of craziness and you won't make any money. You need to approach the idea of an article directory from a different direction if you want to make any cash from it.

If you still want to operate a traditional article directory, then you may want to qualify writers before approving their account. I just started posting articles to Blogcritics. To have an account there, you must submit links to samples of your work to prove you know how to write. I'm sure people will find ways to work around this but I'm also certain this will cut down on the garbage and you will build a stable of trusted, talented writers - something you can market to people who need reprint articles for their projects.

Like it has been said - article directories take an immense amount of time and the return on investment is usually zero.

But having said that - if you have time to burn and don't mind working for free and you love reading articles then go for it.

I still like my directory on fiction bloggers yet it seems most bloggers in that niche don't want to be a part of a directory even though it's free to list. Go figure.

Best of luck.