How to Run a Successful Article Directory

An article directory is like an other website. It serves a specific function, and it's the owner's responsibility to figure out a plan to make it work. An article directory that's not functioning correctly may have a home page like a ghost town. Few visitors, few articles, very few activities, with only a handful of authors.

I can tell whether an article directory can be around in the long run or not just be looking at the home page. In the course of my business, I visit hundreds of article directories and after some time, some patterns are emerging. Everyone can run an article directory. Use a free script like articledashboard, host it on a shared hosting account, and yet another article directory is born. But to make the directory into a successful one takes time and effort.

First, understand the audience that you'll be dealing with if you're going to own an article directory. There are basically two groups: the readers, and the publishers. Without content, there wouldn't be readers, so start promoting your new directory by getting authors to submit content. That's a challenge if the site is new because publishers want traffic when they submit articles, and a new site has no traffic. So why would they want to submit?

If you understand that, you know what you must do. First and foremost, promote your own article directory heavily. Do a lot of article marketing to get the traffic in. Target the publishers in the initial stages. If they read an article written by you, chances are, they already know that you're actively promoting the directory and will be more likely to submit articles.

Once you have people coming to your site to submit articles, treat them like VIPs! Approve their articles if they meet your guidelines as quickly as you can to show that the site is active. Make sure that the articles meet your quality guidelines. Don't fall into the trap of accepting poorly written articles just because the site is new. If you do that, you'll face more problems down the road.

And your problems will be from the readers who come to your site for the articles. They make a search in the search engines, find the title interesting and click through to your site, only to be disappointed with a poorly written article. Chances are, you've lost that visitor forever because it's going to be hard trying to get the visitor to come back due to the first poor experience.

Some visitors are webmasters or publishers looking for reprint content. If your site offers poor quality content, they'll move on and not reprint the content from your site. This, again, will affect your site adversely.

Finally, make sure that your article directory has RSS feeds that are well syndicated. This means that any author who has an accepted article will have his or her article syndicated to many other websites. More exposure will make the authors very happy, and they'll come back again and again to submit more quality articles. Your article directory is on a roll!

That's how you can build a successful article directory. Once you have done a good job, how you want to monetize the traffic is up to you.