Where Are Your Articles Being Published?
by Bill Platt
Published on this site: January 31st, 2006 - See
more articles from this month
There are a few article directory software programs in the
marketplace. Some are great, some are good, and some stink
to high heaven, for the writer and for the website owners.
In an ideal world, all article management software would
be easy-to-use for the webmaster. Also in an ideal world,
the submission process would be fast and easy for the writer.
But, this is not an ideal world.
In today's article hungry marketplace, there are literally
hundreds of websites where you can submit your articles.
Three Types of Article Directories
There are three kinds of article directories:
- Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reprint
- Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reading
- Article Directories Inside of a Website, with Articles
Available for Reading
With these different kinds of directories, you will find
different categories of webmasters. This distinction is more
important than you think.
- Corporate Owners
- Independent Online Business Webmasters
- Hobbyist Webmasters
Personally, I own two article directories. One has nearly
2500 articles in it, and the other has nearly 5000 articles
in it.
Both of mine are of the first type, Stand-Alone Directories
of Articles Available for Reprint. But, I am not a corporate
owner. I am an independent online business webmaster.
The reason why the type of owner is important is that the
type of owner will determine where your articles will be published
today and tomorrow.
Corporate owners have a bottomless supply of web server space
available to them. In the corporate category, these directories
are the most important:
Directory Owner Budgets
Most new article directory owners have a small budget for
web hosting, and therefore, they have a limited amount of
web server hard drive space.
Most of these new directory owners have jumped into their
website with both feet hoping to cash in on their Google Adsense
revenue.
After a few months, the truth will crash them into the wall.
On http://www.articles4reprint.com,
I have more than 4500 articles live. I have another 1000 articles
pending my approval. Generally, it takes 30 seconds to approve
one article. So, the articles currently pending on this site
will require an investment of another 8.5 hours to bring up-to-date. One day
a couple of weeks back, I spent 19 straight hours approving
articles on this site. I am not going to stop taking submissions
to this article directory site, but it does require a lot
of my time to maintain.
Perhaps I am exceptional. I will spend the hours required
to approve articles, but will the next person?
I started this site with a basic account. I have had to upgrade
my web hosting package three times to be able to continue
accepting articles to the site. Will the next person make
this kind of commitment?
The payoff for operating a website like this one is the Adsense
revenue developed from hosting such a wide range of content
on the website. In the case of the http://www.articles4reprint.com
website, I am currently generating only $40 per month on my
Adsense account. Will the next person consider this a fair
trade of time for money? Likely not.
I Know This Is My Business, But Don't Take My Word For
It
At various times, I submit articles to various directories.
The distinction of "at various times" is actually
important. Websites that were accepting direct submissions
from me six months ago are no longer accepting submissions
from anyone.
Writers want to believe that they can just crank out hundreds
of articles, generating hundreds of links back to their websites.
Sometimes they can, and at other times, they cannot.
It comes down to this. Every website where I submit articles
has a human moderator at the other end of the transaction,
and they have the right to choose what materials they will
use and what materials they will not use. Each webmaster can
also consider whether the time required for the approval process
will help their bottom line.
These big article directories no longer accept articles from
anyone. Also shown is the last date an article was added to
the site.
Many smaller directories have also stopped taking articles.
In most cases, the websites show that they accept articles,
but you never realize that they are not printing your articles
until you look or until you hit the Submit button on the Submission
Form. Or, you can continue submitting to them, never realizing
that you are wasting your time, until you go to search the
website for your articles.
http://www.articlefinders.com
says that they have a monster backlog and they are not taking
new articles until they get caught up.
http://www.marketingtroll.co.uk
seems to indicate that they are still accepting articles,
but they have not published a new article since May of 2005.
Folks, I could go on forever. I could literally show your
hundreds of directories that seem to be accepting articles,
but they have not published any new articles in months or
years.
Generally, Mailing Lists on the Major List Servers Deliver
Better Results
Article distribution email groups on Yahoo and Google generally
provide good results, but they fall into disuse almost as
frequently as web article directories.
Here, I will show the subscriber count of the Article Distribution
Group, the last time an article was published through the
list, and the URL for the list.
The following article distribution group is active, but there
is no moderator to review your posts:
In Conclusion...
If you are distributing your own articles to a house list,
check back from time to time to make sure that they are actually
using your articles. Always verify your results. Don't waste
your time submitting articles to people who will not even
look at your articles.
Bill Platt is the owner of http://thePhantomWriters.com
Article Distribution Service. Effective January of 2006, we
send a Distribution Report to all of our clients. Our Distribution
Report outlines where an article was distributed, and it shows
how many publishers and webmasters are subscribed to those
email distribution lists in real-time. We have been providing
our services to our clients since 2001. Convert Text Articles
to HTML using this free tool: http://thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl
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