Archive for November, 2007

How to rate an article directory?

I have been submitting content to various article directories for about 90 days. I have submitted 80+ articles and variations to 20 or more directories.

One thing I have noticed from other boards is that it can be difficult to determine how effective all your work is. Some sites have lousy stats, others have decent stats but result in little traffic.

Obviously, if you are posting junk, you will get little traffic. However, I have taken the same article, re-written it several times, posted it to the various directories and had big differences in views and site visits.

Factors I am considering when reviewing an article directory:

Directory:   Directory name and url
Interface:   Can you switch between WYSIWYG and text mode?
Internal stats:   At a minimum there should be number of article views. # of time article emailed or that the reader clicked the backlink are also good.
External stats:   Since there are no definitive stats for rating these sites, I am using a loose combination of page rank, Alexa and the number of pages in Google (site:url).
Review time:   If there are less than five approved articles, review time should be one week or less.
Communication:   If articles are not approved, is the violation reason clearly described?
Account required:   Do you need to create an account to post articles?
Automation:   Is it allowed and, if so, how complex to implement?
Overall Rating:   Combination of all above factors
Personal Results:   Separate from overall rating. This is my personal experience with the site.

If you are just looking to blast articles, this probably won’t be of much interest. There are plenty of spinners and auto submit services out there.

Black Alley

Hammer is running out of gas and so is Spillane. You know Hammer will always get the girl, money, bad guy, etc and this book doesn’t deviate. The plot is a little weird with 89 billion dollars up for grabs. Drags in places. Good for filling a hour or two at the end of the day. It is what it is.

Black Alley

A Jump for Life

Remarkable story of a mother and daughter’s survival in the Warsaw Ghetto and escape from a train to Treblinka. The mother wrote the journal immediately after the war and had it transcribed into English. Sat in a drawer for 40+ years until being found after the mother’s death.

A Jump for Life: A Survivor’s Journal from Nazi-Occupied Poland

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

This work has none of Morris’ hubris and extravagance so blatantly on display in the efforts with Reagan and the second volume of TR. He lets his writing and research hold the weight and doesn’t resort to the silly tactics of “you are there, riding in the wagon with TR.” This book was the impetus for my creating the Theodore Roosevelt Timeline.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Nietzsche

My memory says this did happen. But my conscience says ’twere better if it had not happened. Gradually memory yields to the dictates of conscience.

Aldous Huxley

Brave New World

“I’d rather be myself, ” he said. “Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”

A gramme is always better than a damn.

Everybody’s happy nowadays

Was and will make me ill
I take a gramme and only am

Cyril Connolly

When he at last achieved fame and success he was a dying man and knew it. He had fame and was too ill to leave his room. Money and nothing to spend it on, love in which he could not participate; he tasted the bitterness of dying.

On George Orwell

T.S. Elliot

The progression of the artist is a continual extinction of personality. One constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a window pane.

John Brown

The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.

Dante

In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood
For I had lost the right path.

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