Article Directories! why do they exist?
Article Directories!
What exactly is the purpose of them? Pages and pages of somebody else's work, all nicely categorised and listed there for someone else to pop along, copy it and republish on their site. Maybe do a bit of rewording first then pretend it's original! BTW, it's not, it's called plagiarism and it could possibly be copyright infringement into the bargain.
So! Why are they there?
Could it be that the owners had the philanthropic idea that sharing this information is a good thing and wanted to give the Internet a vehicle for it to be seen?
If so, do we really need so many of them?
OR, given that myriads of these things appeared shortly after Google Adsense took off, could it be that these lists of "articles" simply exist to gather revenue for the owners from clicks on adsense adverts placed on pages of content quite willingly provided by others?
From the dozens of forum threads there are of people looking for more and more places to give their (or somebody else's) work away it seems like it's a fairly successful scheme.
Now there is a fine line between "giving away the farm" and promoting it. Surely posting your "article" at dozens of these directories is giving it away? Where is the sense in creating something original and promptly handing it out to so many other outlets who then;
- Earn money from it
- Allow all and sundry to use it freely
Would it not make much more sense to put it on your own site and give away a sanitised, cut down version as a "teaser"?
I realise that a lot of people see it as getting a "free" backlink, but it's hardly free when you have to create the article (or pay for it to be written) in the first place.
I also realise that some people see it as promoting themselves as "expert" in whatever field you are writing in. There again, the "teaser" principle would make common sense, as people who are interested would have to come to your site to read the full text, maybe even stay a while and read other pages, sign up to your newsletter, forum, blog, whatever. Hey! They might even click on an advert that YOU get paid for.
This article was added by Chris Hirst and was posted on 07 September 2008. Chris has been a member since 09 January 2008 and has written 23 article(s) for modTalk
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
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