Top Article Directories and Top Submission Sites By Someone Who Actually Uses The Stuff by M. Dawson

I can’t tell you how many times now I’ve searched for the top article directories and top submission sites on Google. The same lists always show up on the first page of returns, but they are always based solely on Google pagerank and Alexa ranking.

That’s all fine and good, but after several years’ experience marketing articles on the internet (and a lot of success as an affiliate because of it), I have a slightly altered list of top article directories and top submission sites – the ones that will actually make you money, are easy to use, are free unless you choose to pay for extra services, and have gotten results for me personally.

1. Ezine Articles. Ezine is first on just about every list, and for good reason. They are pagerank 6 on Google, and are constantly improving the way they do things in order to stay that way. Their Adsense ads are to the right, navigation menu to the left, and all that’s in the center of the page is your article, followed immediately by your links. If you don’t take my advice and end up trying scores of other submission sites, you’ll see just how many bogus sites are happy to take your content, and then put 5 inches of google ads between your article and your resource box, screwing you out of the chance you have to actually profit.

2. Content Crooner. While you can post your articles on Content Crooner’s site, their big draw is (paid) distribution. I rank this second on the list even though it isn’t free because oh my god, does it work, and it’s cheap ($40/month*, or less if you buy more than one month). They distribute your articles to (supposedly) 300-500 sites. If you’re at all experienced with distribution, you know that it’s only actually reaching a fraction of those 300-500 sites, but it doesn’t matter. I tried it on a whim, and it delivered for me in terms of sales. (Make sure you use a special link so you can track this when you use Crooner.)
*That’s UNLIMITED distribution for $40/month. I don’t know how the other distribution sites stay in business; they generally all charge per submission, and they charge between $5-15. Plus you don’t need to use any software; you just paste your article into the form on the site, and that’s it. (I think they even have a 30-day money back guarantee.) And as long as you’re still an active member, they keep distributing your articles to new publishers as they sign up. It’s really just an unbeatable deal.

3. Go Articles. I’m surprised at how well this page does in the rankings, considering you can post just about ANYTHING there (compared to ezine, who are Nazi-like in their quality standards). It’s easy to sign up, post, and there’s no review period – your article goes live right away. If you use Content Crooner, they distribute to Go Articles, so two birds with one stone, there.

4. Articles Base. AB is surprisingly good at driving good traffic. And by good, I mean traffic that buys. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. It has a good pagerank, the layout is easy on the eyes, like EZA they keep the adsense out of your content, and HUGE BONUS: they allow links in the body of the article. I love this, and have made lots of money from my Articles Base articles.

5. Xomba.com. Xomba is great because not only can you post your article there, with links in the body, they also share 50% of the Adsense revenue on your articles with you. How awesome is that? Post everything you write here.

6. Isnare. Isnare is another highly ranked page with an easy to use interface. You can also distribute your articles with them with paid credits.

7. Your own website, with Adsense enabled. Using your own website has gotten a bad rap. If you are a prolific writer, i.e., you’re doing this as a full-time job (and if you are, you should be publishing at least 50-75 articles a week), using your own website is never a bad idea. It’s free unless you decide to upgrade it, it only takes a second to post your articles there, and you can make some extra money from Adsense that way.

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A couple of tips.

1. Post to Ezine Articles first, and let the article get indexed by Google before you publish it anywhere else. It usually only takes a few hours or a day before your article gets indexed. Since Ezine generally outranks other sites, it’s good to be indexed there first. Then distribute to the other sites.

2. Be careful with ArticleSnatch.com. I want to be clear: I don’t have any evidence that Article Snatch articles perform poorly. The articles rank highly in Google returns. The problem is, when you click through and check out your article, you’ll find a couple of things there that are personal pet peeves of mine.

First, they pepper your article with ad links. Worse than that, they’re irrelevant ad links. In my opinion, it makes the whole article look like a big ad. Not only that but there are huge picture ads both next to the top paragraph or two of your article, and then – and this is what annoys me the most – BETWEEN your article and your resource box, followed by a bunch more ads. And, the first link in your resource box is a link showing them as the publisher. Couldn’t they add that AFTER your resource box? Couldn’t they allow your resource box to flow naturally from the article text? I think ArticleSnatch.com is a bunch of greedy pigs, and you probably lose a lot of clicks you would otherwise have gotten if they didn’t try to make your links as subtle as possible and make the whole page a giant Adsense ad.

Content Crooner distributes to Article Snatch. This is why I recommend that you first allow your article to be indexed on Ezine, which outranks Article Snatch. (Once you are indexed on a higher-ranking page, who cares.) And if you feel like I do about Article Snatch, the good news is that after Content Crooner distributes to them, you CAN go and delete your articles from Article Snatch. I don’t bother; I just don’t want them showing up as the number one return for my articles.

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