An article directory is a very useful online service for online marketers and anyone who has a website, blog or other web pages that they author, to promote through article marketing.

These online article services are highly sought after and so is owning an article directory, the thought has passed many minds of having an article directory as a viable business, but then they get it up and running and either abandon them or just simply don't know how to market them to benefit through owning a content site like it.

To start an article directory it would suit someone who loves to write and organize many research tasks and someone who also enjoys reading and writing articles themselves and they understand the processes of writing a good article. After all article writing is a skill that can be acquired with practice, the turning point comes when your writing just seems to flow and become in sync with your thoughts.

The more quality your articles are, the better results you will always have through article marketing and understanding this promotional method is a great starting point for beginning to toy with the idea of having your very own article directory service.

There are many existing article directories out there, but there is still a place for new article directories if you are serious in treating this as a business, you just have to think about all the other article directories that get started and don't end up getting anywhere and so they sit and gather virtual dust.

So, reaching the high traffic of the big article service players is hard work, but it is achievable, with a tight marketing plan, that will break through the wall of abandoned article directories and over a long period of time become an established online presence.

Now a good domain name is essential to brand your directory with a relevant and descriptive web url, a domain name is more useul when it describes the service of your site or associates some meaning for web visitors to quickly understand what your website is for.

To make an article directory work as a usable site, you will need a script that will hold all of the contributing files and folders and sub directories that will be used to make your site interactive and user friendly, there are some free scripts available, but they largely expect you to install the scripts yourself and this can be quite technically challenging for the novice.

Articledashboard is one that I found very frustrating as some of the links to the support forum didn't work and there is no good information on how to install the article dashboard software, you could there either do one of two things, search the Internet for help and support from others who have properly installed it and are using the software now, or you could get someone to install it for you which is not that expensive, if you have some funding or extra money to put into your article content publishing business.

There are otherrecommended scripts available online with possibly easier to install options and ones that I myself would use over the article dashboard script, because there may be more help and support for the scripts, of course you'll need to have your own hosting account with a good amount of space and bandwidth with an MySQL database, because you need to think about the future of your ever expanding article directory as more and more members might join to submit their articles, then the space and bandwidth needed will be considerably more than when you started off.

Although now there are multiple options online for acquiring your own article directory and the other scripts that are available usually have the upgrade support that comes with your paid installation, it's just about working out which one would be more suitable for your needs and for what you want to accomplish with a full force article directory.

Starting your own article directory is very cheap considering normal business expenses of paying rent on premises, then the bills for that business base and so on, in fact any website business is far cheaper than any brick and mortar business and so the risk is considered less in terms of finance and capital you pump into your online business.

On a web server you may have other options and software that could compliment your article directory, such as a php forum that could be added to it to make it feel more like a community.

Any web based site that has many members using the site, must have a secure site, with all of the latest updates that eliminate site vulnerabilities that online hackers can exploit, if you are unsure then do get someone to do this for you through your web host control panel.

But I would definitely recommend getting an expert to install and maintain your site for you, as this is often out of someones comfort zone, doing the technical behind the scenes of a web based member online business.

Once you have your article directory up and running, it will need to be promoted, so the next part of our series is how to market your article directory.