I've written quite a few hubs reviewing the various website scripts and content management systems out there that you can use to set up a money making website without needing to do any programming yourself, and wih a particular emphasis on free scripts because I know how good it is to get something for nothing, and also because if you pay good money for a script then there it will almost certainly be good quality, but the free one vary wildly from pathetically bad to just as good as the ones you have to buy, so I figure providing info and reviews in this area is more valuable to people. Take a look at the links to the right of this text for a couple of my favourite ways to set up your own website business for free and start making money, or if you are particularly interested in running your own article directory then read on to see my reviews.

 Aside from providing interesting articles for people who are surfing the internet to read, an article directory fulfills two purposes. Firstly if someone has a website or product which they want to promote then they can write an article and have it published on your site along with an author bio including links to their site or other contact details. Secondly people who are looking for free content for a website can reproduce any of your articles as long as they keep the author bio intact and include a link to your site.

The advantages of running an article directory as opposed to any other kind of website are also twofold. Firstly you get content provided for you for free, so you don't have to provide it yourself. Secondly people adding a link to your site when they reproduce your articles give you some valuable free promotion.

You make money from your site by adding advertising. Google adsense generally works best.

 The Article Dashboard script produces a clean looking professional website with a control panel that allows you to control the category structure, edit the text on every page using a template structure and so on.  The categories are displayed on the home page along with the most recent articles, and there is a section for top authors. This is a good scripts and a lot of people have used it to create successful sites, but although it is free it only works if you use their hosting. This is fine if you don't already have a hosting account, but if you do then having to set up a new account means that this isn't truly a free script. Learn more here.

 ArticleMS has a really nice control panel with loads of options to help you to configure your site the way that you want it. It includes a WYSIWYG editor for submissions and a collaborative editing system. All the urls created by the site are seo friendly, which is a bonus, and it is genuinely free with no limitation on hosting. The one drawback with this one is that it doesn't include the html box underneath each article which people can copy and paste to repubish the article, author bio and a link to your site. This means that you are probably less likely to get as many people republishing your articles, and more likely to get people doing so without including a link to your site. Apart from that it is excellent. Learn more here.