Cynthia McKenna LPC, NCC writes:

so where is the top 10 list for the categories? I am not seieng that on my author page.

thanks,
Cynthia

*************
Cynthia McKenna LPC, NCC
http://www.cynthiamckennacounseling.com
http://www.counseling.typepad.com

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Cynthia,

March 15th of this year we launch the “Top 10 Authors By Quantity By Category” feature. See this forum post:
http://ezinearticles.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1021

I logged into your account and the closest category you are near to a top 10 ranking by article quantity is this category: Anger-Management

If you look near the top, you’ll see this to click on: Top Authors in Self-Improvement:Anger-Management

That will show you the top 10 authors in that category by article quantity alone. Before this feature, you’d never easily know that you were very close to getting on the top 10 list without doing some calculations and a bunch of minutes of searching to pull all of the data together.

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Ed Howes writes:

I have yet to scroll down my articles just to see what categories or how many, my articles are in. This gives me that info but I still have to scroll my articles to see which are in what category so an article count per category would be helpful with the rankings. I’m not very competitive, so I don’t care much about ranking. What I’m waiting for are web site stats. Average number of daily visits past 30 days. Number of articles, articles per category/sub category. Daily average new authors past 30 days and more I have yet to think of. I would also like to know if EzineArticles is profitable and if so, for how long?

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Ed Howes writes:

Chris,

If nice guys finish last, how did you finish in your triathalon? Will you write an article about it?

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Lance Winslow writes:

WOW, thanks, I appreciate that, I had emailed to ask about it. I had made a paper schedule for myself and check off the articles as I do them, but it really does not work very well. So thank you very much.

Oh I was having fun with this Triathlon thing too:

http://www.EzineArticles.com/?Should-The-Top-Online-Article-Submission-Website-Entrepreneur-do-Triathlons?&id=220843

I just do not want Chris to get eaten by a shark or alligator or something while swimming out there? We cannot afford to lose the guy!

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Patricia Nordman writes:

Awesome, Chris! Thanks so much for everything!

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Yes, it’s true: This new feature was inspired by a request from Lance.

Since I’ve only done the triathlon thing in Wisconsin, there are no sharks or alligators here… :) unless the cows can swim, I’ll be ok.

For my next tri event on June 25th, I’m doing the half-ironman distance and have found a local masters swimming coach to do the event as a relay with me. Most likely, I’ll do more dualthlons or tri’s as a relay and I’m certain there is no ironman in my future as I’m a sprinter.

Heck, my true fitness love is Racquetball, so all of this swimming, biking and running is about cross-training for my core sport.

Ed: For my first triathlon, I beat the guys in my age division that didn’t finish and learned a lot about how I could improve my next one. When I started feeling sorry for myself for not placing better within my age group, I realized that I beat everyone who didn’t enter.

I had also run a 10k race the day before with 10k+ people (mental note not to do that again the day before a triathlon) and came in 3464 out of the 6530 runners in my division. I was running a pleasant pace of 9:35 minute miles as I didn’t want to burn everything in me before the Tri the next day.

My 10K race photo (it was like 52 degrees F.):

We’ll take a look at where we could include an article count per category. Right now, that info is included in the CSV download info that is part of your MY ARTICLE REPORTS, but requires a bit of Excel work to identify it. I’m sure we’ll be evolving article reports quite a bit more this year.

You also asked if we were profitable. We’re privately held, stable and have fire in our bellies. :)

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Pamela Beers writes:

Rankings are a cool addition, Chris. Thanks so much. My rankings are much higher than I expected, especially for a newbie, and I am thrilled.

I like your triathlon picture. Whew! Many congrats to you! Since I’ve looked at your picture, I’ve become inspired to become more fit. But first, I think I’ll take a nap.

Again, thank you and the staff and the authors for all of your contributions.

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Ed Howes writes:

Now look what you have done Chris! You have inspired Pamela so when she wakes up from her nap she will be shooting for top author in the fitness category. :-)

Thanks for your story. It is an excellent lesson in attitude and the value and ease of changing one’s viewpoint to extract the meaningful lessons of experience. Now that you have proved you are a good guy, you can become a major exception to the rule. “Good Guy Finishes First – Destroys Myth” :-) Thanks for the hint on profitability. It is not hard to see the capitalization that works against profits short term and insures a bright future. I will continue to seek ways to stoke your fires. There is a lot more to this than a million article archive.

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Kathryn Bechen writes:

Love EzineArticles.com!

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Lance Winslow writes:

Ed, you have a great sense of humor indeed. Keep making us smile and laugh. Good stuff and good future topics for articles too.

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Ed Howes writes:

Kathryn,

Thanks for validating so many of us. We have patiently awaited your profession. :-)

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Pamela Beers writes:

Ed Howes, you are a love. I had a power nap and I’m rarin’ to go. Now what did I do with my jogging shorts? :-))

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Ed Howes writes:

Pamela,

Yes I am. :-) Look for your shorts under the bed.

Lance,

Thanks for the comment and encouragement. I seldom do as I am told but because it is you, I shall obey.

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Cynthia McKenna LPC, NCC writes:

Thanks Chris,
I must’ve missed that post – actually, In mid March, I don’t think I had a clue how helpful this blog is – so I am sure I did not read it.

But now I do – and I appreciate your efforts. The site-formerly-known-as-beta is very nice indeed.
Cynthia

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David writes:

This is a good start, but we should measure more by quality articles. I have several high volume websites that I place articles on. I am very selective and will only use the best articles. What I have found is that the best articles actually come from the 200 and under crowd. To give your writers a little tease of what can happen – I took one article and placed it on the front page and it received over 28,000 hits in less than 5 hours and one month later its still receiving thousands of hits. Thats the power of quality over quantity. 1 article can get more readers, click throughs and sales then the entire article portfolio of some of the most prolific writers. I am not the only one that looks for articles here and we all have the same desires – quality articles that benefit our readers and that have potential to be front page material.

Remember – Quality will make you rich, quantity will get you nowhere.

David

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Ed Howes writes:

David,

Thanks ever so much for this comment. It is great to hear from someone who has tested. Many of us know this intuitively and many more do not. It is also a good testimonial about the value of front page placement on a reader heavy site. I’ve had an urge to write an article about this very thing, the past few days.

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NAVEED writes:

what about ranking the authors as per their quality of articles?

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Ed Howes writes:

Naveed, It is much easier said than done but it can be done nearly objectively with a multiple rating system. Fellow author ratings, reader ratings and possibly professional judges. Articles could be rated one to five as they are on site. There would be a one to five score on content. One on grammar. one on style and any other category we can think of. All ratings are then averaged and then all sources are averaged. You end up with 4 and you have a good article. A three rating would still appeal to those who like the style or content. One might have a 3 cutoff, An article below a three would be unrated. If it is edited. Every author would have a quality rating based on all rated submissions.

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Ed Howes writes:

If the unrated article is edited the author can re submit to one panel of judges.

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Shelly writes:

I’ve been curious about this whole “author ranking” thing for a while. I was thinking that a ranking based on percentage of articles published to number of total articles (for the individual author) would be much more informative to me, as an author. I’m much more interested in what kind of publishing rate I can get than in whether or not I have more articles than the next author. I think it would be really informative to see, for example, if I get a 10% publishing rate, and someone else has a 20% publishing rate, to be able to look at what they’re doing and how I can improve.

HMMMMMM… Anyway — I Love EzineArticles! :)
Shelly

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Shelly,

Interesting thought… we’d have to throw in one more variable, otherwise the data would always be skewed to meaningless: TIME or LENGTH the article was on the site.

Someone with an article on the site for 18 months would have a different rank if it was based on how many times it was published vs. someone who just added an article this week.

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Ed Howes writes:

Not as useful as what Shelly proposed, I thought it would interesting to know the total publisher pick ups for all articles all time as of yesterday noon or something. Since we can average our pick ups per article, we could compare our own numbers against the entire directory.

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Shelly writes:

I compare my own “views” to “ezine publisher” every day. It seems that this ratio would be a way to compare my stats with others, or at least a more informative indicator than the number of articles in rotation.

To tell you the truth, as a relative “newbie”, I consistently wonder if I’m getting a good number of publishes and whether I need to work on my teasers or my articles or if everything is fine the way it is.

One of the things I LOVE about this system is your open ears and willingness to hear what’s going on with your authors. Thanks! :)

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Ed,

We do publish the MOST PUBLISHED:
http://www.EzineArticles.com/?type=mp

And again there is the TIME or LENGTH of article being on the site variable.

Will do some case studies this Summer to see if we can fret out some value from all of this data….

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Ed Howes writes:

Thanks Shelly and Chris.

I had never looked at “ezine publisher”. Probably thought it was none of my business. I was not as clear as I should have been in the previous post. The numbers I was after were averages. Average number of publisher pick ups per article – whole site. Average number of views per article – whole site. How popular are my articles when compared to all others on site?

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Ed Howes writes:

I misunderstood the publisher thing. I compare total pick ups to total articles for an average number of pick ups per articles. The average I wanted to comper with the entire directory. I have noticed that articles popular by view count often have below average publisher pick ups and vice versa. Average or better pick ups on below average view counts. Of course, most new submissions will be below average in both categories and it can be hard to spot the real movers in both categories.

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Lisa Vox writes:

Good service, Chris! Also going to start jogging today at HQessays.com :)

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ellen mossman-glazer writes:

This has been a very interesting banter but now you’ve really got my attention because my biggest curiosity [and I think what most of us are primarily here for ] is what happens after the ezine publisher clicks. [besides our web stats] I think I am in Ed’s category ‘Average or better pick ups on below average view counts’ which feels very cool, but I am always curious and don’t find too much on the net about where those articles are ..

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Ed Howes writes:

Ellen,

I think many of us use searches. Your article title in quotes will give you clues, sometime after publisher pick ups. Maybe 1 to 4 weeks after pick up. On all your catalog you can search “by author name”. When I do this, I visit any site that piques my curiosity. I only visit a few in each session but there is often something surprising to learn from the visits. Like you never submitted there and you are 6th from a top author who has submitted 14 articles. I always have fun publisher checking. Still it would be better to know who has picked us up in the first place, from any directory. How many times have we been picked up from directories on which we never submitted? It can make one crazy thinking about it.

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ellen mossman-glazer writes:

Thanks Ed. that’s helpful. I have found myself on a site or two where I would rather not be – quality of writing, professionalism and such…but it’s a fun way to do your work, none the less.

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Leesa writes:

I noticed this a couple of months ago. I looked at who was tops in the Podcasting category and noticed that I was about a few articles behind the top person. So, I emailed him and challenged him to see who could reach the #1 position first with 10 articles. He beat me to it.

I love this new feature.

[EDITORS NOTE: Here’s the Top 10 Podcasting Authors By Volume.]

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Ceri Balston writes:

Ok, so this is how authors are ranked for a particular category. Does this ranking also influence the order articles appear when visitors search for articles?

For example, if you search for either ‘Colour Therapy’ or ‘Leyline’ I’ve found to my surprise (and delight) that my articles were in the No.1 spot.

Does anyone know how this happened?

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Penny, Managing Editor writes:

Ceri Balston,

There is no underlying reason why this occurred other than your articles being relevant to the terms being searched. Ranking does not affect this.

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