From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur

EzineArticles expert author Stephanie Chandler recently introduced a new book called “From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur: Make Money with Books, E-books, and Information Products (Paperback)” and she mentioned EzineArticles.com as a resource to help entrepreneurs and infopreneurs to increase their exposure. :-) Thanks Stephanie!

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on December 7, 2006 at 2:59 pm

Views 474 | Comments (1)

Here Is A New One

Just when I think I’ve seen it all… Today a report came in that an article we are hosting says this in the resource box:

“You have permission to publish this article electronically, or in print, free of charge, so long as the signature file is included. I’d appreciate your telling me too.“

But, what this author forget to include was putting her website URL in her resource box… leaving readers frustrated that they can’t find a way to tell her that they reprinted her article.

The article marketing lesson: Be sure to include your website URL in your RESOURCE BOX…uhm, especially if you are asking your reader to notify you upon reprinting your article. :-)

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on December 7, 2006 at 6:48 am

Views 501 | Comments (9)

Article Writing and Marketing Answers

I receive a few hundred questions from my AskChristopherKnight.com site monthly and today I’d like to share a select handful of them along with my answers:

Bryant asks, “If an individual use your website to publish a business article what are the chances of that article being published in a major print magazine like Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc, FastCompany, Forbes, Smart Money etc ? I am looking for a service to submit articles to major magazine and newspaper editors to be printed inside their magazines.”

Chris Knight answers: EzineArticles content should never end up in major print magazines because our TOS prohibits such use: “Agree to never charge others to view any article you reprint from our directory.” We’re the wrong tool for this purpose. I have heard that many highly-niched publications have approached our authors directly to ask for their permission to reprint and we’re always ok with it if the author of the article approves such use on a case by case basis.

Doris asks, “My topic is “joy on the job” and “happiness at work” and I don’t see any related category. Can you create a new category? Otherwise people won’t find the article.”

Chris Knight answers: Your assumption that people who use our site actually browser our site by category is false. The reality is that the category that your article in only has a very SMALL amount of influence as to how much traffic and syndication that your article receives. Best to just put it in the closest category you can find and run with it. You won’t be sorry. :-)

Sanford asks, “I just signed up to ezine to submit articles.I notice that you have great articles and I wanted to know if I was able to use some of the articles for my website as well as submit articles.I am doing everything to draw traffic to my site,but to really help others through my articles and current book.”

Chris Knight answers: As long as you follow our posted TOS, you can reprint up to 25 articles per site per year. If you submit any articles to us, I’d recommend that you put a space after your periods as this is a common mistake that our editors have to correct. Thanks in advance!

Kingos asks, “What are the most effective means of article marketing? How do I write 5 star articles guaranted to bring me income?”

Chris Knight answers: You are asking the wrong question because writing articles is not about creating direct currency…but rather it’s about demand creation, qualified visitor and traffic creation, and qualified lead creation. It is certainly not a ‘get rich quick’ strategy, but an important strategy nonetheless for which it’s designed.

Rick asks, “It seems you’re not a fan of automated third-party article submission providers, and I completely appreciate why. Saying that, I think finding a reputable one with integrity would be beneficial for all parties involved. [parts snipped] I know you don’t want to endorse anyone. But can I ask you if you refuse to accept material from [3rd party submission service provider snipped]”

Chris Knight answers: You are right that we don’t endorse nor recommend any of the 3rd party article submission service providers. A year ago we came to the 3rd party article submission community with hopes to find article submissions that we normally wouldn’t have found on our own. For a while, it was worth it, but I can tell you that lately, we’re close to becoming less friendly towards the 3rd party article submission service providers. Very few of them go deep enough to care about all of the article quality issues that the complexity of their services really requires to do a good job for them. The days of blast and forget are over. Get this: The amount of author support we gave last month to EzineArticles members who were trying 3rd party article submission service providers who were asking us why their article didn’t make it to our site far out weighed what we received in return in terms of article submissions above and beyond what our current members already do. If your 3rd part article submission service provider is able to submit to us as your agent without us knowing about it (we treat the submission as if it came directly from you), this is the best route to pursue.

Bob asks, “I have someone submitting my articles to major sites. I’m considering software that will automate this process, but am cautious. What’s your take on manual vs automated submission? ”

Chris Knight answers: Same answer as what I just gave to Rick. We work very hard at EzineArticles.com to be worthy of your direct time (or that of an assistant of yours) to submit your newest quality original articles directly to us. If you want to use an automated provider for everyone else, that’s your business. :)

Martha asks, “I was reading your blog and would like to ask: Are you moving in the direction of something like About.com? If so, love it and can I be in charge of the adoption area? Are you going to have people blogging on certain subjects daily? Thanks.”

Chris Knight answers: We’re not currently running the about.com business model because it doesn’t fit the EzineArticles model where we support multiple to thousands of experts in each niche. I recommend that you write hundreds or thousands of “adoption” articles and put them in our parenting category… and know that we’ll have an adoption category soon.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on December 6, 2006 at 10:55 am

Views 602 | Comments (3)

EzineArticles in the Blogosphere

Random Musings:

1) Vlad in his blog entry, (EzineArticles: Quality over Quantity”) said:

Since choosing to put quality as my primary goal, I am not longer able to submit few articles a day. If I submit one, I am happy.

…I also believe that I am not that far off in saying that if you want to get high quality links as a result of the effort you put into your articles, provide high quality content. Why would you expect your not so high quality article to earn you a high quality link?

Right on Vlad! I couldn’t agree more.

2) Ryan Healy in his blog entry, (Ryan on EzineArticles.com) said:

Article marketing is a great strategy for growing your reputation, your traffic, and your business. The trick is, it won’t do you any good to just write an article or two. You have to be consistent and publish a lot.

Yep, that’s true! Quantity and Quality are both important factors. I also see Ryan’s blog had a commentor (Joseph Ratliff) who had a great RESOURCE BOX tip to share: “Are you selling in your resource box or providing value for the readers?”

3) Brandon Cornett in his blog entry, ( Real Estate Marketing … After the Sale) thanked us for sending him the EzineArticles mug. :-)

Going into this mug mailing project, we never knew so many nice EzineArticles Platinum authors such as yourself were going to blog about it. Thanks!

4) Edward Mills in his blog entry, (EzineArticles Does It Right) said:

My article Surrendering To Freedom: Stepping Into Grace was found on Ezine Articles by the Healing Garden Journal and published in their 125,000 subscriber magazine.

Nice job Edward!

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on December 5, 2006 at 2:03 pm

Views 760 | Comments (32)

Content Done Better - Landing Page Quality

Carson Brackney over at his Content Done Better blog had a comment about our landing page quality aspirations: Article marketing and landing page quality…

I wanted to put Carson to ease on one issue… he mentions:

“Instead, I am concerned about squeeze page-reliant clients and other with whom I have worked on articles experiencing decreased effectiveness from their campaigns due to a failure to adjust to EzineArticle’s eventual adjustments.”

To be clear, the only landing page quality metric that we’re actively rejecting articles for are links that are dead. I don’t think that’s too unreasonable to expect that a brand new article submissions should have a valid link that works when clicked on… but we do frown on authors who put a ‘parked’ domain in their resource box because that adds no value to our users when they click on the URL in the authors resource box.

Many had a field day complaining about my entry on how I was proposing that resource box website link standards should be raised (63 comments, many of them negative)…and even though I did a follow up to that post to reassure everyone of our intentions; It really seems to me that few are thinking about this issue from our end-users perspective (something that we obsess about improving) or the perspective of making those who refer traffic to us, to look good for having done so.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on December 2, 2006 at 1:59 pm

Views 761 | Comments (6)

Kaleem’s MySpace profile

Check out what Kaleem Abdullah put near the top of his MySpace profile.

Thanks Kaleem and every EzineArticles expert author who proudly puts their “Featured on EzineArticles” button and link on their MySpace profile. :-)

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on December 2, 2006 at 12:28 pm

Views 634 | Comments (1)

Ted Gross Wonders About Article Submission Validity

EzineArticles expert author Ted Gross in his blog: (Article Submissions - Worth Your While or A Vast Waste Of Time?) muses about several things to talk about:

Ted said, “And before you put this down, just at a check, ezinearticles.com where I usually submitted articles in the past, is listed at alexa.com at 528. Which means it is the 528th most popular site on the net - and that dear people translates into millions of hits a day.”

Technically, we’re at 488 today on Alexa based on a 3 month average weight (we’re actually at 395 as of today); but I can assure you that does not translate into millions of page views per day. Let’s get something clear: When Ted said, “hits” — I’m pretty certain he meant page views (one human looking at one whole page in a given session); because technically, we do manage many millions of hits or transactions on a daily basis; but our daily page views are not even close to ‘millions’.

Ok, Ted gets to his primary point, “But does it do anything for me as an author? No suspense here. The answer to that is categorically, 100%, without a shadow of a doubt - NO.”

Thankfully, the masses do not share Ted’s opinion. Hey, we can’t please everyone.

I further respectfully disagree with Ted’s comment about how we use this blog to:

“…the other that the hype going up to convince people they are “authors” is way over the top.”

Geez, if a person writes an article, if they are not an ‘AUTHOR’, then what exactly are they? :-)?

There’s more that I disagree with in Ted’s blog entry, but his first commentor (Talia Mana) really makes a good counter point:

“I have never submitted to those ezinearticles places but it is probably a good idea to draw traffic to my website and build the proverbial “platform” (necessary for a non fiction author who is not related to the Kennedys)”

Meaning, *use* sites like ours to help you build a base of demand and traffic for yourself and your business/brand.

Ted followed his blog entry up with another one (Article Submission As Part Of The Viral Process) that further clears some air:

“…please remember this is in regard to authors who desire to beef up their portfolio and not those people who are looking at the numerous opportunities on the World Wide Web.”

Yeah, that does make Ted’s previous comments more valid in the right context because submitting to EzineArticles or our competitors does not make sense if done for the wrong career reasons. I think the real issue that many have told me that irritates them off about article submission is that you don’t get rich quick. It takes time and effort to build market demand for yourself, no matter who you are.

In closing, the real reason you should submit your quality original articles to EzineArticles.com directly is to generate qualified visitors and traffic back to your website from us directly and if you get a boost from syndication land, call that a bonus.

UPDATED DECEMBER 3rd 2006: Ted updated a new blog entry in response to this blog discussion: [Looks Like We Touched A Sensitive Spot…]

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on December 1, 2006 at 10:20 am

Views 778 | Comments (22)

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