Why Platinum Is Earned

If you are at our Platinum level membership, you probably didn’t know that we added a form to help BASIC level members tell us why we should upgrade their account to Platinum. This custom form template pops up after they have exhausted their 10 initial submissions and it encourages them to give us 3 bullets of reasons why we should immediately upgrade them to Platinum unlimited status.

I’ve removed the names to protect their privacy, but thought I’d share some of the ‘reasons’ submitted in the last 24 hours:

– Practical, solid information derived from 30 yrs of solving persuasive communication challenges for executives, professionals, entrepreneurs. (Antion & Herring can vouch for my credibility.)

– My articles are proofread a lot better than those of one of your most voluminous contributors. :)

– I’ve got more articles waiting to be uploaded.

– Good response regarding number of views of articles since they have been posted.

– Variety of subjects of articles.

– Solid group of additional articles to submit.

– The articles submitted to you by myself and the clients of [deleted] provide usefull information that bring quality content to your site.

– And finally, because I really like working with you all :)

– I write informative articles for Ezinearticles readers

– I am a keen writer and as you can see I have written many useful and informative articles on varying topics

– I have around 10 websites, that I am continuously adding fresh content to, so I will be writing for along time to come

– I have many articles waiting to be adding to my account.

– I have followed your editorial guidelines.

– I have created unique content for your site. (This is one of our favorite things to hear!)

– I have expertise in the real estate business.

– I contribute high quality articles that help people

– I would like my articles to be approved faster so more people can read them and learn from them

– I want to contribute to Ezine Articles as best I can.

An interesting trend: Authors who submit Platinum upgrade priority requests on Saturday and Sunday seldom give reasons why we should upgrade them vs. week-day upgrade priority requests.

This concept of asking an author to tell us why they want Platinum wasn’t my idea… as one of our editors suggested it.

From a service standpoint, I want everyone upgraded to Platinum as fast as possible.

The reality is that it takes us about 4-16 minutes to review each account before they go to Platinum,… *if* they go to Platinum because we really want to trust our Platinum level author. Right now, the upgrade from BASIC to PLATINUM is backed up a bit.

Priority for the upgrade review goes in this order of priority:

  1. Members who send in upgrade requests.
  2. Members who have a domain name that looks like their business name (instead of a generic @yahoo/hotmail account) in their username.
  3. Members who have the oldest membership ID (giving priority to those who registered first).

Insider Stats:

  • 236 members earned Platinum membership since the first of this month (Feb 2007).
  • 275 members earned Platinum membership in January 2007 (vs. 160 in January of 2006).
  • 367 members are up for Platinum review as of right now.

Posted by on February 19, 2007 at 11:26 pm | 4,639 views

15 Comments »


1
Luigi Frascati writes:

“- My articles are proofread a lot better than those of one of your most voluminous contributors. :)”

LOL ….

I wonder who it is …. LOL

Comment provided February 19, 2007 at 11:45 PM

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2
Jan writes:

Okay, call me sappy, but I like this one!

“I contribute high quality articles that help people”

I like the people helping people thing, you think we could all make a difference if we helped just one other person every day?

I’m loving it.

Thanks EzineArticles.com for allowing us this grand opportunity.

Jan

Comment provided February 20, 2007 at 12:07 AM

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3
Edward Weiss writes:

I’d pass on the person who wrote this:

“I have many articles waiting to be adding to my account.”

Seems a little iffy.

Comment provided February 20, 2007 at 12:41 AM

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4
Steve Hill writes:

Personally I do not see why people should have to grovel, surely EzineArticles would like to receive their articles.

By now Chris and his team are able to tell via the quality of the articles whether a person should be upgraded or not.

I would like to see a list of the statements that were not good enough, i.e ended up with a person not being upgraded.

How many people have been denied an upgrade via their comments? I would suggest very few.

Comment provided February 20, 2007 at 2:29 AM

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5
Christopher M. Knight writes:

Steve,

I agree. No one should have to grovel.

As far as I know, none of the statements caused anyone to be not-upgraded.

The process is put in place to help us prioritize membership upgrade reviews.

Even if a person put no reasons why we should upgrade their account, the mere fact that they contacted us, tells us that we should give their account a priority review over a member waiting for a review that has not contacted us yet.

Comment provided February 20, 2007 at 3:03 AM

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6
Steve Hill writes:

Cheers Chris,

I did not want to offend but had to give my point of view.

Most people who contribute on here just agree with everything that is posted.

It is good to disagree at times, otherwise it is just boring to read.

Comment provided February 20, 2007 at 6:51 AM

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7
Ed Howes writes:

You must upgrade me to complete my therapy and allow me more time to write.

You must upgrade me so I do not go to your competitors and make them filthy rich.

You must upgrade me so I can submit an application to be an EzineArticles editor.

You must upgrade me so I can show my family I’m not just watching videos in the home office.

Comment provided February 20, 2007 at 3:04 PM

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8
Gary Simpson writes:

Howdy Chris,

I have thought for many moons now that an upgrade from basic to platinum is like upgrading from a yellow and rust Datsun 120Y to a Testa Rossa Lamborghini Countach. It’s too much, too soon.

Now I know this would probably be an administrative nightmare for you but…

Basic Level – up to 10 articles.
Bronze Level – 25 articles +
Silver Level – 50 articles +
Gold Level – 100 articles +
Platinum Level 200 articles +
Diamond Level 500 articles +
Lance Level – some Goddam ridiculous number!

Surely you could get a techie to script this so that it becomes automatic once the qualifying threshold is reached (eg on certain forums).

The reality would be that personal scrutiny would only need to occur once as it does now.

Having submitted this most excellent idea to choof your forum further into the stratosphere do I get a prize or something? Only joking but hey…

Best Wishes

Gary Simpson

Comment provided February 22, 2007 at 12:26 AM

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9
Danny Snyder writes:

I wrote ten articles and was automatically upgraded. I did not receive a request for why I should be.

I did read and follow the guidelines. I read a bunch of articles about the best ways to write articles, get them read, and get them brought up in searches.

My first four articles were published on 2/1/07. Then I kept writing and had my tenth one published on 2/14/07. I just checked and my articles have been viewed over 1100 times. Two articles showed up as 8th and 12th on Google. Looking back I don’t know why I felt compelled to tell you that.

Maybe I just wanted to show that following the path laid out by others really will get you results. Thanks everyone.

Comment provided February 23, 2007 at 2:52 PM

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10
Ed Howes writes:

God Bless You Danny!

Your testimonial brought tears to my eyes. Thank you! Thank You! Thank You!

Comment provided February 23, 2007 at 3:48 PM

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11
Mohan writes:

I have two comments on this :

1. A stipulation be made that the first link when clicked should point to the article in the website since I find a lot of similar and standard formatted matter mostly irrelevant to the topic whenever I follow up the article.

2. The length of an article should be minimum 600 words to deter human machines dishing out trash in 250 words! Longer articles should have precedence over shorter ones.

Comment provided February 26, 2007 at 3:23 AM

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12
Sharon writes:

I have to disagree with Gary Simpson’s suggestion. Although quantity is great for many promotional purposes, quality is far more important, so I think the quality of articles submitted is a better way of determining Platinum status. Of course, I’m biased, having less than 40 articles uploaded, but they are well written articles which I hope give people more information by the time they have reached the end of the article than they had when they start to read.

Comment provided February 26, 2007 at 7:10 AM

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13
Jan writes:

Okay, I finally have a reason why I should be upgraded to platinum (even though I’ve been here for a LONG time)… I really had to think about this a while!

I should be upgraded to platinum because I know how to put two thoughts together, make a sentence, and inspire Lance to write another article (or two or three).

My point is, if I can inspire him, I might be inspiring someone else as well. That would just be awesome.

(Besides, my articles are often picked up for ezines, although it doesn’t always show on the ‘publisher line’. I either make ’em laugh, torque ’em off, or confuse the dickens out of ’em!)

Jan Verhoeff

Comment provided February 26, 2007 at 8:54 AM

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14
Gary Simpson writes:

Hello Sharon,

It doesn’t surprise me that people would disagree with my suggestion. If it were adopted you would be a Bronze Level. That sounds significantly lower than Platinum Level.

But I do agree with you, in part…

==========
(snip) “… quality is far more important …”(snip)
==========

One REALLY good article is worth infinitely more than 10 or 20 or even a 100 badly composed, error riddled, poor quality, cloned collections of words spewed out of some mixmaster machine that some poor misguided fool thinks will make him/her a prolific and entertaining writer of great repute.

Having said that Platinum just doesn’t seem (to me, at least) to be an appropriate term for just 10 articles. The word tends to suggest a LOT more than merely 10 – quantity AND quality.

Gary Simpson

Comment provided February 26, 2007 at 5:08 PM

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15
Alex Newell writes:

Hi Chris

Like some others I reard the bullet points as a grovelling exercise. With thanks to Ed Howes above:
You must upgrade me because I never fly coach class
You must upgrade me because writing articles keeps me out of trouble
You must upgrade me because the TV don’t work and I’m bored
You must upgrade me because all my friends are Platinum Authors
You must upgrade me because I really really like you
You must upgrade me because I really need something to show off about
etc.

You could turn this into a contest

Comment provided February 28, 2007 at 5:06 AM

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