Problem Articles 30 Day Purge Rule

Currently, there are 16,499 articles in a Problem status. These are articles that are suppose to be savable… meaning, they weren’t hard rejected by our editors, and with only a little bit of author attention, a high majority of them could be saved and accepted/published.

When our members receive a PA email (Problem Article), they fall into two very easy to identify camps:

New Rule: Articles that are flagged as having a problem status will be auto-purged in 30 days from the date our editors send the auto-generated email to our member asking them to fix a small problem so we can accept them. In addition, we’re building in an automated follow up reminder email to help encourage our members to fix the article, fix the relationship, so we can move forward together.

Some of this is our fault as we only notified the author once that there was a problem. If the author was a close personal friend, we’d have sent a follow up email or two to help remind them of what needs to be fixed.

This is a bit crazy, but there are 4,786 members in our system right now that have 6,174 articles in a problem status ONLY… meaning, they never corrected the problem or tried to correct the problem and then gave up, abandoning their account. They are all getting a loving email next week to see if we could do something to help them save their rocky start with us. If they don’t respond in 30 days, these accounts will be terminated so that the author names can become available for others with the same name.

We’ve known of this lack of a built in email sequencing solution thing to solve the lack of member follow up for about a year now, and it’s finally time to handle the problem by building it into our system so we don’t have to revisit this issue again.

Our plan for December 2007 is to provide very fast service for our members who are fully engaged with us while doubling back to those who’ve been lost in the process… because we will not be able to give this level of personal attention come 1st quarter 2008 when submission volume picks up historically.

So, that’s what’s on my and our minds today. What’s on your mind?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on November 30, 2007 at 9:29 am

Views 530 |

10 Comments »

1

Hope Wilbanks @ HopeWrites.com writes:

I think this is an excellent idea, Chris.

Comment provided November 30, 2007 at 9:57 am

2

Chinmay Chakravarty writes:

No problems, Chris. This is perfectly logical and necessary. Only reqirement is that the ‘problem’ need to be specified a little more clearly. This way the burden of explaining on both sides is likely to be erased. Serious ‘problem’ articles may be rejected outright which is advantageous to both editors and writers. Personal attention can be given to outstanding articles with minor problems.

Comment provided November 30, 2007 at 10:10 am

3

Christina Sponias writes:

Hi Chris!

I would suggest revisers. Why don’t you tell to all members that have problematic articles to send their articles to several revisers that would correct them for them? They would have to pay for the revision but this service would be cheap.

You have to have a group of revisers for these cases, revisers that know very well what EA can accept and that will be able to correct all the problematic articles in order to help the authors and in order to help EA save all the material that is being wasted.

The revisers don’t need to work with you in your office. They can work at home but be part of your team and have their own deal with the authors, independently of EA. They only need to know how to save the problematic articles according to your rules.

Comment provided November 30, 2007 at 10:52 am

4

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Interesting… will consider or perhaps make this part of our proofreading service yet to be announced.

Comment provided November 30, 2007 at 11:01 am

5

Christina Sponias writes:

Yes Chris, your own group of affiliate revisers will solve many problems at EA:

- The problematic articles will be fixed by them
- The foreigners (like me) will prefer your revisers instead of searching for them in the vast web
- Whenever an author will need advice or help in writing an article, he or she will go directly to your revisers

You can also have a group of ghostwriters for those that can only make a list of benefits or whatever and let somebody else transform the information given in article.

You can make money with the commissions for giving so much work to many revisers and ghostwriters!
You won’t lose authors that have difficulties writing, you won’t waste material that needs improvement and you won’t need to reject many times an article after several corrections because it will be directly corrected by the experts that know very well your rules.

Comment provided November 30, 2007 at 1:43 pm

6

Michelle L Devon (Michy) writes:

More than fair, and totally necessary - good move.

Love and stuff,
Michy

Comment provided November 30, 2007 at 2:37 pm

7

Lance Winslow writes:

Well, I am proud to be part of the greatest Online Articles Site, ever created in the history of humankind. Others should be too and take responsibility and fix their articles, as that is a fair for all concerned; the reader, Ezine Articles Community and themselves. And that is my $ .02 on this issue

Comment provided December 1, 2007 at 6:29 am

8

Angela Chen Shui writes:

Thanks for the push, Chris. One happy result of this post is that I finally finished editing a problem article awhile ago… ;-)

Comment provided December 3, 2007 at 5:02 pm

9

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Nice Angie!
http://www.networkmarketinginternethomebusiness.com/blog/2007/12/internet-and-network-marketing-success.html

:)

Comment provided December 4, 2007 at 8:05 pm

10

anson writes:

i think this is necessary

Comment provided December 19, 2007 at 1:50 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

BLOG COMMENT POLICY
© EzineArticles.com - All Rights Reserved Worldwide.