Publisher or Authors Responsibility?

Jill (a Publisher) writes:

Have a situation with an author who accused us of not including his link (when article posted to our blog, link was not clickable so my assistant tried to fix it and the author implied that we purposely removed his link)

If an author submits an article and in their author paragraph chooses to use html instead of a straight “http://www.xxx.com” link and then when someone cuts and pastes the article, the html does not translate to the blog and the link is no longer clickable or even distinguishable, is the person who uses the article responsible to go back and fix the link for the author to make it clickable?

(certain html links lose their clickability when transferred into an email too)

Chris Knight Responds:

1. It’s your responsibility Jill as the publisher to respect the Publisher TOS and make all links active, regardless as to whether they are anchored text links or regular http:// full URL’s.
   
   
2. We’ve already made this easy for Publishers by the fact that we provide an HTML version of every article in the EzinePublisher section of the Article Tools found in the upper right corner of every article.
   
   
3. To Authors who only include anchored text links: What are you thinking? Stop that. Include one full http://Your-Company-Name.com/ and optionally one anchored text link. To only include anchored text links is not wise at all.
   
   
4. To Publishers of ASCII TEXT email newsletters who reprint EzineArticles content: We’d appreciate it if you’d respect our members content by including the full http:// URL next to the words they anchored up. You know it’s the right thing to do so please do it.

Anyone else have comments?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 15, 2008 at 9:05 am

Views 43 | Comments (4)

200 New Themed Logos

We’re testing a new concept to solve a problem that can’t easily be solved:

EzineArticles has ~100k expert authors who know and understand what EzineArticles is, but in any given day, we’ll have 100k users before the sun rises who don’t know or understand what EzineArticles is?

ie: We don’t have a very consumer-friendly facing brand that encourages repeat visits or brand loyalty by way of the EzineArticles name.

So we came up with this ambitious idea to theme-up all 569 categories with an EzineArticles logo that included elements of the niche that those articles will be found in. This way a user might perceive that the logo and the theme match visually…and perhaps they may even start to think of EzineArticles as an online magaZINE for the niche they are viewing articles on.

Some examples include:
(Continue Reading…)

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 14, 2008 at 7:41 am

Views 225 | Comments (26)

Golden Rules Article Template

The “Golden Rules of X” article template idea is ridiculously simple, yet can be powerfully perceived as valuable by your readership.

Here’s how the Golden Rules of X article template works:

1. Create an article title of the: “Golden Rules of _____________” or “The 16 Golden Rules of _______________” or “____________ Golden Rules To Live by”
2. Using a numbered list, include the rules that sum up the primary lessons you’ve discovered or learned through your experience & expertise.
3. Expand to include “WHY” each golden rule you’ve outlined is important.
4. Summarize at the end the theme behind why your set of golden rules are important and what it will mean to the reader when they implement them in their own life and/or business.

Broad vs. Narrow focus: You can include the golden rules of various aspects of your niche including narrow topics or sub-topics rather than only a broadly-focused set of golden rules.

Example: I might write an article on the “7 Golden Rules of Article Writing & Marketing” — I’d follow that up with an article on the “10 Article Title Golden Rules To Profit By,” “4 Golden Rules of Writing Resource Boxes That Sell,” or “19 Golden Rules of How To Pick Article Topic Choices.”

Makes sense?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 13, 2008 at 7:41 am

Views 224 | Comments (9)

6 Link Max Becomes 4 Soon

Important Change:

In 2 weeks, EzineArticles will no longer accept articles with (3) self-serving links.

Currently: (See Editorial Guidelines section 2.f.) Your articles can contain up to (3) self-serving active links and (3) non-self-serving links for a total of (6) active links per article.

Next 2 Weeks: Your article submissions in May 2008 can continue to include up to (3) self-serving links and up to (3) non-self-serving active links for a total of (6) active links.

After June 1st 2008: Your articles can contain up to (2) self-serving active links and up to (2) non-self-serving active links for a total of (4) active links.

Active Links Allowed In Each Article:

(Continue Reading…)

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 12, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Views 503 | Comments (34)

Expand Your Article Titles

Tip: Expand your article titles by 35-40%.

One constant theme in my article writing & marketing coaching is to always be expanding your article title length so that you make it easier for people who are searching for your articles to find them… ie: Expanding your article title gives you more ‘hooks’ into your target article reader.

However, there’s a right and wrong way to expand your article titles. Last year in our Alternative Health section, there was a string of calcium articles that I’m going to use to illustrate right and wrong ways to expand your article title length.
(Continue Reading…)

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 12, 2008 at 7:20 am

Views 262 | Comments (15)

Your URL Clicks Divided By Total Articles

What are your total URL Clicks received divided by the total live articles in your account?

This percentage would show you how much traffic your articles are generating on average, each…or would they?

First, feel free to comment on this blog entry and share what yours is… but let’s take a closer look at the 8 ways this CTR (Click Through Rate) number can be skewed or perhaps not as important as you may think.

1. It’s not accurate because LENGTH OF TIME is a variable we currently don’t provide - ie: monthly cut-off data.
   
   
2. It’s only partially in your control. You can only optimize so far and then you’re at the mercy of market interest.
   
   
3. It doesn’t factor in how much traffic your EzineArticles generate from sites and ezines that syndicate your content. This is a major factor for most.
   
   
4. Forget about scoring a high CTR percentage. Consider for a moment the URL Clicks CTR compared to your total article views… What would you rather have: 1000 article page views and 50 clicks (5% CTR) or 7000 article views and 210 clicks (3% CTR)? Me? I’d go for the lower CTR and higher total clicks delivered!
   
   
5. Different niches provide different CTR by nature.
   
   
6. Instead, analyze ALL of your articles and look for individual article patterns to see if you can draw actionable conclusions as to what type of content matched with what type of compelling resource box offer creates the best overall desired performance. ABT! (Always Be Testing!)
   
   
7. Never lose site of the most important user: Your reader! They can sense ‘thin’ content in a few milliseconds…and they are gone. Obsess over your readers and the URL clicks will take care of itself.
   
   
8. Worry less about scoring big numbers with a handful or articles and instead focus on covering your niche expertise in greater article volume & depth. Too many members focus a core chunk of their energy on over-optimizing existing content when they could focus the same energy on expanding their article inventory.

Your Thoughts?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 8, 2008 at 3:46 pm

Views 238 | Comments (9)

EzineArticles on Twitter

I’ve decided to separate my personal life on Twitter from our EzineArticles business life.

Follow EzineArticles on Twitter, and we’ll follow you:
http://twitter.com/EzineArticles

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 7, 2008 at 10:32 am

Views 169 | Comments (0)

Viewing EzineArticles At Work

If you’re one of the few unlucky folks who try to view EzineArticles.com at work, and get this blocked message:

There is a work around! It’s called a Proxy service…or you could just call your boss/IT department and ask them to stop treating you like you need web surfing supervision.

Resource: Websense Web Filtering - Does It Really Increase Productivity?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 6, 2008 at 2:23 pm

Views 184 | Comments (1)

Premium Business Class Speed

Does it drive you crazy that your articles aren’t reviewed instantly by our editors?

We’ve been considering this for 2 years now and it’s time to introduce a premium level of business class service for members who want a faster experience with EzineArticles.com. Before we release this, we’d like your input.

Here are some of the details of what we were thinking:

• Deliverable: Priority article review. Your submissions would go to the front of the queue and our editors would review your articles BEFORE any non-premium level members submissions. Instead of waiting days to a week+ for your articles to be reviewed, most would happen same or next day (Mon-Fri).
  
  
• Being a Premium level member would not guarantee any editorial favors. This is purely a speed-of-service priority thing. Our editors would not know if you are a premium member or not as our article review back-end systems manage which articles are loaded in their daily review queues. It would also not grant any membership level advantages (ie: It wouldn’t help you get from Basic to Platinum any faster).
  
  
• Deliverable: Priority email support. Your email tickets to our Member Support center would go to the front of the queue.
  
  
• This would not deliver higher personalized service nor is it article writing & marketing training of any kind. You’re simply buying a speed pass to the front of the line with your questions sent to Member Support.
  
  
• Most likely would be a reasonable annual fee with an introductory charter discount for the first members who become clients.
• PayPal subscription services will be the payment method.
• Most likely would not come with a written SLA (Service Level Agreement) because we’d have to price it too high to guarantee a level of service. Instead, we’d price it to be attractive for the masses of our most active members with hopes that the value received far outweighs the price paid… to encourage annual renewals of the priority review & support service.

What issues should we consider as we price and bundle/package this EzineArticles Premium membership speed/service?

What kind of additional fee-based premium services would you like to see us offer?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 5, 2008 at 1:03 pm

Views 1,128 | Comments (84)

Happy Cinco De Mayo

This is not an American holiday today, but more than 50% of our countries population might argue that it should be.

I was just in the SF/SJ Bay area last week and it seems like this event is a major fiesta celebration with Latino rock bands and plenty of Mexican food dishes to taste test.

For us here in Wisconsin, we’ll enjoy some Margarita’s, Tequila shots, Daiquiris, or Cervezas (beer) with chips & salsa.

Resources to catch you up on what Cinco De Mayo is about:

• Ole to Cinco de Mayo!
• Cinco de Mayo For Kids
• Cinco de Mayo: A Time for a Festive and Entertaining Party
• Cinco de Mayo Menu Ideas for a Colorful Cinco De Mayo Celebration

EzineArticles Factoid: 86 of our Expert Authors are from Mexico.

Do you celebrate Cinco De Mayo and if so, what do you do?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on May 5, 2008 at 11:35 am

Views 236 | Comments (3)

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