Many of our members routinely invest thousands in advertising per month or quarter. We’d hope that the price we attach to this service would be a ‘no brainer’ for those who are already getting a high economic ROI from their investment of labor to submit their best quality original articles to EzineArticles.

If you’re not getting a high ROI already from EzineArticles as compared to everything else you do to attract leads & traffic back to your site, then no price would be right to make this offer of speed/priority to be attractive to you.

Target ideal EzineArticles member for this premium service: They already have sales in excess of 6+ figures in their business, can see the rewards already from their articles listed with EzineArticles and know that speed of service is worth something when you’re under competitive pressures to ‘make it happen’.

Speed is expensive. Guaranteed speed would be really expensive.

Time is money… and we’d hope that clients who already appreciate the traffic we send to them will easily be able to justify a nominal fee to have their articles and email questions go to the front of the line.

We’re really in the dark on this one and hope to introduce the service, learn from client feedback and adjust to improve the value & consistency of service.

First member feedback.

Then we listen & learn.

At least a week if not a month. We’ve got 50+ projects in our development hopper at any given time. This is just one more of them.

It will be a sad day when this changes.

There will definitely lead to a delay in processing the articles from people that do not choose to pay.

This is no doubt the start of a full roll out of a paid service for all members.

I do not blame you for attempting to earn additional revenue from the site however it will open the door for a new article site to take over the top slot.

A famous saying in business, never forget the people who helped you to reach number one.

What would happen if the current speed of service you enjoy today does not change regardless as to whether you become a premium speed/priority member or not?

Then will it still be a sad day?

I don’t thing Chris is looking into it as a way to increase revenue, rather it is an optional service to make some of the impatient authors happy.

If they are in a rush to get their articles published, they have the option to pay for it.

I submitted an article last Thursday (I think) and am still waiting for it to be approved.

Now, using my amazing powers of deduction, it seems EA has grown by leaps and bounds - both in new authors and adsense revenue.

New editors are hired but it seems the workload is just too much. What to do? A new service.

I’m all for it but I won’t be using it since I no longer sumit on a regular basis. Just wish for the good old days when the turnaround rate was swifter.

I think this is a great idea, both from your standpoint and from your users standpoint.

You’re in business to make money and offering a premium service with greater benefits in exchange for money, makes great sense.

As to those people who feel “cheated” because high ranking article listings are no longer free, they are the ones who need to grow up and stop living in the make-believe world of entitlement.

That is diametrically opposed to successful thinking, anyway. In business, you can only measure ROI. That means return on investment.

And you can’t have an ROI if your investment is zero. If you’re not willing to invest in your business, then you don’t have a business.

It’s been a long time since I’ve submitted articles, but seeing this has fired me up again and I’ve already contacted my assistant to start cranking up the machine once again.

Good luck with your new program. Count me in!

Craig Garber
kingofcopy.com

Yes, we have authors who have more money than time and know they would appreciate a speed pass.

Yes, we would like to offer this premium membership to help us attract more revenues so that we can continue to expand and hire the best people possible. The best people in the market are not the cheapest, but they make less mistakes and are more efficient at production.

Edward,

It’s a lot of things… There used to be a day when one editor could review an article alone and it was enough. Now every article is touched by two humans along with an array of additional proprietary software tools to identify when we’re dealing with truly original content.

We’ll be at 40 full-time humans behind-the-scenes by mid-Summer if not sooner. Seems like our efficiency per person has gone down as our head-count has gone up; but that’s an operational thing that will improve over the year as we continue to innovate.

Our primary focus is on investing heavily to improve everyone’s experience when interacting with EzineArticles.com. We operate with the fear that a stronger competitor is just around the corner. The only way to beat them is to provide a significantly better user experience through innovation, listening to the feedback loop, and workin’ our tail off.

What has also sky-rocketed: The millions of monthly visitors we send to our members. Our value proposition is stronger and our system of attracting pre-qualified eyeballs to visit your website has strengthened as our market trust improves.

I’m more than busy improving my new site and rebuilding (yet!!) my old site, and interpreting dreams, etc…. But I saw quickly this page…

My opinion? I believe that the fast service must be free for the best authors.

I also believe that Ezine Articles must pay the best authors for submitting here their wonderful articles… There are many sites that pay the content producers.

So what you’re saying is that perhaps rather than us improving our speed of service on the article review and/or member support side… that you’d rather see a premium membership where we help you save time by submitting your articles to us?

We’re looking for ways to improve the leverage of the expertise & systems we have in-house while saving our members time.

If you’re an entrepreneur; they say you should never trade time for money, but for many; it makes great business sense to trade money to buy back ‘free time’.

One of our focuses is to significantly improve the article submission process speed for everyone. This is a great priority for us because we want our members to have more time to write articles rather than be bogged down by the article submission process.

–

Dr. Debi Yohn,

We’re considering a lot of possibilities right now. Not sure.

But I can see where those who submit time-sensitive material that needs to be published quickly could be offered the ability to pay a little extra to get this done.

A reasonable price for this service would be $50-$100 per year.

Kevin

Another thing I wouldn’t mind paying for would be like a little positive feedback on each submission - like:

“Wow - powerful stuff” - or

” You hit the ball out of the park on this one, Ian”

Just stuff to keep my spirits up, as oftentimes uncertainty creeps in when you are in the throes of a three week article marketing bender.

But, even with Stuart Smalley stuff left out, I would be more than happy to contribute if it’s offered.

(although I’d pay more for the compliments)

I would weigh what the cost is as compared to what the article is actually doing for me and my site. If I write a new page, it’s a matter of the article helping that page get indexed more quickly…sometimes. The matter of more visitors to my site….I would have to gauge what I am getting monetarily from that compared to your charge.

You are asking for an opinion when we don’t have an inkling of whether it would be $5.00 or $100.00.

I know the value of your Directory to me. I do think it’s a good thing that you are contemplating this as an option so that it can be considered.

1. Need to make more money

2. Need to streamline the editorial process.

1. Need to make more money
The more articles that are accepted the more pages are available for AdSense revenues so it makes sense that you would want to get the articles on the site ASAP.

I’m a professional writer. That’s how I make my living. I’ve turned my writing skills into developing websites and promoting those websites through article writing and distribution. And of course I’m paid to write articles. I have an article on freelancing on the Internet in the upcoming July issue of the hard copy The Writer Magazine.

EzineArticles.com is one of the better article directories which is why I submit here.

The way I look at it is, I’m giving you articles in exchange for traffic. You require exclusivity of the article to my name. I’m not in favor of now having to pay for the privilege of having articles published on ezinearticles.com.

Yes, I know you’re not charging me to publish, only to go to the head of the line. However I see it as the first step to being charged to be published.

2. Need to streamline the editorial process.
If the problem is streamlining the editorial process, is there a way to flag those authors who rarely have an article rejected so they only have to go through a minimal editorial review?

Dee
brianhillanddeepower.com

Thanks for your prompt reply.

As other people have stated, the speed to accept an article has already slowed due to many reasons, I currently have eight articles pending.

I think you should have a top rank of authors, authors who have been submitting articles regularly over the longer term, people such as Lance for example. These authors should, in my opinion receive priority without the need to pay. They are the life blood of ezinearticles and have been very loyal to the site. The site has no doubt been very beneficial to them in return of course.

For members who only submit the odd article they could perhaps pay for a priority listing.

Lance where are you? What do you think to this idea?

Nice plug for the new site Christina!

I am surprised that you are still allowing this form of spam Chris after stating that you are going to put an end to the practice.

There are many ways to monotize the site Chris. Do you have a web promotion DVD on sale as I am sure you would sell thousands of them, not to mention ebooks.

You have only two items in your shop which no doubt sell very well, these both concentrate on article marketing. I am sure people would like to hear your opinions on other forms of web promotion.

Why not write a book about yourself, your history, likes and dislikes, the story of ezinearticles from start to where it is at now? I would buy it!

This time next year you could be a billionaire, as opposed to the millionaire that you are currently. You could then employ 4000 staff. WOW just think of that.

Steve

James…

This isn’t the slippery slope that I think you may be perceiving it as.

We’re always streamlining the editorial review processes…that will never end, regardless as to whether a member pays to go to the front of the queue or not.

We have a huge incentive to streamline the article submission process and review/acceptance process… because this leads to happier members…who in turn become more engaged with us.

I would support it just for the fact that Ezinearticles is a great source for quality traffic by maintaining good quality standards and I am appreciative.

Here are the types of premium services I would have an interest in:

- quicker approval
- better feedback if rejected
- easy response system
- comments to improve article
- Premium placement for x number of articles a month that would increase traffic

Hard to say a price point without a concrete set of services.

Hope this helps.

Tyler

I will be extremely interested in how this works out for you. Seems to me that this could go in three directions.

- Nothing will change for the non-paying members. This will fly under the radar and everyone will be happy.

- Your reviews for the non-paying members will slow down even more, resulting in possible problems.

- Your paying members will not grow to the expectations you might have and you abandon the project.

I really think it will come down to how the non-paying authors are treated. If they see no difference then I think you have a hit. But if they see a slow down because paying people are jumping in front of them, they may have a problem with it.

All this being said, personally I would continue submitting to EA whether I pay or not and whether reviews slow down or not. The volume of traffic coming from your directory to the author websites is nothing short of monumental…and that’s what it all comes down to…getting people to your business.

Respectfully,
AL

I don’t think we will charge a per-article fee because managing micro-payments is expensive… but I also won’t rule it out.

Tyler,

We hear that from members quite a bit that they would like a higher level of personalized service from our review team when an article isn’t accepted.

The challenge in providing this is that we’re setup to be an operationally efficient business rather than a highly customer-intimate business. Conflicting focuses.

Thanks for your comments (and that of everyone’s so far) as you’re providing us with excellent insight into what’s important to you.

If you can garantee that EA’s solution will not impact the standard service, than go for it. BTW: Do we get to know the other 49+ projects on your list too?

This is sort of like Economy vs. 1st Class service on an airline, no?

Either way, you still arrive at the destination but a small handful get to board & leave the plane quicker and in some cases, their baggage comes off the rack sooner. If you value speed, you win; if you don’t value speed, you still win and saved a few more bucks.

It seems that all sides of this issue have been discussed. I can only say that you need to do what you need to do. While I appreciate your asking our opinion it sounds to me that if you can find a way to do this thing you are headed in that direction.

For those of us who may not be able to pay for this fee, we will have to live with whatever the results are.

As for Craig’s comments, I feel sufficiently grown up, my business just isn’t. So I am looking for things that don’t cost me money and this has been a great place. If Chris decides to change things my new venture will still not be grown up enough to pay for a premium service. But, such is life!

It’s kind of like a “they think they’re better than me” feeling. The question is, how many of the coach passengers would take it before they switch to another carrier?

EA is definitely the one that guarantees you get there, but will another one have better seats?

AL

Since I became a platinum member my articles get reviewed within four days which is fine with me.

My opinion is I don’t mind the new premium membership for those who are using EA for their main article marketing and can afford to pay the extra money as long as the free service to regular and platinum members remains the same.

Chris, one feedback regarding your new service is to weigh in the balance if this new servce is worth all the hard work and extra hours your business would be putting in. Yes it may bring in extra revenue but in the end would it be worth your time and energy? Just some things to think about.

I’ve just started submitting articles again after a hiatus - I’d forgotten what a great ROI articles provide. :-)

So I’m happy to pay for a faster response with getting articles online. The Web is becoming MUCH more competitive; I can see a huge difference between now and this time last year.

As time goes on, it will be even more competitive. (I shudder to think what the situation will be even two years from today.)

Anything which helps us to get noticed online is worth paying for, so I’m very interested in a premium service.

As you said, this service will be primarily valuable to people already making money online, and will help them to be competitive.

For those people just starting out, it will be less valuable, and until they start making some money, your free service will continue to be a great tool for them.

Cheers from

Angela

I would welcome the pay-to-play submissions!

Just keep it so we can all join in and have fun!

Jim Furr >

I would prefer a system where you buy a package of credits (with Paypal) and then you can use them as needed. This is better for occasional submitters and avoids micro payments

High volume writers could buy (discounted) bulk credits.

Many thanks
Alejandro

I’m not really sure I see a major benefit of this service. If you submit articles regularly, whether it’s 1 a week or 10 a day, then you’ll have your articles published at the same rate surely - 1 a week or 10 a day, even though there will be a delay of 5 days or whatever for each specific article.

This would only be of benefit for the first few articles you submit, once you’ve got that regular flow or consistent submission rate it makes no difference surely?

Dan

Maybe a bidding system for front page placement like I’ve seen done elsewhere, or maybe a “premium articles” insert at the top of each topic section?? Just some ideas for you to add to your list.

I understand the problems you’re facing, but good, committed authors, may well be penalised because they can’t afford to pay. Do you have any idea of how much longer non paying customers will have to wait compared to the waiting times now?

If it’s only a couple of extra days, it shouldn’t make too much difference. But if a non paying author will have to wait a week or possibly longer because paying customers keep ‘jumping the queue’, then you could be in trouble.

I think charging a fee for impatient authors wanting faster publishing is fine. Personally, the turn-around (even the slower turn-around) isn’t really a problem. If I had a complaint, it would be that the turn-around time is inconsistent. I try to space my writing/submission so that my articles appear somewhat regularly. With the longer and inconsistent lag time, this has become impossible. I can submit 3 articles and have them all published on the same day 3 days later, or I the 2nd one I submit might be published 3 days later, and the 1st one 5 days later, and the 3rd one 7 days later.

I wouldn’t even mind a 7-day publishing time frame. But it would be nice if I submitted an article a day to have them published 1 a day.

Cheree

A good idea, but a sad day!

You say that this is unlikely to interfere with the present turn around/approval of articles for non-paying members. As a Platinum author I hope this is correct but I just can’t see how this will be the case.

I don’t like the idea personally as in many similar cases that I have experienced once payment for premium service is introduced into the equation the service to those who cannot afford to pay deteriorates despite all efforts to the contrary.

I also believe this will be inclined to take away the incentive for authors to strive to qualify as Platinum particularly those who can afford to pay for “jump the queue” service .

Taking the above factors into consideration I can only conclude this is purely a “revenue raiser”.

I think you should be very careful that you don’t alienate the very people who helped you put your business in the position it is today.

Sincerely ,

Norman Holden

I’ll think about it and probably offer some suggestions at some point, but right now, my objection is not so much the cost as the favoritism thing (I’ve been exposed to favoritism a LOT lately, non-business related and it just really irks me.) So while I trip out over the justification, rule out all the emotional reasonings, and consider the value of such a concept, I think I’ll decline to make further comments, and just play havoc with the system by adding my website address here, so folks who are reading what promises to be a high traffic blog post can trip on over to my site and sign up for an ezine where I’ll share the rest of my revenue raising ideas…

Jan (the rambler)

You have a great article directory and if the new service provides you with more income, allowing you to stay in business, then I’m all for it.

To everyone who is worried about this being the opening gambit for a pay-per-publish site, I wouldn’t worry about that, the market is fiercely competitive. The vultures would swoop in right away to provide free article sites if we started getting charged.

Keep up the good work!

Chip: I agree… the market is fiercely competitive.

Norman: It’s a revenue raiser. Sure. We’re not hiding the motive. More revenue = better quality of service and increased consistency.

Don: 2-3 hour turn around speed on a consistent basis is very expensive to deliver. Heck, we’re investing in new systems to improve our accuracy as that’s as important to us as ‘consistency of review’. We have a 3 month plan here to improve that we’ll be sharing as new systems come online that are in development right now.

All: I guess it’s human nature to be cynical and think that our service will degrade for everyone who doesn’t become a premium member. It’s as if you think we won’t care unless you pay us money. That’s simply not true as this premium level fee (the amount which has not been decided on yet) will only be a fraction of the true cost to deliver the service. Our primary model will continue to be ad-supported.

Cheree: I expect the consistency of our service to improve for everyone in the middle of July when we make a major QC process change we’re already on plan to achieve. Sorry that we’re not able to deliver a more consistent article review services today. It’s something we’re aware of and working on.

Susan: If premium members keep ‘jumping the queue’, then we’ll be in a better position to continue to hire more editors.

I expect the bulk of our membership WILL NOT become a paying premium member. It would be pretty dumb of us to not pay attention to the needs of the BULK majority of our members.

Wendy: We’ve thought about this also. Right now, we have too many ideas and that’s why we chunked down this premium service into something very simple to understand and implement. Once done, it’ll open up our ability to add other business-class services that I’ll save for another discussion.

All: The ability to schedule when an article is released is a premium level feature already on our drawing board.

P.Pal: Guaranteed Saturday & Sunday article review and Member Support is probably not going to happen due to premium labor costs and lack of member interest in perceiving it as valuable.

Filoiann: I was thinking the same thing. We won’t roll this premium service out unless I’m perfectly convinced that it’ll have a significant positive impact after all of the additional time & capital is invested to deliver it.

All: Feels like we really set ourselves up for failure when we catch up some weeks and are ahead of the incoming loads vs. other weeks when we’re 7k+ articles behind (like the past month). ie: If we catch up and can provide faster service, we normally will want to do that; but then a false expectation is set that our members think we can guarantee that speed of service when in fact, we don’t have the excess labor to deliver it every day.

Allen: I flew coach from SFO back to Wisconsin this past week..so I know what it’s like to be in the back of the plane in seats with a tiny pitch that has my knees jammed into the seat in front of me… but flying 1st would have solved my problems (I value SPEED and I’m 6′1″ tall plus I like computering while in flight (nearly impossible in coach)) regardless as to which major airline I’d be on.

I do agree that this will be successful if our non-paying members don’t feel like they are missing anything critical to their business. I belong to plenty of free-based websites where I don’t feel left out at all by not being a premium member.

All who have posted so far: Thank you! Your input is appreciated!

EzineArticles.com is an extremely successful and very profitable site not simply because of your past business model but because you have a team of high quality writers providing you with thousands of dollars worth of free content every day which you are able to monetorize to very good effect because of the standing the site in the eyes of the search engines.

To suggest that the service will not decline further for those who decide not to become premium members simply flies in the face of the evidence.

The sad fact is that all successful Internet entrepreneurs eventually loose their passion and focus their attention on the bottom line and that is exactly what is happening here.

I would advise caution however, especially at a time when article marketing is far less successful than it used to be and when the search engines are unquestionably discounting links from the article directories - including EzineArticles.com

Article slabs will be a better idea.

Upto 100 articles: Nominal rate

Upto 500 articles: Moderate

Above 500: Higher rate.

I would say that if you’re going to start charging, do a better job of weeding out the crap articles. The other day I came by to visit and there was a “most viewed” list that you had posted. The first article I clicked on was utter, keyword-phrase-stuffed junk.

Why are you letting this stuff pass?? Make it truly prestigious to be a part of the EzineArticles.com experience. Then maybe more people would pay for high priority service. Get the forty editors to put their foot down already. Then maybe the guy who said he’d pay for compliments (ha ha!! so funny) can know that he’s not just getting sweet-talked.

I would not have any real problem with your proposal to pay for preferential review so long as the review time for non-paying authors is not extended beyond the present length of up to 7 days approximately.

I agree with Dan that, provided it is consistent, the length of time required to review your articles should not greatly affect the frequency at which they are published. I can appreciate that some articles could be time sensitive and it would be helpful to be able to pay to have them reviewed with the least delay.

Michelle’s comment regarding paying for article feed-back interests me, though it would be one more task to squeeze into your schedule. That idea would be of more benefit to Newbies than to experienced authors.

I agree with Norman Holden’s point that paying for preferential review would erode the value of gaining Platinum status. That would be a pity. Would it be practical to give greater preference to Platinum Authors with regard to reviewing their articles? Again, with a view to preserving the status of Platinum authors, payment for preferential review might be restricted to Platinum authors only.
Regards,
Norm Pavelka

I look forward to hearing how this goes. Any chance we can get an update in the future as far as how it’s working for you on the backend?

Do you have a better idea yet as to when you will implement this one?

Respectfully,
Allen Graves

My compnay, of course, would only pay for caoch seats and if I couldn’t get an exit row seat I was miserable. Felt like a Q-tip in the middle of a brand new pack! Really sucks for us height-endowed guys, huh? LOL

My first thought is that I’m not comfortable with the idea. I know you keep emphasizing “what if the current speed isn’t affected by the premium level?” Realistically, I just don’t see how that would happen. The fact is that speed for those who choose NOT to pay would get slower.

About a year ago you mentioned something similar to this without a cost, but instead based on # of articles you’ve submitted. (platinum, gold, silver, expert, basic levels I think is what you called it).

I liked that idea better because it rewards those of us who are regularly providing EZA with high quality and high content which benefits both of us.

Is that idea now off the drawing table with this fee based one replacing it? As I recall, you got A LOT of positive feedback from people when you pitched this idea.

Thanks,

So really all it is, is making it a bit faster for articles to go ‘live’? Nothing else? If you are an experienced marketer and doing a lot of different marketing tactics, I don’t think it’s that big of deal to have to wait.

Mike

Some of the articles on EzineArticles are very poor, and it does no-one any favours, least of all the authors who DO provide quality, informative, useful and well written articles.

If a Premium Class was introduced, then some way of reducing the poor quality articles that come through would be much valued. Like Dina said - “Make it truly prestigious to be a part of the EzineArticles.com experience”…

Dan

Michelle: Members who become premium members will not be granted any editorial or membership favors beyond speed of review and speed of email support priority. I thought I made that very clear that we can not be bought into accepting crappy thin articles.

Dan & Dina: I agree and this is an ongoing objective for us to continually raise the editorial standards that new article submissions must meet to be accepted.

Alyssa: Yes, you’re referring to a new level of membership status that would represent QUALITY & QUANTITY instead of only QUANTITY (what Platinum is now). This never got off the ground because we have had an impossible time figuring out how to draw the quality line so that it was fair and consistent… In addition, we didn’t believe it would lead to an increase in article submissions to warrant all of the alienation that would occur if an expert author didn’t feel ‘respected’ because we didn’t agree with their quality levels.

The idea is NOT off the drawing board.

Other quality-focused things are on deck right now that are more important…that I’ll be able to talk about in the coming month.

Allen: “WHEN” is a great question. I thought within a few weeks to a month if all objections were handled. This is one of several concurrent changes on deck that we’re evaluating.

Right now, I just authorized more servers (most people don’t know that we’ve been adding 2 or more dedicated servers every month this year) because I believe we could make more money if we can improve the speed of our member experience… IE: The goal is a frictionless & fast article submission experience, regardless as to whether you paid a premium to get your article or email support question to the front of the line.

Norm: The “pay for feedback” would be something we may never offer due to the huge cost to provide such compared to what we perceive we could charge for it.

Let me give you an analogy of what that would be like: You go to McDonalds to order fries, but instead of paying your money-getting the fries-and running, you want the person behind the counter to explain for 12 minutes how they made the fries, where this batch came from, what kind of cooking oil they are using, what changes they’ve experienced in the quality of their fries and so on. McDonald’s isn’t setup to give that level of service and to provide intelligent responses to such questions would be hugely labor expensive.

We did consider only allowing Platinum authors to become premium members, but the reality is that less than 9% of our members are Platinum and Platinum doesn’t mean that their articles are QUALITY only. Many many many many of our BASIC level members have article qualities that far exceed our Platinum members content. Not always, but enough that we’ve learned to treat BASIC level members with respect until they prove they deserve otherwise.

Don: So you really think our service has declined considerably over the past year, eh? You must not be seeing the MILLIONS of visitors we’re delivering our members this month that we weren’t delivering this same time last year.

You are wrong about this Internet entrepreneur. I love this job and I’m far from bored.

You are right, that we are under pressure to improve revenue as I currently perceive that we’re leaving a lot on the table compared to what we’re delivering.

If you came here for link building, you’ve found the wrong tool for that purpose. Being on EzineArticles is about exposure and attracting pre-qualified visitors back to your website where you can monetize that traffic & convert them from prospects to clients.

Do you really believe that declining perfectly acceptable articles for no good reason at all while allowing people to post thousands of cra**y articles is an improvement.

I have been submitting articles to you for a long time now and indeed an amongst the top 150 of your more than 94,000 authors so I think I know what I am talking about when I say that as a customer the service which you provide to me has declined.

As you say yourself “You are right, that we are under pressure to improve revenue as I currently perceive that we’re leaving a lot on the table compared to what we’re delivering.” This is about making money and not improving your service.

Christopher, I don’t want to start an argument here but please read what people are saying here. They are not happy with the performance of your current bank of editors and you will not convince anyone that introducing a paid service will not result in a further worsening of the service for those who remain as free users.

You will also have a hard time convincing people that you are not already enjoying a very considerable revenue from the site!

You’ve chosen to not reveal who you are to everyone else in this blog and I respected that choice.

Your comments have been heard.

I am new to the world of ezine publishing and only on the threshold of what it is all about.

I guess I’m looking for a hand to become more effective in web marketing for my site.

For me, speed doesn’t matter much as you are as fast reviewing as I am in generating articles. What would be good is feedback on what I write from your reviewers; and direct consultancy so that I make the most of this medium for my business development.

Your ezine guidance articles are very helpful. Please tell me how you syndicate articles, whether I can influence this and if I can find out which articles have been taken up where.

Thanks.

Chris, as far as I can tell you are doing a good job. If you feel like this premium service will benefit some and not harm the rest then go for it!

All the best

At the end of the day I believe that you are going to go down this route despite what anyone says - I just hope that you do not live to regret your decision.

Stephen

Speaking of which, it seems that the time required to review my articles grows longer by the week. Will we ever see an improvement in this?

There has always been an unwritten rule when it comes to article marketing. This “rule” states that the article authors will give content to the directory in exchange for the backlinks. Nowhere have I ever heard of any guarantees about timeliness.

I always hear us authors getting upset because the directory owner makes money…well, we got our backlinks right? Deal done. Why should we be concerned with what the directory owner is doing with his end of the deal?

As a few article direcetories have become successful from awesome marketing and a lot of hard work, I am seeing more and more demands being placed on them that were never assumed before!

If the service degrades further, then it is what it is. If I want backlinks and traffic from EA, then I just have to deal with it.

Sorry if I offended anyone.
Allen Graves

If you do go this route, I would address this “problem” so you don’t alienate those who already are loyal members and who have added much value to EA.

When you look at your throughput levels of article approvals, number of editors, processing time, etc., consider the 80-20 rule.

You probably spend 80% of editors’ time on 20% of the articles submitted and 20% of their time on 80% of the articles. The slowest, worst authors drag down the efficiency of the whole process for everyone.

[Reading articles approved in recent months it is clear that many authors submitting articles struggle with basic competence in the English language. This has got to take loads of time for your editors to deal with.

And, finally, it produces a barely-adequate article product.]

So keep scores on authors/submissions/rejections.

You already keep score on number of submissions. Just add a private (between you and the author) score on rejections, with say, A as O.K. passed first time, B bounced for a simple mistake like a non-working link C. returned for a more serious error, D. returned for substantial re-write F. returned for complete re-write; or use some similar graduated scale.

Then give the faster service for free to the Platinum plus authors with A-B averages. Charge the rest for faster service (because these are the ones that are slowing things down).

And let anyone who doesn’t have the faster service take their chances in the back of the queue (speed of publication is not important to everyone.)

You will thus encourage the better quality authors who tax your approval system the LEAST, which will mean more of them, more articles from them and faster, lower-cost throughput for quality articles for you.

You will get compensated by the others, the C-grade and below, to pay for and offset the cost of their drag on the productivity of your approval system.

And you process the rest, who can’t or don’t care or don’t care enough to either A. submit quality, no problem articles or B. pay, when you have the time.

You want to encourage something, like better articles that you can approve faster and at lower cost to you, then make it easier for the authors of such articles.

You want to increase your bottom line, identify the high-cost articles to process and charge the authors (pass on your higher costs) for a fast service.

And use the rest for filler, handling them as you do now.

Don’t just add an across-the-board charge for speed, where the non-problem authors have to pay to offset the higher costs of processing articles from authors who are more writing-challenged.

That would tend to drive away many good authors and attract and bring in more marginal ones.

Think about it…

Best regards,

Jorge

In my opinion, it still comes down to this:

It is the authors choice whether or not he or she makes use of the service. From what Chris has said, the difference would be that those who pay for it would have their article pushed to the front of the line.
If you want speedier acceptance, then pay for it. If you are happy with waiting, then don’t pay for it.

Your article isn’t going to get treated any different as far as being approved or not, just the speed in approval will be affected. No one is going to receive any preferential treatment.

I agree that a monthly subscription rate would be best. As one of the posters said early on, for those of us in the process of building a business, a large yearly fee is sometimes difficult for us to manage.

Overall, I think the concept is good and whether to use it or not is clearly a personal choice. So, I say, Go for it Chris!

Anita

The quality of articles often ebs and flows with who is writing the articles. That’s the content providers and different writers create different levels of quality. What Dina considers high-quality, may lack emphasis or style as compared to Jeff. Or visa versa. The point being, each person has their own veriation of quality, and EA does a good job of allowing each individual’s style to come through.

Not everyone writes tight copy and hardline perfection.

Now I really don’t care. As soon as I finish writing an article and my reviser revises it, I submit it to EA and then to one of my blogs and many other sites, without waiting for EA’s approval.

And you know what? I have 50 visitors guaranteed for each article as soon as I publish it in one of my blogs (and of course, many other visitors follow later…). This result is much better than the result I have when I have a fresh article at EA.

So, when the EA’s team decides to finally accept my article, I already have received a lot of traffic from it.

And the traffic is all mine: it goes to my blogs - it doesn’t go first to EA or any other site.

I’m far from one of the most prolific authors on here, but hoping to change that in the near future. I can still track definite increases in traffic and list sign ups to article submissions. I wish I had been around when it was working better than it does now!

One thing that should be obvious, though, is that the process would have to take longer now than it did a few years ago. There could be no way around that. I went to Disney World as a child when it first opened and didn’t have to wait in line. It’s different now even though that’s one of the best run theme parks in the world. Sorry, but there are just more people on the internet now along with a lot more information. It takes more to get noticed…and the same effort it took to make great strides in the past constitutes

I do agree that I see some crappy articles (in my opinion) get through, but I haven’t had any trouble whatsoever getting any article through that I took time and care putting together. I see the efforts being taken to stop the junk from getting through. Nothing is perfect.

The net effect of all that is I can see a definite advantage to a premium service. I know from my own business experience that this could provide the means to actually provide better service in the long run. Most people would roll right along as they always have and get the benefit of improved systems funded by those paying for the premium service.

Of course it could go the way some have imagined and turn into a service valuable only to those who pay, but I think there are economic incentives enough to prevent that.

Thanks!

Carl Pruitt

Instead of making this a monthly or yearly fee, I was thinking about maybe introducing a ‘credit’ system where authors can actually purchase credits for their account and where maybe a single credit would be worth around 2$ to 3$ and would get their article ‘guaranteed’ approval within 24 hours?

Also I must say that it is not surprising that many people have taken this opportunity to actually attack you on your revenues from this top notch directory….

Jealousy is human nature….

Its not easy to check every article for its uniqueness and when there are 10,000 of these articles waiting to be approved in EZA on any given day…. maybe some of us need to get some hands on experience on to this, to see how a painstaking process it really is…

This article directory strives on original unique content, if it didn’t then we wouldnt see our articles getting ranked in the top 10 of google within a few days of approval.

Final thoughts… Chris, give it a try and we can all see how it works out, and congrats on your success of running such a top notch high quality directory which is not only loved by its members, but also by the almighty Google!

Best Wishes to you Sir…

Fact: EzineArticles expert authors who are PROFIT driven are MORE ideal to us than authors/members who are not profit driven.

Everyone here is exchanging their time & expertise for traffic & exposure.

You take that traffic & exposure in the form of qualified leads to your website where you then convert or monetize the additional visitors to become paying clients of yours.

We’re simply considering adding priority queue for those who are already profiting from the EzineArticles system.

If you didn’t already get 50,000 page views for your EzineArticles and 500-750+ URL clicks… you may not be an ideal client for the premium member speed service.

Said another way: If you didn’t already profit from EzineArticles, then we prefer that you stay a free level member until you do.

Why: We’re always about making sure you GET more than you pay for; including getting more traffic bang for your time investment.

For those who think service will become really crappy for non-paying non-premium members: You’re wrong.

I’ve seen at least 7 new editor candidates in our hallways this week already interviewing and know that we’re hiring even more editors (regardless as to whether we offer this premium level of service or not) and I just returned from touring a 2,000 sq. ft. addition to our existing 2500 sq. ft. office.

We’re already motivated by the fact that we know that faster article reviews = increased submissions.

All,

Price: If SPEED & PRIORITY is the deliverable for what you pay for by becoming a premium EzineArticles client/member, then you might compare this to the difference between a coach vs. 1st class airfare ticket.

Coach round trip here in the USA is about $250-$600 per trip and 1st class is about $600-$1300 round trip…so the difference for the speed of priority boarding & unboarding, priority luggage handling sometimes and better legroom/food service is about $500-$750 in cost per trip.

But this not a perfect comparison.

I’d prefer that you think about this speed & priority deliverable as being an advertising/marketing investment.

If you’re not already investing $10k or more annually in advertising or marketing your business, you may not be an ideal client for our premium service; no different than you might not fly 1st class if you earn min. wage. Hey, we all gotta start somewhere.

One more comparison:

UPS/Fedex/DHL charges about $6-$8 USD to deliver a package via GROUND service here in the USA… but they also offer an express overnight delivery option for about $12-$27 USD… a premium of about 2x to 3x the regular ground cost.

If you’re currently paying nothing because our service is free, then the real cost is your time and the ROI is equal to the quantitative fair market value of the traffic per lead generated and the qualitative value of the exposure opportunities that come your way (media interviews, job opps, high-profile pubs that pick up your content, etc.) because of your content on our high traffic site.

Yes, of course we’re grateful for the 98% of our members who may never become premium clients and we won’t stop daily improving our service to everyone… no different than any major theme park continues to run a clean, safe & efficient entertainment experience whether you pay for the ride waiting line speed pass or not.

At some point, the economic and other value you receive from EzineArticles HAS to exceed your perception of the time you invest to engage us and submit your quality original articles; otherwise you wouldn’t make the continual investment of energy to do so.

When we do price this product (no ETA on that yet), it will be reflective of a fraction of the value we hope you perceive that you receive above and beyond the current perception you have of your investment in engaging EzineArticles as your traffic attraction vehicle of choice. :)

I am new to this game and really don’t have a dog in this fight (at least not yet) but I am finally coming to the conclusion that Chris is trying to do right by everyone here.

Anytime you offer a free service and an outlet to get information to the greatest number of people, folks like us will take advantage of it. That said, when things go well and the word gets out more and more people come in to get the benefits (can anyone say Southern California). This has produced slower times for some of you who were here first, but for those of us who are new arrivals we don’t know any different.

For those of you who have been around for a while and whose businesses are more established and financially secure, Chris seems to be offering an alternative. Whatever the cost (within reason) it should be something for you to consider. While I can’t fly first class as I travel today, I certainly hope I can someday soon!

As somebody who has tested the water by running an article directory I can tell you that if you do it right it really is ‘money for old rope’.

Yes, those authors that have been submitting articles for some time also benefit and I have had hundreds of thousands of page views for my own articles which have driven significant traffic to my sites from which I have earned a fair amount of money.

This relationship has worked well for a long time now and works perfectly well for many of the other top articles directories. Yes, EzineArticles is very much a ‘top tier’ directory but it is far from being the only high PR high traffic directory and I also receive substantial traffic and thus income from articles submitted to other directories for which I make no payment and can get my article published far more quickly that I can now here.

The model on which EzineArticles has operated so far, and on which the other top directories also operate, works just fine and both parties happily profit from it. I believe that there is no sound case for altering the balance now and profiting further by simply upsetting those partners with whom EzineArticles has worked to help grow the businesses of both is not a very good idea.

I have a friend who runs a local coffee shop (not Starbucks) and she loads mine before I get there - ready for my $5.10

Sheesh, I’d be a millionaire if I didn’t drink Breve Cremes.

Jan