Malaysia Independence (Merdeka) Day

Today, Malaysia observes the day when the country became free from British rule in the year 1957. This year’s theme for Malaysia’s Independence Day is “Unity is the Core of Success” and celebrates its multi-racial and multi-religious communities.

In honor of this day of celebration, EzineArticles expert author from Malaysia Shawn Lim is today’s Author Spotlight.

Shawn Lim is an aspiring internet entrepreneur and blogger in the success and wealth creation field. He believes that the true “secrets” to becoming an internet millionaire are hard work and smart strategies and hopes that his articles inspire his readers.

In his article, The 4 Keys How to Achieve Anything You Want in Your Life, Lim uses his conversational writing style to list and expand on his 4 simple keys of achievement that can be applied to any life goal. These keys are empowering in their simplicity and a great reminder for anyone who wants more success in their life.

What makes Shawn Lim an Ideal EzineArticles Author?

1. 113 articles submitted and live in the month of August 2008!
2. Easy to read article body formatting with clear introduction, body and conclusion paragraphs.
3. Consistently delivers on his article title promise.
4. Extended Author Bio and Photo uploaded.

An EzineArticles Platinum Member since June 2007, Shawn has 369 active articles with over 24,700 views. His articles can primarily be found in Internet Marketing and Internet and Business Online subcategories. Shawn furthers his credibility by displaying his EzineArticles Expert Author badge on his blog and links it to his extended author bio and photo.

Thanks Shawn Lim for being an EzineArticles Expert Author and to all 1,110 authors from Malaysia…enjoy your national day of celebration!

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 31, 2008 at 8:50 am

680 views | Comments (7)

Quick Do’s and Do Not’s

To give you some quickie ideas on how to get more out of your article writing & marketing activities, here are some quick Do’s and Do Not’s:

Do:

• Only write & submit unique articles that you wrote or you have the exclusive rights to.
• Upload your author photo and extended bio to improve your credibility.
• Write articles in sets of 2 or more.
• Be consistent over time. Avg EzineArticles member who logs in submits 4 articles per month.
• Deliver in the article body on the promise you made in the article title.
• Close every HTML tag you open. If you’re not using our WYSIWYG editor, be sure that every HTML tag you open, gets closed with a corresponding closing tag.
• Setup a Twitter account, upload your photo & a brief single sentence profile, then connect your EzineArticles account via our automatic Twitter syndication module.

Do Not:

• Include common-sensical rehashed overly repeated tips or advice.
• Include bloated words & sentences to simply meet word count minimums. Brevity is appreciated by all.
• Fail to spell, grammar, punctuation & sentence structure check your work before submissions.
• Write in article parts. Each article must stand alone in value.
• Leave “Problem Article” submissions in a problem status. Either work to solve the issue or delete the article please.

Have any more Do’s & Do Not’s to my short list?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 29, 2008 at 12:04 pm

1,074 views | Comments (25)

Where’s The Article Beef?

Here’s the deal… The minimum article count accepted here at EzineArticles is 250 words, and that’s a problem for many reasons:

1. It’s very rare when an individual can write a very high quality article under 300 words. So rare that I rarely see it myself.
2. Thin content undermines the credibility of our site because if a user is dissatisfied, they will not return.
3. The greatest offenders of our members who make promises in the article title that they don’t keep in the article body are in the sub 300 word count range.
4. If you saw a cross-section of the article complaints that come in monthly, you’d quickly see that low word count articles is a constant theme in the offending articles.
5. If we just raise the word count minimum to 300 words, those who write thin content will just increase their bloat by 50 more words and we haven’t solved the problem.
6. The highest volume members are often in the barely 250-299 word content club… making this a sensitive topic because it means we will alienate our most engaged members in order to satisfy our users who demand beefy high quality original content.

One possible solution that I’m not thrilled with is to keep the 250 word count minimum but we could flag members who attract complaints or write thin content on purpose to have a different minimum word count requirement, such as 300, 350 or 400 words.

Your thoughts on how you would solve this challenge?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 28, 2008 at 3:11 pm

1,059 views | Comments (51)

Your Own EzineArticles Followers or Fans

Need your help with a decision:

Soon you’ll be able to allow your EzineArticles readership to subscribe via email to receive email updates whenever you have a new article accepted/published on our site. Essentially, we’ll be helping you create a following or fan base using our traffic to become loyal fans of you and your article content.

We’ve already determined it would not be in real-time but rather a daily summary email would be compiled for each member. If you had 4 or 40 articles accepted in the last 24 hours, (1) single email summary of them would be created and sent to your EzineArticles fan base via email sometime early in the morning the next day.

Think for a moment about the user experience (and not what you’d want as an author). Should we:

1. Combine all of the new article alerts for every author that a single email subscriber has requested (ex: A user subscribes to 7 authors he or she wants to track their newest articles – We’d auto-compile all of those 7 authors worth of new article updates in the last 24 hours and present them with a summary of them in one email) or
2. Send one daily email summary for each author the member subscribed to? (If a user subscribed to 100 authors to track, they would get 100 emails if all 100 authors had 1 or more new articles published in the last 24 hours)

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 22, 2008 at 12:39 pm

920 views | Comments (23)

Article Marketing Cafe

EzineArticles Expert Author Jeff Herring interviewed me this past week for an hour on questions his clients asked about Article Writing & Marketing.

At the end of the event, I went back and listened to the entire live event and took (7) pages of personal notes that I thought distilled the key points of the discussion Jeff & I had. Rather than sell this or use it as a bonus product, I want you to have it for free.

You can listen to it here:

• Download Chris Knight’s Personal Notes (7 Page PDF – 110KB)
• Download the Full Interview (62 Minutes MP3 – 60MB)

Jeff & I had fun recording this. Lots of updated thoughts on various issues & elements involved in article writing & marketing strategies. Let us know what you think of it with a comment below.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 21, 2008 at 4:59 pm

1,699 views | Comments (43)

Submitting to EzineArticles Video

EzineArticles Expert Author James Broadfoot produced a nice new article submission how-to video that is pretty cool if you’re new to the EzineArticles experience:

To read more of James Broadfoot’s thoughts, surf his blog.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 21, 2008 at 1:39 pm

905 views | Comments (10)

Dealing with Draft Articles

In an effort to dissipate some of the confusion around the Draft Article process, we have updated the “Draft Article” article status bar to “Draft Not Live, Not Submitted.”

EzineArticles Draft Article defined: An EzineArticles Draft Article is any article that has been saved within the article submission interface.

A Draft Article is…

1. Saved within the EzineArticles article submission interface by:
• The EzineArticles Auto Save Option which will automatically save your article as a draft every 2 minutes
• A Member clicking on Save Changes at the bottom of the article submission interface
2. NOT live on EzineArticles.com.
3. NOT submitted for EzineArticles editorial review.

Types of Draft Articles:

1. Never Submitted – An article that has been produced and saved, but never submitted
2. Modified Article – A live or in-review status article that has been edited or modified and saved, but never re-submitted.

This means that any article you produce or edit that is then saved within the article submission interface will be placed in Draft Not Live, Not Submitted article status.

KEY POINT: Once your article is in this status, you must “Submit This Article” or “Re-Submit this Article” in order to have it reviewed and posted live on EzineArticles.com.

Critical Point To Also Keep In Mind: Draft Not Live, Not Submitted status articles are *purged* after 30 days if they are not submitted or re-submitted.

Auto Save Option:

• You may be creating drafts unknowingly with the article Auto Save function (default is to yes, Auto-Save).
• The Auto-Save function is optional and can be turned off within the article submission interface by clicking “Turn OFF Auto Save.”
• You can also turn OFF Auto-Save in ACCOUNT MANAGER, ACCOUNT PREFERENCES, ARTICLE EDITING and click “NO” for Auto-Save.
• With the Auto Save function turned OFF, you may make yourself vulnerable to losing article content if you produce content within the interface.

Note: If you produce an article with the Auto Save function turned off and you do not Save Changes before you Submit This Article, a draft will not be created.
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 19, 2008 at 10:12 am

900 views | Comments (12)

Article Inventory Focus

I was reading an interview with comments from Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps and his coach Bob Bowman:

“Putting money in the bank,” Phelps said. “When we train every day, sometimes there are workouts you don’t like, don’t want to do. Bob says you’re putting money in the bank.

I guess I put a lot of money in the bank over the last four years, and we withdrew pretty much every penny in the bank. After Bob and I both grab a little break, it’ll be time to start depositing.”

Writing & submitting quality original articles is very similar to the training investment Phelps made to build to his achievements this past week.

There are days when you’re inspired to write and other days when you write just to meet your goals; but in both cases, you’re investing in building your article inventory with expectations to bring home traffic gold for many years to come.

Tribute to Olympian Michael Phelps – Top 7 EzineArticles:

1. Michael Phelps Olympic Medals – The Real Value of His Eight Gold Medals
2. Michael Phelps Olympics Swimming – 12,000 Calories a Day For an Olympic Champion
3. Olympic Facts – Mark Spitz & Michael Phelps
4. Michael Phelps Swimming in the Olympics – The Eighth Wonder of the World
5. Choosing Performance Swimwear to Make the Difference Speedo LZR Racer
6. Micheal Phelps Facts – Top 10 Must Know Facts About Michael Phelps
7. Michael Phelps Becomes Greatest Olympian in History

Find more articles on the Olympics in our Recreation and Sports:Olympics article category.
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 19, 2008 at 9:24 am

973 views | Comments (12)

CAPTCHA Branding

We use CAPTCHA’s in various sections of EzineArticles in order to prevent non-humans from doing various activities within the site.

Rather than show random useless numbers, words or phrases… we decided to integrate components of the EzineArticles article writing & marketing brands into the various words and phrases that will now show up.

[Example of it in use here.]

You can click on the CAPTCHA scroll thing on the upper left of the CAPTCHA to check out the various words and phrases we dreamed up that relate to EzineArticles in some way.
(Continue Reading…)

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 18, 2008 at 9:42 am

839 views | Comments (10)

India Independence Day

Today, India observes the day when the country became free from British rule in the year 1947. India’s Independence Day is celebrated as a national holiday with flag hoisting, cultural programs, and the Prime Minister’s speech in the state capital.

In honor of this day of celebration, EzineArticles expert author from India Murtuza Abbas is today’s Author Spotlight.

Murtuza Abbas is an aspiring internet entrepreneur who has helped hundreds of newbies one on one to get started with their internet business quickly and easily.

In his article, Content is King – 5 Steps to Make Your Content Worth its Weight in Gold, Murtuza promises on his article title by executing a simply formatted listing of each step and creating a paragraph for each step to expand on each concept. He introduces the main theme of his article in the opening paragraph and each step is a subheading, making his key points easy to identify. Murtuza wraps up his article with a short call to action, free offer, business URL link and short bio line.

Murtuza Abbas – 5 Ideal Author Credentials

1. Article Lengths in the 350-500 word range.
2. Simple article body formatting with subheadings, numbered and/or bulleted lists, etc. make his articles easy to read.
3. Consistently delivers on his article title promise.
4. Extended Author Bio and Photo uploaded.
5. Consistently writes and submits sets of 5-7 articles at a time.

An EzineArticles Platinum Member since June 2005, Murtuza has 273 active articles with over 34,000 views. His articles can primarily be found in Internet Marketing and Home Based Business subcategories. Murtuza furthers his credibility as an EzineArticles Expert Author with his extended author bio and photo.

Thanks Murtuza for being an EzineArticles Expert Author and to all 4,469 authors from India…enjoy your national day of celebration!

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on August 15, 2008 at 8:08 am

660 views | Comments (7)

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