Lance Winslow writes:

I’d like to remind people of something. And that is to use the “subscriber widget” and put this on your websites.

Go to your secured author area, click on “Author Tools” and then on the drop down menu click on “create author sign up box” follow the instructions and copy and paste that onto your website.

This will increase the number of subscribers, plus, be sure to write interesting articles in your niche (s).

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Bonnie Moss writes:

Thanks for this info, Lance. I have been writing for EzineArticles for the past few years, but I just joined this forum last month.

There is so much information to absorb.

Bonnie Moss

October 1, 2009 at 9:44 PM

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Thanks Lance for mentioning that! :-)

Here’s more info on how everyone else can get their own “EzineArticles Author Alert Sign-Up Box” Widget:
http://blog.EzineArticles.com/2009/03/author-alert-signup-box.html

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Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

I subscribe to Lisa… or at least I will.

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Shirley Bass writes:

Congrats everyone! This is cool.

I like the widget idea. I am a subscriber to one of these famous people. And I know I can learn things that would benefit me, by signing up with 2 other authors on this list.

Thanks Chris.

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Karl Hall writes:

EzineArticles is becoming somewhat of a let down, due to the fact its taking 10 days plus to get any articles passed when other high pr article dirs do it it in hours. How can you be competitive and work towards a niche domination?

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Karl,

Article Marketing is a strategy that is not meant to work overnight.

It’s a strategy that gives its spoils to those who invest in it over the long-term. Consistency combined with quality articles submitted in a high quantity over time is the KEY to niche domination.

There are currently NO competitors to our site delivering the kind of quality and quantity of traffic we are delivering. If you think there are, I respectfully challenge you to prove it. :)

6 MILLION visitors were sent to our members websites last month.

Ok, getting back to your complaint:

Sorry. You are right that we are not meeting our article review speed targets.

That’s why we are hiring more new Editors per month than most of our competitors have all together, why we run 2 shifts of Editors, why we authorized overtime pay on the weekends and why we’re busting ourselves internally to get back to our internal speed targets for our FREE level members. [Premium members receive same-day/next-day service]

By October, we expect to be delivering closer to our article review speed targets due to new classes of new Editors completing their training and the previously class of new July & August Editor hires are increasing their performance.

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David Doolin writes:

Mr Knight,

We have a saying in engineering: “Faster, better, cheaper, pick two.”

When I first came across this site EzineArticles, I laughed.

No, actually, I sneered in contempt.

Since that time I have visited a few more times. I’ve now made an account for myself. And I am very carefully collecting every single email I receive from ezine, for later close examination.

At the moment, I’m buried in some other work, but I’m planning to learn the ezine method in the future.

And your emails contain very solid writing advice, applicable to any writing, in any field.

Just so you know, my PhD is in Civil Engineering, from Berkeley, and I am well-published in peer-reviewed academic journals.

I remain, very impressed, and I’ll take the “better, cheaper” option over the “faster” option.

Thank you for your hard work.
David M. Doolin

September 15, 2009 at 4:59 PM

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

David,

Ironically, we talk about “better, faster, cheaper…Pick 2” ALL of the time internally.

I prefer better, faster… and it ain’t cheap! :)

-Chris

September 15, 2009 at 5:18 PM

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Ryan writes:

That’s why we are hiring more new Editors per month than most of our competitors have all together, why we run 2 shifts of Editors, why we authorized overtime pay on the weekends and why we’re busting ourselves internally to get back to our internal speed targets for our FREE level members.
Just wondering if you hire outside editors. I bet some people would gladly work from home to help you out on a per article basis.

October 5, 2009 at 1:29 PM

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Ryan writes:

Sorry, had a brain fart when i replied to this. My question was: Do you hire outside editors? I bet there would be plenty of people who would work from home who’d love to help you out by checking new articles.

October 5, 2009 at 1:35 PM

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Sorry, never.

Our Editorial processes/systems require all in-house Editors. It’s too intense of a position for us to outsource to work-at-home Editors. We’ve tried it before and have decided to only use in-house Editors.

October 5, 2009 at 1:39 PM

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Brian Garvin writes:

This is a great idea. I’m Not sure why I didn’t think of this before. I just added the small version of the EzineArticles subscribe box to our blog. We put it inside a text widget on our sidebar and it fits nice and snug. It gets about 900 uniques a day which I credit a lot of that traffic to EzineArticles.

I need to hit this blog up more often I keep picking up great tips here.

Brian

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Karl Hall writes:

Hi Chris,

It wasn’t a complaint as such and I’m only disappointed because Ezines is that GREAT! If you understand what I mean?

Its great news regarding all of the changes you are making!

FYI I have been article marketing, well sort of a long while already and agree it is a long term strategy!

As a side note, I submitted nine articles that were all accepted no probs then submitted one with a small gramatical error (well I am UK and i’m assuming sometimes the editors view things from USA eyes?) and it got rejected, so alas I am stuck on Basic Plus.

Cheers

Thanks for your reply,
Karl

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Karl,

We allow UK vs. USA spelling of all English words; so that would NEVER be a reason for Basic Plus vs. Platinum.

I didn’t look up your account nor can I discuss publicly if I did why our team made the decisions they did.

If you’d like to know, contact our team via email and ask why specifically.

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Karl Hall writes:

Hehe its fine, I’ll battle on.

Thank for your reply,
Karl

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Lisa writes:

Thanks Kathy :)

I used this on my website and now it’s broken. I pulled it off my website but left it on my blog but it’s still showing as broken. the box reads but the section where they play their email is blank.

I tried regenerating the code multiple times but it still shows broken. My other widgets and boxes all work fine.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Heard back from our team who built the widget:

They said you had modified the code we provided you. To fix, go back in and use the code we supplied. Specifically, you had removed the < form > tags – its not going to work without those. :)

For further assistance, I recommend we take this off-the-blog and privately via email.

September 16, 2009 at 12:33 PM

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Brian Garvin writes:

Lisa have you tried putting the code inside a widget in a text box? That’s all we did and it worked fine. I’d suggest trying swiping the code again incase you might have done it wrong the first time.

Brian

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Lisa writes:

I sure did, Brian and rechecked the code multiple times. If you have any other suggestions, I appreciative it though. Thanks! :)

September 15, 2009 at 5:45 PM

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Lisa writes:

Gravatars seem to be broken in replies to replies. :p

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

I agree… it’s not pulling correctly.

We put it on the “to fix list”…

September 16, 2009 at 8:08 AM

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Lisa writes:

Looks fixed. That was fast! :D

September 16, 2009 at 1:00 PM

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Jon writes:

Thanks for the great reference. Now all I need to do to get to the top is study these guys.

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Brian Garvin writes:

Sorry that’s all I could think of right now. Anything beyond this extends my limited technical skills :-(

Brian

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Shirley Bass writes:

I’ve missed something somewhere.

I would like to know how author’s photos are being displayed on EA’s blog.

Any help would be helpful. :-)

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Lisa writes:

Shirley,

They are Gravatars: http://en.gravatar.com/

Also see: http://blog.EzineArticles.com/2009/07/gravatars-come-to-EzineArticles.html#more-1626

September 16, 2009 at 1:00 PM

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Shirley Bass writes:

I did miss something in this busy world I live in.

Thanks Lisa–We’ll see if I did it right.

Shirley

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Lisa writes:

You’re welcome. Looks like you did it right. Yay!

September 16, 2009 at 2:35 PM

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C.A. Perez writes:

Hi Chris,
I am happy to hear about all the changes. You have a great service. Your support group, in particular, Kimberly, is great.
One day I want to be on that list.
Last week, I received an EzineArticles mug from you. I was ecstatic. I’m drinking from it this very moment. But I have no idea why I got it. Can you enlighten me?

Thanks for everything,
Carlos

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Marc writes:

Carlos,

Glad you like the mug! =) It was sent to you in recognition of having achieved Platinum Member status last month. Congratulations!

September 17, 2009 at 11:11 AM

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C.A. Perez writes:

Thank you, Marc

Now I know.

Carlos

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Geoff writes:

What a super idea the subscriber widget is. I`ll add this to my sites.

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robert writes:

I have to say this is an absolutely worthless feature of EzineArticles.com. lance has over 18,000 articles and hasn’t even reached the 100 mark yet as far as subscribers. That’s enough articles to publish dozens of print books. So why is this even being mentioned when the numbers are so low?

Second, when I first started publishing articles, I was seeing Great results. And now there’s so many authors publishing 50 or more 250 word (recycled junk articles) every week that I’m lucky to get five or ten views per article. That’s why I quit writing articles months ago.

If you really want to help authors, raise your word count requirements and uniqueness standards. Then people who publish unique content and visit ezine for information and additional services would benefit more.

I love ezine, but I’m tired of competing with 250 word yada, yada, yada type of articles.

I hope that one day ezine will realize theres more long term value in excepting a small number of articles with useful tips then there is in having thousands of authors who are only looking to make a quick buck from the backlinks that drive consumers to their site?

Signed,

The grouchy writer

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

It’s being mentioned to increase interest in it.

Social media may be a fad for some, but NOTHING drives actual traffic faster or more consistently than highly relevant permission-based emails.

I’d be willing to bet 100 folks who subscribe to be alerted via email about your next article that gets published will create more traffic than if you had 10,000 members on Twitter or 2000 FaceBook fans.

I disagree with raising word counts because we don’t want longer junk articles with lots of filler copy.

You’re not competing with the 250+ word junk article. If you give up, then you just gave the thin content writer a market advantage.

Over the long-term, the spoils will ALWAYS go to the high quality article writers who write in volume.

Lastly, I’m not convinced that backlinks from us are worth anything. I think they were muted as worthless back in 2005. The real value in posting on EzineArticles is from the traffic itself that we send. Last month, it was 6 MILLION clicks we sent to our members’ websites! That’s the incentive.

September 22, 2009 at 10:24 AM

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Lance Winslow writes:

Hey Grouchy Writer,

Okay, so I understand what you are saying, but realize that this feature is fairly new. And realize that many of the people who are subscribers to my articles are website owners, ezine editors, and trade journal editors. How do I know this? Well, because they email me.

But let’s say only 1/4 of my subscribers are these types of folks, that’s still a huge number. And when they take one of my articles for an ezine with a huge following of 100,000 subscribers, I win. And if a trade journal that is industry specific picks up an article with 25,000 subscribers, whoooyah, boy does that bring in business.

Regarding the yada, yada, yada junk articles of 250 words, from authors that write the same thing over and over and over, and over and over, and over and well, you get the picture. Everyone gets tired of that. I wish they’d go away too.

Still, EzineArticles has so many benefits, it’s hard to put it down, and I actually like this little feature myself.

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Lance Winslow writes:

By the way Robert we should talk, I’ve subscribed to your articles, and we have a lot in common. Including before retirement I had “Blitz Team” real-world flyering marketers. And this year I’ve written 5-eBooks, and now have 15. And I belong to a ton of specialty niche social networking sites for book marketing only. Shoot me an email, glad you popped up on my radar screen,

Sincerely, Lance
(with nearly 8.5 million article views here and an average pickup rate of 17 per article, pubished elsewhere.)

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C.A. Perez writes:

I’m going to jump into this fray. I am fond of saying that I am an old dog learning new tricks. I may be old in age but not in mind or attitude. That I am fortunate enough to be alive in this fast paced technologically vibrant global age is a blessing.

I am a very new Internet marketer. I use article writing as my primary source of marketing. I notice that the world’s population, young and old, communicates in snippets of text. Broadcast networks relay information in sound bites. Newspapers for the most part publish short pieces to inform their readers. Internet surfers browse computer screens at no more than 3-4 seconds per page.

Sadly, today’s readers are not interested in treatises and long discourses to address solutions to their problems or to address their curiosity about a subject. That said, article marketing and ezine publishers in general would fail to provide its readership what they want: short informative snippets of information. More importantly, they would not last long in today’s information environment. It is heartening to see that some people still visit bookstores; I do.

I say all this to address Mr. Grouchy Writer’s comment. Although I am sympathetic with his view, I don’t think the suggestion to increase the word number count would improve the quality of content. The move to limit the number of “keywords” in an article does much to minimize blah-blah articles. In today’s world, if an author cannot state his case in 500 words or less, maybe he should try a new profession in the judicial system, as an attorney. I rest my case.

Carlos
C.A. Perez

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Greg Ikner writes:

Chris, if I have a Blog Page that ties in to my website and vice versa would I still need a widget for my website? My articles are directly from my Blog page. While it sounds duplicative I thought I would ask.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Greg,

I’m not clear on what you’re asking.

The widget is optional…

September 24, 2009 at 7:35 AM

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Lance is in the House! writes:

I’ve noticed that if you start posting too many articles each day that you end up losing subscibers, because no one can handle reading that much volume, so they unsubscribe. However, as a prolific online writer, one cannot be worried about that volume aspect just to keep subscribers, so don’t. Just an observation. Does anyone know how to turn off the subscribers. For instance, not allow anyone to subscribe? Might be a thought to prevent folks from inadvertantly subscribing, only to be bombarded by high out put?

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

We currently don’t have a ‘shut off’ switch available for this feature, but I can tell you that we summarize multiple authors into one single email.

Example: If a person tracks 5 authors, we send them only (1) single email with each of the 5 authors latest articles published in the past 24 hours.

We also make it easy for a person to identify which authors they subscribed to so that they can adjust accordingly without having to unsub from everyone they may follow.

Most follow more than one author at a time.

December 7, 2009 at 9:58 AM

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