Edward Weiss writes:

Ok. Here’s another benefit you could include … removal of ads for premium members. I recently noticed even more (gulp) ads at the top of my articles. Five beauty’s all lined up and stealing attention away from my article.

Why not just turn the whole page into one large Google ad?

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Edward,

At this time, we have no plans to offer that.

I can tell you that we monitor CTR & traffic delivered to our members very tightly so as to meet our internal goals of delivering you more high-value targeted traffic than most or any competitor could. We know that your loyalty to us is directly related to how much traffic we deliver to your website(s) and thus the relationship is fragile and based on a perceived return on time (your time). If over time, you’re getting more traffic instead of less, we hope you’ll continue to write & submit your best articles… and if you get less traffic, you’ll submit fewer articles…therefore we’re motivated to ensure that the amount of traffic increases over time rather than decreases.

We have several ambitious internal projects we’re working on and continuing to develop, all designed to deliver our end users a better experience and also deliver more traffic back to your website. Stay tuned.

September 15, 2010 at 3:59 PM

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Lance Winslow writes:

I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the Premium Membership, it’s well worth it for those who are serious about their online businesses and article marketing as a venue to increase targeted traffic to convert to sales.

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Bpo service writes:

Well surprised and as well as happy with Premium Membership.
————–
Mary Taylor

September 24, 2010 at 1:58 AM

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jon bone writes:

Going to have a look at joining on premium as you guys highly rate it, thanks !!

Jon Bone

October 14, 2010 at 7:10 AM

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Charles van Veen writes:

All I can say is the extra benefits for Premium members are great and if you are a serious publisher upgrading is highly recommended!

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Dr. L M Foong writes:

HI Charles,

Read several benefits about Premium Membership. But I could not find the response time to get our article approved.
Can you enlighten me ?
Thanks

September 20, 2010 at 9:46 AM

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Charles van Veen writes:

VERY FAST! On Working days within a day, mostly even within hours, is my experience. Of course it will be reviewed first by premium reviewers.

September 20, 2010 at 11:09 AM

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Jeff Herring writes:

If you are serious about Article Marketing then you need to understand that your investment in the Premium service will more than pay for itself.

Being able to have your articles approved quickly is great, my favorite feature is being able to schedule the release of your articles in advance.

~ Jeff

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Jason writes:

Here’s something though I think really needs to be addressed. People were bashed a few months back for “quality” of content, then after reading this little bit I saw in a comment below, I really had to think about that. Here’s what I mean:

“Yep, is pretty silly. I just picked out an EzineArticles article at random. It had 263 words of content.

The page also had 8 ad units (2 link units, 4 AdSense units [3 text, 1 image] and 2 Chikita units)

I went ahead and (using copy and paste into Word, of course!) looked at how many words were from the adverts themselves.

The adverts given rise to 474 words! And it would have been more if the image advert was another text ad.

So on this random EzineArticles page, the article was 263 words and the adverts were 474 words.

You moan about ‘IMers’ providing poor quality, then you flood your pages with more adverts than content.”

Now there are some valid points to that comment I found. I would love to hear your thoughts on this one Chris. How do you explain your thought process for “quality” content when you have more adsense copy on the page than article content?

Also, I would really like to know why, at least for premium members, there needs to be a whole set of ads underneath the end of the article which stops many people from getting to the most recently published list. This is one of the main reasons to have a premium account. So you can time out your submissions to get on the list at certain times.

Curious about your thoughts, and please no “stock” answers. Be honest.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Hi Jason,

Your link on your name didn’t work or lead to a valid page as I tried to learn a little bit more about you and your membership with us to understand the context of your thoughts. I responded anyway as you outlined some thoughtful questions. Feel free to update reply with your full name and website URL.

Now to your questions/thoughts:

Bottom line: How much traffic are we delivering you per article, per year?

That is one of our main yardsticks for how much value we deliver our members.

Are there any other sites like EzineArticles delivering 175,000 to 200,000 clicks for free daily for the benefit of their members?

We know it’s a delicate balance; but if we don’t deliver high value traffic to our members’ website(s)…we’re not going to continue to attract more article submissions; therefore we’re selfishly motivated to ensure we deliver every single day.

In your example Jason, you picked a 263 word article… ….an article that barely scrapes by as an article considering we have a 250 word min and articles below 400 words don’t get included in the lists below each article. The sweet spot for articles is in the 400-800 word range.

In terms of usability/quality of the page: The end outcome is to provide value for the million daily unique visitors who surf EzineArticles.com. If we turn them off; they stop visiting. The ads are designed to provide value, just like the content. If they don’t provide value, then we lose visitors. Retaining visitors is something we are very motivated to continue…and this keeps us aligned with our members interests.

Premium members are polled upon signup to tell us why they became a Premium member. Most tell us it’s for the article scheduling or they like their articles and member support queries to be answered ahead of everyone else’s.

As for the list below each article of related/most viewed and most published: You said it was one of the main issues to become Premium. That may be true for yourself, but we’ve never been told by our Premium members that this is the reason they signed up for Premium. It might be a side-advantage reason… but it’s not one that has been listed (and I/we read every single reason why Premium members sign up or cancel their membership).

September 20, 2010 at 9:05 AM

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Roland writes:

In all honestly, Jason has a very valid point Chris. You said an article that has “263 barley scrapes by as an article considering we have a 250 word minimum” but the add copy text was 474 words?

So if your sweet spot for articles is between 400-800 words, how do you justify having 74 words more of add copy than actual article? I agree with you on the 250 word article, it’s not an article really and you may as well put adds all over it, but when you’ve got 474 words of add copy on a page….it’s really hard to call it an article.

I’ll be honest and say that I think you guys really have gone way overboard with the adsense. It makes the articles look bad honestly (of course my opinion only). And truthfully the traffic you USED to be able to give article’s is no where near what you bring now. Not even close.

To be honest, 2 other article directories bring in more traffic than Ezine does now days. Sure, you have more highly ranked articles in the search engines that allow you to use numbers like you did above, but look how old those articles are. You don’t see any of the new ones pulling traffic like the older ones do because they don’t rank as good anymore. Over all traffic has gone way down and so has the click through’s on the resource box links.

As for the adsense under the article that was mentioned above, I’ll agree with that too. It used to be that because you had the premium membership you could time it out and get on those lists thus bringing you more traffic because those lists were at the bottom of the article. Not anymore with the blocks of adsense that are there.

You said this above:

“In terms of usability/quality of the page: The end outcome is to provide value for the million daily unique visitors who surf EzineArticles.com.”

I just don’t understand an article directory, that provides value to the reader, is providing more value by having more add copy on the page than actual article content. Even if the article was 400 words, you’re still over 74 words more add copy and i checked this myself on a few others and it’s over there as well. Those adds are there to make you money and there isn’t anything wrong with that. This is your busniess and you SHOULD do what you want with it. I just think it would be nice if those that paid you the rather expensive fee to be premium got a little more of a “break” on the add content in certain places.

You might not get a lot of people who say that, but it’s a big problem and one that actually caused me to cancel my premium membership when you guys got a little wild with the adsense adds.

Again though, this is your business and you have every right to run it how you see fit, that’s just the way it is. But your explination above is a little off with the comparisons you made I think.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Roland,

You made a claim that “Over all traffic has gone way down” for you.

If that’s true in your experience, then show us which author name(s) you write articles under and I’ll review your account and give you recommendations if there is something that can be done to help improve the performance of your articles.

I looked up both your email address and the full name in the domain you linked your comment with, and neither have an account with us.

September 21, 2010 at 8:45 AM

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Roland writes:

Chris,

Showing you my author names would not do me or you any good. In all honesty, it would be bad for my business:) I have many different clients that I write for and I’m not going to just give them out here or in private. Of course you won’t find my accounts under either of the emails attached here, because like I said, it would be bad for my business.

What I’m writing now, I write with total respect so please don’t take it as a personal attack because it is not. Again, this is YOUR business and I’m fully aware that you have every right to run it however you see fit. I would just like an honest answer as I’m sure so many others would too.

I have over 2K articles with you here on EzineArticles. I know what works and how to write them to get the most benefit from them. This is far from my first time at the dance if you will.

While I appreciate your offer to look at them and give me some suggestions, it’s not necessary. I know very well how to track, test and adjust things to get the most benefit out of what I’m doing. As I said, I’m not a rookie. Which is one of the big reasons why I now submit to other directories more so than this one. The traffic is greater, the click through percentage is higher and I don’t have to worry about my article being lost in a sea of ads that surround it.

But, you still have not addressed some of the issues that I brought up above. I would still like to hear an honest reason that having add copy that is more than the actual article word count is giving the reader the “best possible experience”

The logic on that just doesn’t add up, and as I said in my other comment, I’ve checked quite a few articles over 400 words and the add copy is greater than the article word count. I just don’t see how that is benefiting the user.

There was a big fuss a while ago about the quality of content that was submitted here and you made some rule changes. Awesome, I was all for it, but now that you are getting higher quality articles, longer articles, how do you justify putting more adsense copy on the page then article content? You have no idea where those adsense adds are pointing to. They could be going to some worthless garbage page that is giving your “reader” that you say you are so concerned about a HORRIBLE experience.

Those adds are there to make you money, I get that and there isn’t anything wrong with it. But to make such a big deal not long ago about quality and user experience, I think the amount of add copy has totally swallowed the article. Honestly, the articles now look almost like a giant classified add.

And for those of us that pay the $97.00 a month (or used to in my case), I think you could really do a little better as far as the number of adds and the placements. Especially under the article like that, because many people don’t even know those other lists are down there now.

Anyone that does article marketing, that TRULY knows what they are doing, knows the traffic has decreased, the click through percentage has gone WAY down and the articles are not ranking as well as they used to. Yes, some people think the part of the premium account that’s the best is because you get your questions answered fast or that you can get your articles approved in 24 hours. Yes, those functions are nice, but those are no where near the real benefits of the premium account. At least not what they used to be before some of the adsense blocks were put in certain places.

I’m just looking for an honest answer here, not one that goes around the topic or off in a different direction. I know you don’t have to answer me, and honestly I’ll be shocked if this comment even gets posted. But I would appreciate it.

Again, all this was meant with the up most respect. I’m just pretty straight forward with stuff, so apologies if it comes off the wrong way.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

As you can see, we let your thoughts/comments be shared publicly here in the spirit of openness.

One of my personal rules (that I need to follow more often) is to not engage in debate with people who want to make public arguments that are posted anonymously. Makes no sense to me but I do understand the desire to not disclose who you are.

September 28, 2010 at 10:17 AM

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