Content Filtering

Here’s an internal report that shows how many articles our anti-duplicate & anti-derivative content filtering software deflected in June 2008 for EXACT MATCH and DERIVATIVE MATCH article submissions:

How to interpret this report:
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on July 7, 2008 at 11:55 am

Views 547 | Comments (21)

Free Article Writing Audio Training Clips

New Audio Training Feature: (Got 90 Seconds?)

The EzineArticles.com :90 Strategies Audio Training Series offers you quick tips and strategies for successful article writing and marketing with EzineArticles.com:

• Get Your Writing Process Flowing — 8 Simple Strategies to Get You Writing Again
• Your Article is Your Sales Agent — Spend Your Time, Not Your Money
• Article Title Guidelines — 6 Guidelines to Crafting a Successful Article Title
• Article Title Keyword Strategy — Keyword-rich Article Title Example and Explanation
• Article Title Length Strategy — Expand Your Title to Narrow Your Focus
• Article Title Promise Strategy — Use Your Article Title to Start Building Trust with Your Reader
• Article Body Formatting Strategies — 3 Tips for Article Body Length, Readability and Paragraphs
• Resource Box Components — 4 Elements of a Successful Resource Box
• Resource Box Strategies — Grow the Trust Relationship with Your Reader
• Resource Box Pitfalls — 5 Resource Box Components to Avoid
• Article URL Link Strategies — 3 Tips for Placing URL Links in Your Articles with EzineArticles.com
• Landing Page Strategies — 5 Tips for Successful Landing Pages
• Share Your Unique Perspective — No One Sees the World The Way You Do!

Listen online, download the MP3 or read the PDF transcription for any of the EzineArticles.com :90 Strategies in our Audio Training Series:
http://EzineArticles.com/training/audio/

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on July 3, 2008 at 2:53 pm

Views 499 | Comments (7)

Images

Orlando Asks:

I’m just wondering why we can not add images on our articles. Now days, bandwidth volume or downloading speed is not a big deal anymore.

Great question here’s why we don’t allow images in articles:

• It has nothing to do with cost or download speeds.
• It has to do with a test we did a year ago where we tested image ads. The campaigns did well for us, but significantly cut down on the CTR (Click Through Rate) on the links in the Resource Boxes…essentially halving the traffic we were sending to our members.
• That means yes, we are forgoing image ad revenue in exchange for our members receiving the current high volume of visitors leaving EzineArticles.

Everytime I look back at which decisions helped ensure our growth rate, it was our decisions on what we didn’t do that kept the model in tact. Simplicity, speed, usability, & functionality/utility rules.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on July 2, 2008 at 8:30 am

Views 427 | Comments (12)

New- Share Your Social Media Links

Exciting new feature that is part of your EzineArticles membership account: Ability to add links to your social media/networking sites!

Example: (my EzineArticles extended author bio page)

Benefit of this? Gives you the chance to use your exposure on EzineArticles to help you build new or reinforce existing relationships via various key social networking sites.

We’ve made the decision to support these sites: LinkedIN, FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter & FriendFeed

Here’s the 6 simple steps on how to quickly add your social media links:
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on July 1, 2008 at 2:54 pm

Views 808 | Comments (20)

Paul Godines Short Story

EzineArticles Expert Author Paul Godines submitted his first 10 articles and wrote us a short-story as to why we should upgrade his account from Basic to Platinum:

Here is why I think I deserve Platinum status:

“One day, a father took his son to the internet with the firm purpose of showing his son how many things he could do. They spent the day on the net surfing, they Googled their name and they emailed their friends and even watched a movie online.

At the end of the day the father asked the son “How was the tour of the internet?”

“It was great” the son replied

“Did you see all that you could do on the net?”

“Oh yea” said the son.

“So tell me, what did you learn?”

The son answered “I saw lots of videos, and webpages and Google and even heard some music.” “But what I learned most was that I found a place I could read about anything I want to learn and write about anything I want.”

His fathers said “Why did you pick writing and not the videos and other stuff?

His son replied “Because its natural to me, I couldn’t stop reading and writing If I tried, it’s my passion.”

Hope this helps, let me know if I can help.”

*Reprinted with permission*

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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on June 30, 2008 at 9:17 pm

Views 346 | Comments (3)

New Article QC Process Lag Question

If you’ve been following the changes we’re working on… you know that we’re very close from changing our 2nd human QC article reviewers from POST to PRE. That means instead of our quality control team reviewing articles after they were made live; they will be reviewed before the article is made live.

This change has created a new problem of what to do with the article being reviewed during the time lag between the 1st editor approval and the 2nd QC editor’s approval?

We’ve narrowed it down to two options and would like your input:

1. Option #1 is to lock the article down after it is reviewed and approved for the few hours to a full day before our QC team (editor #2 that touches your articles) can review the approval of the 1st editor.
• Upside to this is that it’s the easiest for us to implement, gives internal credit to the editor for having touched the article, and would be the fastest path for an article to move from review to approval to approval to live on the site.
• Downside is that the author would NOT be able to edit his or her article once it’s been reviewed by the 1st editor during this time lag span of a few hours to a day.
2. Option #2 is to let the Author edit the article after it’s been approved by the 1st editor, but the action of the Author editing their article would cause the article to be put to the back of the review line.
• Upside to this option is that the Author retains control over being able to fix problems within their article before it goes live on the site.
• Downside to this option is our editors will be doing work that is wasted and anytime an Author edits his or her article, it’ll take longer to approve because it’ll move to the back of the line.

Your thoughts on Option #1 or #2?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on June 30, 2008 at 10:12 am

Views 441 | Comments (20)

Articles By Expert Name Domains

Interesting little microcosm of a trend happening here by some of our members:

• http://www.ArticlesbyJeff.com - Jeff Herring
  
• http://www.ArticlesbyAlex.com - Alex Mandossian
  
• http://www.ArticlesbyKevin.com - Kevin Nations
  
• http://www.ArticlesbyMike.com - Mike Stewart
  
• http://www.ArticlesbyAndrew.com - Andrew Poletto
  
• http://www.ArticlesbyConnie.com - Connie Regan Green
  
• http://www.ArticlesbyRobert.com - Robert Lee Goodman
  

Essentially they have made it easier to mention or give out their EzineArticles expert author URL in a domain name format that is easier to say, spell or be remembered when the ‘elevator pitch’ moment happens.

Jeff Herring gets the credit for coming up with this idea.

If you’ve got one to add to the above list, add a blog comment and give your articlesbyyourname a plug. What do you think? Crazy idea or Smart?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on June 26, 2008 at 12:21 pm

Views 558 | Comments (41)

New Expert Author Profile Views Stat

Now, when you log in to your EzineArticles Membership account, you’ll notice a new “Profile Views” stat that will now track the # of visitors to your Expert Author Profile (example) & Extended Author Profile (example).

Because we didn’t start tracking your EzineArticles Profile Views until this week, it’ll only be accurate from this week forward and doesn’t include all prior months/years prior.

Why we added resources to support this Profile Views metric:

This was the 1st step in a larger project (not announced yet) designed to help give you more information on the impact of your presence on EzineArticles.com as an Expert Author.
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on June 25, 2008 at 5:56 am

Views 411 | Comments (14)

Affiliate Link Quality Range

As you may already know from Section 3 of our Editorial Guidelines, EzineArticles allows links from affiliate marketers provided that the URL used is OWNED by the AUTHOR of the article and is a primary domain (can’t be a sub-domain or domain with sub-directory).

This barrier of entry is a message that should communicate that if you’re too cheap to buy a $10 domain, that you haven’t done your homework yet. Prior to this rule, we had a serious inflow of PLR & non-exclusive rights content that made it clear that some (not all) affiliate marketers are only out for a fast buck at any cost.

Here is the range of affiliate link redirects that give us pause sometimes when reviewing articles so that you could see ‘under the hood’ to our thinking:

1. DNS Rewrite: Fastest method to move a visitor from a primary domain to an affiliate link.
   
   
2. Meta-Refresh: HTML code that moves a visitor. Tip: If you’re going to use this method, make the delay = zero (don’t waste the visitors time)
   
   
3. Framed: Deceptive, confusing, untruthful. This is where a zero pixel frame is setup to show the domain name in the URL address bar, but the contents of the browser show a different affiliate linked URL.
   
   
4. Script Detect Referrer: Highly evil, creates no trust, makes us question your value as a member. This is where a script detects the title of the referring article and then redirects the traffic based on which affiliate link is A/B split tested to provide the highest yield that day. Makes us uneasy because of how fluid the owner of the script can change the quality of the user experience.

Now, put your mind in the experience of the user reading your article:

Does the user have a positive experience when they click the link that continues the trust-building process you started by offering your expertise in the article body?

If you can’t answer yes, then FAIL.
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on June 24, 2008 at 9:14 am

Views 481 | Comments (18)

Articles Attract Positive Comments

A hidden and much overlooked benefit of writing & marketing quality original articles:

Your articles on EzineArticles.com and other sites that
syndicate your articles will attract positive comments
that you can aggregate as 3rd party proof of your expertise.

Over the years, keep track of these comments and reach out when possible to the people who left the comments to thank them (and ask for their permission to use their comments in your website/marketing materials).
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Posted by Christopher M. Knight on June 22, 2008 at 11:40 pm

Views 1,727 | Comments (22)

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