1. What is EzineArticles?
2. What’s the value of membership?

Watch this video to get the answers to those questions and more. And at the same time, meet 4 of the key players on the EzineArticles Team:

• Chris Knight, CEO & Publisher
• The Other Chris, VP of Operations
• Penny, Managing Editor
• Marc, Marketing Manager and Public Relations

Downloadable Versions:
           

We’d prefer you hear our message straight from the horses’ mouths (so to speak). In the process we hope you’ll see, and feel, the passion we have for EzineArticles, our team and our huge family of domestic and international members. None-the-less, we’ve also created a downloadable transcript of the video for those who may need it. [Download PDF - 236K]

Watch the video now. Then leave a comment to tell us what you feel are the biggest benefits of EzineArticles membership.

If you missed our July 1st #HAHD Celebration Teleseminar yesterday… here’s the replay:

[Download the MP3] (56 minutes / 19MB)
(Sorry, no transcript available.)

If you participated and completed the HAHD challenge, here’s how to claim your mug.

Whether you made it to 100 articles in 100 days or not, we want you to celebrate this incredible ground-breaking marathon with us during a very special teleseminar co-hosted by Chris Knight, CEO of EzineArticles.com and Jeff Herring, The Article Marketing Guy.

ON THE AGENDA:

• How to scale from being an article marketing dabbler to being a Massive Article Content Creation & Free Traffic Attraction Machine
• How lessons learned from this first challenge can help you do this without losing yourself or quality during the process

WHEN:
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
11am-Noon Central Time

TO LISTEN IN/PARTICIPATE:
Phone-Number: 404-260-0037
Conference ID: 5859880#
Listen by Webcast

We hope you’ll join us live because we’ll be announcing how you can submit your request for a FREE EzineArticles #HAHD limited-edition mug!

Please SUBMIT your Questions in the form of a blog comment below and we’ll do our best to get answers to them via the teleseminar.

On June 10th, I had the opportunity to be one of the speakers for Erin Blaskie’s 2nd annual Summer Speaker Series for an interview entitled “Article Marketing: What You Need to Know.”

This interview was designed to be an overview of what article marketing is all about.

Listen to the interview:

[Download the MP3] (57 minutes / 19.6MB)

Sorry, there is no transcript… But, I took 45 notes:

1. To follow the discussion on Twitter, here’s the hash tag: sss09
2. To follow everyone in the discussion: @ChrisKnight @EzineArticles @ErinBlaskie @TaraKachaturoff
3. The best kind of traffic is highly pre-qualified traffic… the kind where they are already warmed up to you and your expertise because they just read your article.
4. A good reason to write & submit articles to EzineArticles is because you want to build your platform of people who know, like and trust you.
5. Repurpose existing content you already have to create your first set of article submissions.
6. Article marketing is not a strategy to get rich overnight, but when you do it over-time, you build up a foundation of traffic that never stops coming to your website.
7. 25-250 articles is a good quantity to shoot for to start with.
8. Best article writers do it habitually… It’s part of their routine.
9. Always write in article sets of 2 or more articles at a time to save time.
10. To get started, create a Free Membership account and submit your first 10 articles.
11. Current rejection rate is 30-40% of everything submitted… but, don’t be discouraged because most members use the rejection process to learn the system.
12. Massive action is way more important than perfect article submissions.
13. Get free article writing & marketing training here.
14. Each article submission is reviewed by 2 humans on our team.
15. After your article is submitted it’s reviewed by the first editor. Then it’s reviewed a second time by a QC editor before it’s published.
16. 250-5000 words is our allowed word-count range, but 400-800 words is the ’sweet spot’.
17. One of our primary goals is to be your highest non-search engine referrer of free traffic back to your website!
18. Article title will determine up to 95% of the success of your article.
• Include a primary keyword hook and a secondary hook.
• Article titles can be up to 100 characters long.
• Don’t be cute or do a ‘play on words’… Be blunt.
• Your article title is a PROMISE. We then check to see if you delivered on the promise in the article body.
• Your article title should make English sense… shoot for 60% natural human language and 40% keyword efficiency.
19. Don’t write highly/overly keyword dense articles. ie: Don’t repeat the same keyword more than once or twice per 100 words.
20. Article Body is the Give;
    Resource Box is the Take.
21. Keep “sales pitches” in the Resource Box.
22. Don’t include every expertise or every item in your resume in your Resource Box. Also don’t include every website you own.
23. Basic-Platinum members can have up to 3 Resource Boxes that we database for you to save time. Premium members can database up to 12 Resource Boxes.
24. While some members achieve 20-30% CTR (Click Through Rate), realistically you should expect to see 2-12% CTR.
25. Most of the top articles that achieve breakout traffic with tens of thousands of referrals from our site do so with a full http://Your-Company-Name.com/ URL in their resource box and not anchored text links.
26. Deep Linking is allowed. This is where you include a link to a specific page within your website.
27. Use the word FREE in your Resource Box. Give something away for FREE, such as a free report [related to whatever the topic of your expertise is].
28. Keep the Resource Box highly aligned with the article body content.
29. Once published, you’ll receive an email that your article was published, RSS feeds are updated (niche category rss, your expert author rss feed and widgets are all updated in real-time), permission-based email alerts are sent out to both our daily summary alerts for your article’s niche category and to any email subscribers who are fans of yours on our site.
30. In addition, if you’re on Twitter, we send out a tweet for you. [Discover how here]
31. Some members who are also on Twitter AND FaceBook setup their tweets to automatically be syndicated to FaceBook…further allowing our auto-tweets to make it to your FaceBook friends’ awareness.
32. Use EzineArticles.com to do research about what to write about or for someone to interview for your next info/media product.
33. Update & include your author photo and extended bio to get access to more exposure benefits.
34. Watch the Roadmap to Platinum video or read the PDF.
35. Platinum members get a free limited-edition mug & International new Platinum authors get a care package that includes a mouse pad, pen, notepad & stickers. Be sure to update your postal address.
36. Head of the Long Tail gets the most traffic, yet also the most content market supply. Mid to long tail gets less traffic, but the market supply is lower and thus your chances of getting high rank & exposure is better.
37. 25-40% of your articles should target the HEAD of the Long Tail.
38. Article quality without quantity means you’ll achieve very little success. You must find a way to reach a high QUANTITY of articles that are unique/high-quality.
39. Because you don’t just advertise your business once a year, why would you only write articles once a year? No… instead, write & submit daily, weekly or bi-weekly.
40. Don’t worry about losing sales by giving away all of your expertise via short/informative articles. It isn’t possible to give away all of your expertise anyway in 400-800 words.
41. When you submit to us, your articles do not have to be exclusive to EzineArticles.com; but it does need to be exclusive to your name. That means, we should not find your article submission on any other website in the world under someone else’s name or no name.
42. Should you submit 1 article to 200 articles to one site or 200 articles to 1 site? Obviously I’m biased that you should submit 200 articles to EzineArticles.com because I’m not certain you can find 200 other sites you can trust.
43. We’re very efficient at keeping regurgitated/rehashed garbage (a.k.a. ‘article vomit’) off of our site, so don’t use software article rewriters.
44. Keep writing, don’t stop, don’t worry about perfection, focus on continuous improvement.
45. Lastly, get big or get out. That means focus on dominating your niche by being the expert author who writes & submits the most articles that each share slivers of your expertise.

Okay, it’s your turn. What did you discover/learn from this interview & what can you apply to your article writing & marketing strategy?

Cheryl is a writer, teacher and inspirational speaker based out of Burlington, Connecticut. While these are impressive credentials in their own right, what really attracted our attention to Cheryl was the editorial quality of her articles.

In less than 6 months as an EzineArticles Expert Author, she has managed to already receive Platinum status and serves as a role-model for creating original, high-quality, problem-free articles.

We asked Cheryl to share some tips for writing great articles.

1. What drew you to our attention is the editorial quality of your articles. What’s your secret?
   

   “Thank you for the compliment. Reading each article carefully and being sure to review it more than once helps to assure me I’ve made few errors. Proofreading and rewriting are essential skills. In addition, I care about what I say and I know that readers will judge me by the way the article sounds.”

2. What EzineArticles tools do you find most useful?
   

   “I love the article reports. I track the views and URL clicks on each of my articles. In the almost six months I’ve been with EzineArticles, I have been able to determine which of the two categories I write for produce the best results, as determined by the number of people visiting my website. While some of my articles have more views, I can see that the ones that produce the most clicks are best. The tools provide that data for me on a daily basis and I use the information to analyze my overall success.”

3. What kind of traffic do your articles generate for you?
   

   “Much of my website traffic comes from the articles. I have been pleased with that response. While I continue to work toward attracting more traffic, I see progress. I have had direct responses from people who obviously read the articles and were motivated to contact me.”

4. What advice would you offer somebody thinking of becoming an EA author?
   

   “First, I would suggest that a potential author determine the desired outcome. Is it just to have an article published, is it to have someone read the article (writers often feel very lonely in their work), or is it to drive traffic to a website resulting in sales. Those are different goals. Once that is determined, I would recommend just writing some articles and analyzing the responses. A person has nothing to lose to try. And the only way to improve writing is to write. This provides that opportunity with a built-in audience.”

5. In your eyes, what makes you unique as an article marketer?
   

   “I am a writer, so that helps. I understand marketing and providing benefits to the reader. I constantly work on improving the quality and the content of my work.”

6. You’re fairly new to EzineArticles. What’s your impression thus far?
   

   “I love the chance to write and have my articles read by others. I see this as a necessary sales tool for my work. What better way for a writer to promote her work than to be able to write to do that?”

Thanks Cheryl for being an Expert Author and a talented member of the EzineArticles community!

Oftentimes it’s easy to get so focused on quantity of articles that we overlook the quality of what we write. As Cheryl points out, writing high-quality articles is equally important to the overall success of your article marketing efforts.

Bottom Line: Write lots of high-quality articles! ;-)

A few weeks ago EzineArticles Expert Author Alex Mandossian interviewed me on Entrepreneurialism (one of my favorite subjects) and together we raised $2,680 for his Smart Start Giving / Kiva.org Micro-Loans for Entrepreneurs charity.

I received quite a few complaints that the audio replay was very hard to hear, so I’m releasing the MP3 and Flash versions that we created from the event. These are much clearer/easier to hear.

[Download the MP3] (46 minutes / 11MB)

Along with being an Expert Author, Edward is considered by many to be the Internet’s favorite piano instructor. His site offers step-by-step instructions and video tutorials, plus a guarantee that anyone can learn how to play New Age piano.

And check out these stats! Over 270 approved articles and almost 400,000 views since February, 2005 – that translates to 300 views per article per year! At his current rate this is what his numbers will look like in (10) years:

• Over 600 Approved Articles
• More than 190,000 Article Views per Year
• In Excess of 1.8 Million Total Views

We had a chance to ask Edward about the keys to his success as an Article Writer and Marketer:

1. Over 270 articles – pretty impressive! How do you keep feeding the article hopper?

“That’s a good question. When I first noticed EzineArticles a few years ago, I already had about 100 or so articles written. These were all for my newsletter and when I found out about article marketing and your site, it was easy to just submit them.”

“After that, I committed to writing a few articles a week. Now, I just write articles to match keywords to my target audience. For instance, last Christmas I wrote an article titled “Free Christmas Sheet Music for Piano” and that got over 8,000 hits in less than 3 months! So it really is all about targeting the right keywords.”

2. What EzineArticles tools do you find most useful?

“I’d have to say the ease of actually submitting an article. I like your WYSIWYG editor and since you’ve made improvements, it’s even easier to submit articles. I also like the stats feature. It lets me know which articles are drawing interest and which ones are duds.”

3. What kind of traffic do your articles generate for you?

“A ton! And that’s probably because I’ve written a lot of articles targeted to my niche ‘New Age Piano’. In fact, EzineArticles is ALWAYS in the top 5 referrers for all the traffic I get. And it’s the best kind of traffic. When people click on one of my ads, it’s good. When people visit my site after reading one of my articles, that’s infinitely better! Why? Because they are warmed up to what I have to offer.”

4. What advice would you offer a newbie author?

“Focus your efforts on really being an expert in your niche. I know this is said a lot, but the more you focus your article marketing, the more readers see you as THE expert in whatever niche you’re in. Fortunately for me, I’m the only one (to my knowledge) doing what I do; which is teach New Age piano online.”

“Also, set a goal. Five articles is not enough to establish you as an expert author. Sure, it’s a great start but I’d say write at least 2 articles a week. After a year, you’ll have more than 100 articles and that’s something.”

5. In your eyes, what makes you unique as an article marketer?

“I’m constantly searching for opportunities to write articles that will reach my target audience. I use the Google Insights for Search feature. This gives me a very valuable look at what people are searching for and what the hot searches are. It also tells me the geographic locations for where people are searching. An invaluable tool I highly recommend.”

Thanks Edward Weiss for being an Expert Author and a talented member of the EzineArticles community!

One parting thought: If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note that our impressive 10-year growth prediction for Ed factored out his (100) initial articles. That means that his average growth rate is (34) articles/year… that’s less than (1) article/week. Think you can write just (1) article each week? If you’re not already, give it try. In a very short time, you’ll start to see numbers like Ed’s!

WHERE: http://www.smartstartgiving.com/february09/

WHEN: TODAY at 8am PST, 9am MST, 10am CST, 11am EST

WHO: Alex will be interviewing Chris Knight, CEO of EzineArticles.com

WHY: Help us raise $5,000 USD for Kiva, an organization whose mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

Participate by donating $20-$40 and you’ll receive:

1. Giving Option #1: Give the maximum donation of $40 to help entrepreneurs get a smart start; and do it before the end of today Friday Feb. 27th. In a special email newsletter issue to 100,000 of our members that will go out within a week or less, you’ll get your name mentioned along with (1) link to your website or blog, plus (1) link to your social media profile of choice (ex: FaceBook, Twitter, etc) and (1) optional link to your EzineArticles expert author URL.
2. Giving Option #2: Give a donation of $20 before the end of today Friday Feb. 27th, and you’ll get a name mention plus (1) link to your website/blog or EzineArticles expert author profile (your choice).
3. Send us an email with your receipt along with your full name and URL/website address for yourself or your business, one optional URL for your favorite social media profile, and lastly, your author name as listed on EzineArticles.com (optional), depending on whether you’re doing giving option #1 or #2.

What will we be covering? My answers to questions like these:

• What specific incident inspired me to start this business?
• What’s my/our crowning achievement?
• What’s the single biggest mistake I’ve/we’ve made along the way?
• Who’s our ideal target audience?
• What *big* idea accelerated business growth more than any other?
• What are my typical business rituals that drive business growth?
• How has Giving impacted my personal and professional life?
• Knowing what I know today, what would I have done differently 10 yrs ago to have grown faster?

Please join Alex and I for this FREE call, give $40 to help entrepreneurs get a smart start, and join us in about an hour: http://www.smartstartgiving.com/february09/

[Yes, there will be a replay available for this free call]

[UPDATE 11:20am CST] I will be matching 100% of all donations that come in by Midnight tonight, Feb 27th, 2009.

YOUR TURN QUESTION: Please add a blog comment here during or after the call to share what insight you learned or can apply to your business?

Whether you are just getting started, have less than 10 articles, or lots of articles, Chris and Jeff will show you how to get an unlimited number of articles on EzineArticles.com – a site that receives 15+ million unique visitors a month! You want to be in front of that kind of traffic.

[Download mp3 Version]

Feel free to share any distinctions you learned while listening to this or if you had questions unanswered, now is the time to ask them with your comment below.

What happens is that most experts who get the QUALITY aspect of article writing often fail to create enough quantity of articles to get the traffic & exposure return that is possible based on the quality of their articles.

Unfortunately, many of our members who master the QUANTITY aspect, fail to reach a quality factor that makes us proud to promote this type of author as ‘ideal.’

Then along came EzineArticles Expert Author, Ann Keeler Evans… who wrote and submitted more than 250 high quality articles in her first 6 months of being a member. I just knew that Ann had some rituals and secrets that many of our members could benefit from, so I called her up and received permission to interview her on what, why and how she does what she did.

• Download the PDF Here – 146KB – 5 page action guide
• Download the MP3 Here – 27MB – 28 minutes

Learn more about Ann Keeler Evans here.

After you listen to the interview or read the notes, what key point(s) did you take out of this as it applies to your unique situation?