Important Reminder:

To Qualify:

1. All articles must be submitted under the same author name. Articles from multiple author names may not be combined.
2. A minimum of 100 articles must have been submitted between 12:00AM CDT Saturday, August 1st and 11:59PM CDT Sunday, November 8th.
3. Articles submitted within the 100 day window must be approved prior to November 15, 2009.
4. Those who believe they have met the challenge requirements for any prizes must send a prize request via email to hahd@ezinearticles.com prior to Monday, November 15, 2009.
5. Qualifications will be verified and prizes will be shipped via USPS to the postal mailing address listed in the member profile and to verifiable postal mailing addresses ONLY.

All qualifiers will receive a FREE downloadable #HAHD Certificate of Achievement (frame not included).

Upon request, all qualifiers will also receive:

• Original Limited-edition EzineArticles #HAHD Trophy Mug
• Limited-edition EzineArticles #HAHD Mouse Pad

All “First 100 Qualifiers” slots have now been filled for this challenge. If you didn’t qualify, don’t despair – the 3rd #HAHD Marathon Challenge begins December 1st, so start planning those articles now!

Question: How do I crank up the word count in my articles without adding fluff, yet still deliver NEW quality content that will capture my audience?

Hmmm, seems like an easy enough question. This challenge arises when you have already delivered as much as you feel you can and your articles are starting to sound like your grandfather’s favorite old story. Over and over, the same words are flowing and you’re trying like crazy to offer something new in your market. So what do you do?

Answers:

• Join in Conversations - Sign-up for forums and participate in blog discussions. This will help you discover what your market is looking for. When you get a nugget of wisdom, draft an article on it and submit it!
• Ask Questions – When you feel that you have shared everything you know, go ask questions. Generate discussions on your own blog page or learn what others are talking about.
• Review Your Already Submitted Articles – You might find that there are plenty of snippets in each that will give you new topics for future articles. You may notice that can further clarify issues or elaborate on one specific area.
• Social Network Within Your Niche – Social networking via Facebook, Twitter, etc. creates a vast opportunity to meet others in your area of expertise. Learn from them and pass your newly-discovered knowledge on to your readers.
• Use Article Templates – Occasionally using different article templates can force you to look at your niche differently and approach your writing from a fresh perspective.

Remember, writing is not easy and article marketing is not a fast process. To succeed, you will need to invest time in researching your topic and your market’s needs. The good news is that time changes everything – so there is always something new to write about.

4 Things to Avoid:

1. Filling your already thin article with loose filler words just to meet the word count. These articles are spammy and do not provide a good user experience. Your readers will stop reading.
2. Writing about newsy topics and then blatantly slapping an affiliate link in. It’s not OK to write to about Obama scholarships in hundreds of articles and then pitch an affiliate link.
3. Say the same thing, only using different words or rearranging those words. It’s not OK to submit derivative content.
4. Don’t write 1,000 articles that you know nothing about. This is not only unethical, it’s simply rude and offensive to the reader. It may even be downright dangerous or cause harm to others in certain circumstances. If you are going to write as an Expert Author, BE an expert author.

Here are a few other blog posts to help you find inspiration for fresh, content-rich articles:

• Let’s Pretend …
• Make Your Writing New Again
• Harness the Power of Unbidden Ideas
• Surround Yourself with Topic Inspiration
• Article Topics to Get You Unstuck – Part 1 and Part 2

This is by no means an exhaustive essay on how to generate a high number of longer fresh, original articles. If you have other thoughts and ideas on the subject, we’d love to hear about them. So please leave a comment.

Despite the fact that Halloween is not until tomorrow, many of the good little ghouls and goblins of EzineArticles got into the spirit of the holiday by dressing up for this year’s Spooky Feast and Costume Contest.

In addition to the many wild and crazy costumes, there was an assortment of fiendish foods. And to top it off, Graphic Designer Shaun put his artistic skills to work on an incredible trio of EzineArticles Jack O’ Lanterns!

……

……

Just in case you’re interested, the winners of the costume contest were:
Scariest: Kevin as Hannibal Lecter
Most Creative: Robert as a Hippie

On behalf of the entire EzineArticles Team, have a happy and safe Halloween weekend!

A few days ago, you learned about our recent crackdown on derivative content. Unfortunately, many authors became concerned that this new guideline included existing articles from their websites and blogs.

Let me be clear: You SHOULD submit existing articles and content from your website or blog.

Here are the Key Points:

• Repackaging Existing Articles On Your Website Now and Submitting Them To EzineArticles Does NOT Trigger Our Derivative Content Filters
• Rehashing One Article into Many Versions of the Same Article IS Creating Derivative Content…Something We and Our Users Don’t Want
• Continue to Write and Submit High-Quality, Unique, Original Articles
• Submit a Good Percentage of Your Existing Content to EzineArticles.com
• Your Old Existing Articles that Someone has Not Seen Yet… are New to Them!
• Think of and Leverage EzineArticles as a Distribution Platform
• Find a New Audience by Submitting Your Existing Content AND Your Brand New, Original Articles to EzineArticles.com

Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question if any part of this is still unclear.

At EzineArticles, we only accept 100% original material for which you have exclusive rights. What does that mean exactly?

In a nutshell, it means the words in your articles are uniquely YOURS (a.k.a. You’ve written the article yourself). If you employ a ghostwriter, it means you are sure no other author is receiving any version of the same material.

Exclusive content is…

• Associated *only* with your author name
• Written by you personally from scratch, OR;
• Ghost written exclusively for you and no one else, from scratch

Exclusive content is not…

• Re-written from another article
• A combination of paragraphs, sentences, or article fragments re-arranged or re-worded from multiple sources
• Private Label Rights content or re-written PLR material
• Attributed to a company or organization
• Published under multiple different author names/ pen names
• Comprised primarily of sourced/ quoted material from others
• Lifted from the public domain

Here are some common questions:

I have rewritten my article to be 30% different from the original I received, so it is unique. Why won’t you accept it?

An article which was re-worded by 30% (or 50%, or 70%) is NOT 100% original; it’s derivative.

An argument we often hear is, “Of course my article is 30% copied. I can’t change the facts about my niche!”

This argument is used to justify derivative writing. We understand that you can’t change established facts, but if you channel your personal knowledge of “the facts” by writing from your own consciousness rather than relying on COPY+PASTE, the word combinations you choose will always come out 100% unique and original.

If my article passes a copy detection search, does that make it original?

Not necessarily. In our experience, authors who feel the need to see how many websites match their article before they submit it for review lack confidence in the originality of their work.

Copy detection searches are best used to see if anyone is copying YOU, not to see if you have copied someone else. If you are not certain that your article is a genuine original, it’s time to audit your writing style or find another ghostwriter.

I wrote the article, but it contains quoted definitions, statistics, and some sourced material. Is that okay?

Yes, as long as ALL quoted/sourced material is clearly identified as such within the article. If you quote definitions for common terms or include outside statistics, make sure you give credit where credit is due. Since we want you to share your OWN expertise, also take note that our Editorial Guidelines limit quoted/sourced material to a maximum of 3-5 lines.

The article is produced by and owned by my company. Can I submit it under my name on their behalf?

For an article to be considered “exclusive” to you, it must be your own copyright. If the content can rightfully be attributed only to an organization and not a person, it is best not to submit the article to us.

Writing original articles is hard work. How does it benefit ME?

Quality matters to your readers and to publishers. Readers are much more likely to click over to your site and make a purchase if they trust you. They will only trust you if you come across as a real person with unique insights.

Re-hashed and copied material does not offer unique insights, so it does not create trust with the reader or build an author’s legitimacy as an expert. That means less clicks and less sales. Even worse, authors who waste time rewriting articles will ultimately find their articles removed, accounts suspended, and memberships terminated.

KEY POINT: The effort it takes to write original articles is time well spent; the effort it takes to re-word copied “Frankenstein articles” is time wasted.

To Summarize…

We believe that writing 100% original articles that you own the exclusive rights to is inevitably the most beneficial and ethical practice not only for you, but your readers and article/ezine publishers as well.

Effective immediately, we will be keeping the same 2% keyphrase rejection threshold as before, but will now include the Resource Box in the word count & keyphrase density calculation.

Why? A small minority of members were stuffing their resource box full of keywords and keyphrases because they figured out that we weren’t including the resource box in the 2% threshold calculation.

Here is a real life example of an article that met our standards prior to May 7th of this year:

This 325 word article had the following stats in just the article body:

Keyphrase: debt settlements occurs 9 times (2.7%)
Keyword: debt occurs 17 times (5.2%)

Under the newly implemented standards, the Resource Box is taken into consideration when doing the calculations – this is to ensure that the loophole is closed and that keyword and keyphrase stuffing discontinues. The same article calculated it with today’s calculation method would not meet our new standards:

Keyphrase: debt settlements occurs 14 times (4.3%)
Keyword: debt occurs 35 times (10.8%)

[The images shown here are of the actual article used for this example as viewed by our keyphrase (left image) and keyword (right image) highlighter tools.]

Enough of this crazy keyword loading I say!

If you are new to writing articles and want to know what an acceptable keyword or keyphrase density is, our recommendation is to either forget about this nonsense and write as you normally write. The alternative is to avoid repeating any keyword or keyphrase more than once per 100 words (i.e. 1% keyword or keyphrase density).

UPDATED October 28th 2009: Please post with your real name and a link to your primary website. This is a professional forum.

Downloadable Versions:
           

After I finished recording the video, I watched it and made some notes about what I had said. Let me clarify a few points:

We’re not at war with Affiliate Marketers … the more we think about it, we’re really at war with people who submit highly derivative content … You know the type … You’ve seen this type of low value article as it looks like yet another rehashed works of every other similar kind of article instead of the fresh perspective that a true expert in their niche delivers.

Those who write & submit high value exclusive rights content have nothing to worry about.

Are you really an expert author if you write highly derivative content? No.

Ideal members write original content and own the exclusive rights to that content.

What’s the ideal word count? 400-800 words.

Get this: Over 142,000 articles are currently in “Problem Status.” Of those, 41% are under 399 words. Compare that to those that are over 750+ words which account for 1-2% of the total. That means you can significantly increase your chances of having your article accepted purely by increasing your word count to the 400+ range. Watch for a full blog post this week with the details on this internal stats study.

Don’t increase your word count for word count sake. More filler words that say the same thing really adds no value. Instead, find ways to add your unique perspective, your unique expertise and how that can help your ideal reader to improve their situation. Use bullet points, numbered lists, etc.

As for the big “crack down” on low value content: We’ve been raising our standards every single month since we started. The only thing changing is the pace at which we raise our quality standards.

This wasn’t just a business decision that affected us but it will also impact you because your high quality articles will have less competition for our million+ daily visitors when you don’t have to compete with low value derivative content. We have an obligation to protect the massive time investment our ideal members have had over the years.

Don’t worry about rejection. Even the best writers get rejected from time to time. Use the rejection process to learn our Editorial Guidelines. We know it takes time to learn and understand our 5-6 pages of guidelines. It’s ok to make mistakes along the way.

Keep on writing & submitting your best quality original articles as that’s the best way to get high-value traffic & exposure back to your website.

My goal for doing this quick video was to reassure 99% of our membership that they have NOTHING to worry about. If anything, they will see an improvement in the quality of content that will be side-by-side to their articles. That’s healthy for competition because no one wants to put their high value articles next to low value rehashed/regurgitated works, right?! Right on. :)

UPDATED Oct 27th 2009: You can now View this video on YouTube.

Website Magazine has ranked EzineArticles.com #18 on their list of the “Top 50 Websites for Professionals,” in their November, 2009 issue.

Websites that make the cut, like EzineArticles, Google, Yahoo, Facebook and YouTube, are considered the most important for Web professionals based on their popularity among Web professionals, the business community and consumers.

The accompanying article warns professionals to not “even think about ruling out content and article marketing as a way to shore up brand visibility and drive website traffic.” The article went on to note that success stories like EzineArticles “still generate the respect of many professional and aspiring Web professionals and will continue to do so until content is no longer king.”

According to Website Magazine, readers should treat the list “as an important starting guide for your Web Success.”

Follow @WebsiteMagazine on Twitter.

Definition: Substantive Articles – Articles that contribute to your niche. These include suggestions, ideas, sources of information, insights into the topic and almost anything that will stir discussion.

Your readers should want more! They should comment on your article and offer you suggestions for more articles. If you’re getting this already, you know the meaning of substantive … Keep up the good work!

If you’re not having this dynamic conversation with your readers, then here are some tips that will help you achieve this:

• It’s Not OK to be Short and Sweet – Saying something is a cool idea without adding the WHY does nothing for the reader. This is not quality – this is easy writing. Your readers will see right through it. Good writing takes hard work and research.
• Relate Yourself to Your Work – Readers want to know how this has affected you and why it works. Add YOU to the topic by offering tips and further exploring why the tip works. People want MEAT. They want to know they can trust you. You’re the expert, so show them you are. Give them the MEAT.
• Make Connections with Your Audience – Do your research and ask them what they want. Then deliver this value in articles. This is worthwhile stuff. Readers want to know what they will find valuable TODAY. They don’t want to know what happened in the news last year. Think EVERGREEN!
• Think 400-600 Words as Your Quality Base – Don’t fill your article body with FLUFF just to reach this word count, but rather allow yourself enough room to explore the topic.
• You Won’t Know Until You Try – Perfection should always be your goal, but remember to submit and learn along the way. Trust me, you’ll get better with time.

Remember, writing high-quality, original content is not an overnight process – it’s hard work. Keep going, and you’ll get there in time.

I promise. :-)

If you have other suggestions for promoting a dynamic conversation with your readers, please share them with the rest of us by leaving a comment below.

We’ve been firing an average of 2 Premium members every day now as not being a good match. In some cases, we’ve had to fire members who were Premium, got fired, bought again and then had to be banned from Premium membership. We’ve had members plead to pay any price for speed or to be unbanned. One guy yesterday offered us $36k to accept his articles on top of our Premium membership fee with one exception: He wanted us to accept derivative content. No way!

Key Issue: Our team has been at great odds with ourselves because we want to deliver excellent service to our Premium members, yet a high percentage of our Premium members are not ideal EzineArticles members. We’ve essentially accelerated the speed at which our worst members can submit low value, thin content into our system.

This further frustrates our Premium members because they are getting downgraded (most are at Basic Plus level), having their articles rejected and are being shown the word “NO” more often than they’d ever care to see.

It was my goal, by this time, to have muted the value of Premium membership by delivering Premium speed to all free members … thus, forcing us to find other things of value that we could package into our Premium Membership service level. Unfortunately, we’ve struggled ALL YEAR to deliver on that internal goal. If you only knew what we’ve done to reach this goal, your mouth would drop and hit the floor.

After much internal debate, we’ve determined that the real issue is the need to reject another 10-20% of low value content (from both Premium and non-Premium members) by tightening up our content filters even more. This is not something new – we tighten up quality standards every single month. But the rate of which we’re tightening down is accelerating.

What’s Happening Now:

We had already tightened up our anti-derivative content filters a few weeks ago and that’s currently shaving off 700 articles a day that never make it to our human editors for review.

Our next big pass at curbing low-value content submissions will come in the form of banning certain types of content that are currently in too high of market supply (think “Acai berry” type articles) and other commonly spammed articles with highly derivative content (think penis enlargement, get your ex back, dating articles, some types of finance articles). We’ve been slow to reach this point because we’re looking for ways to allow legitimate good ideal members to submit content on these topics while singling out the gamers who only want to submit really thin low value content.

Know that we’ll communicate in this blog which types of content we’re no longer allowing and we’ll be revisiting our Editorial Guidelines to include more information about the coming changes.

In the past, we’ve grandfathered existing articles in when new quality levels are set, except when a live article is edited, today’s standard is applied to that content. That means we would typically have allowed old articles that would no longer be accepted with today’s standard, to remain live in the site. We’ve reached a point where we can no longer allow that to happen. At risk are articles that are highly derivative based. If you’ve written original articles from your head and didn’t use any software article rewriter, you should have nothing to worry about.

There’s one more major issue that I’ll be sharing about soon in terms of a paradigm-shift that will be made in the coming weeks. Until then, I hope you appreciate the transparency and I’d like to enlist your continued support to help us properly navigate the key issues that will ensure our collective long-term survival together.