I think I'm in love with Ezinearticles - is there a cure?

[kenj]

I am about 900 articles into a love affair with article writing and I have to say I am in love with Ezinearticles.

They let me put my articles on their website. From this website I have had a constant and almost immediate stream of visitors to my website. They just keep on coming.

I cannot ever imagine that I would not use this directory for my articles. Sure I have submitted many to other places but according to my stats the ones on EA get great clickthroughs.

What is more these 1,000's of visitors have cost me nothing but my time in writing my articles. I find that part very easy anyway.

What I do not understand is the list of negative posts about EA.

But they do say love is blind.

[indexphp]

Why don't you write some of those articles and put them on YOUR site?

[alexshelton]

I think getting articles written for EZA has been my best IM investment to date! Its awesome

[kenj]

Hi Garrett

I didn't make it clear, most of my articles do go on my sites. But I use EA because I get extra traffic from them. Some of my sites that are only 2 months old are already on pagerank 2 and I am putting this down to good one way links from other sites - the main one being EA.

I cannot think of another way of acheiving this so quickly without EA

[rapidscc]

Wow kenj 900 articles! not bad, not bad at all!

As for the love/hate with Eza, well you know what they say, there's always two sides to a coin...but it's still a coin :-)

[Angela V. Edwards]

Why don't you write some of those articles and put them on YOUR site?

The reason that people put their articles on EZA is because EZA is tremendously search-friendly. I can write an article about the economy and put it on my own site and who knows what page it will end up in Google. Unlikely that it will be on page one.

However, if I write the same article and submit it to EZA, my article about the economy has a huge possibility of not only ending up on page one of Google, but could very well end up in the top three results.

THAT'S why people put their articles on EZA.

[Black Hat Cat]

Originally Posted by Garrett Aren

Why don't you write some of those articles and put them on YOUR site?

How do you know he isn't? It's not an "either or" situation, it is possible to do both.

There seems to be a consistent theme among some here that says if you put your articles at EA, you can't put them on your site too. You can. It helps to make a few changes to the articles, but it's not absolutely necessary. The main point though, again is, it doesn't have to be one or the other.

[tommygadget]

EZA is consistently my main source of traffic. If you look at your logs as much as I do, you'll thank them. If you've seen some threads around here taking Chris Knight to task, even there people agree that it is a great source of traffic. Make sure you diversify your link portfolio because all your eggs in one basket is never a good thing.

TomG.

[shazzam]

Thanks. This post is useful.

[Niche]

900 articles is pretty impressive. i suppose Bum marketing is still alive and thriving then

[Zeus66]

I'm with you, Ken. Nothing performs like EZA... #2 is a distant 2nd. They're the Google (in a good way) of article directories.

Having said that, my experience has been that it depends a lot on what you're writing about, in terms of how many views/clicks you'll get. I've been a Platinum Author at EZA since 2004, and I've posted articles about all kinds of topics in dozens of niches. There can be a huge difference in results.

For example, I had a site about hairstyles (ironic since I have almost no hair, but it was my wife's baby, really).... anyway, I thought it would have little chance of doing well, but it killed. I sold it a couple years ago for over $8,000, and all I ever did to promote it was write articles and submit them to EZA. That's literally all I did, and within about a year it was making $800-$900, on average. During prom and wedding seasons, it did almost twice that much. And, the number of views and the CTR at EZA were the highest I've ever gotten (nearly 50% CTR).

I ghostwrote (is that a word?) a bunch of articles for a dog site owner, which is a very popular niche, and the results were still good, but not even close to the hairstyles site results. Go figure.

More recently I've been writing articles about article marketing and traffic building, and I've been less than impressed. Not as many views and a pretty average CTR. It's early yet, but I'm left to conclude that niche saturation has a lot to do with it. There are a lot of articles flying around about this kind of thing, so maybe it's a case of trees in the forest.

Anyway, I'm going on about this because I don't think it gets enough attention. I would caution newer article marketers not to see the number of views and clicks others report and use that as a benchmark. It will vary (sometimes widely) from niche to niche.

What every article marketer can and SHOULD do, however, is work on crafting articles that have the best chance of getting views and clicks, regardless of the niche. This means building a keyword list first so you're targeting phrases people actually search for, then writing compelling titles, & descriptions, informative article contents, and a strong call to action that follows the body seamlessly.

John

[LB]

Imagine if you created 900 pages of original content for your own site or blog...

[Daniel Scott]

Man, don't people read these days? HE DID! He put them on his own site AND EZA!

Plus content doesn't mean crap if no one can find it.

I think the best cure for your rational way of thinking is to start drinking too much and saying that EZA take too long to accept your articles and what not. Seems to be the trend these days.

But under no circumstances are you allowed to stop using it. You have to keep using it and bitch about all the problems it has.

-Dan

[Dan Grossman]

The cure is realizing that filling the web with the noise we call 10-minute "articles" is not truly building value that will help you 2, 5, 10 years down the line. You could be using the time building a business that you can retire on and pass to the next generation, not counting the clicks from other marketers today.

[Daniel Scott]

Steven Waigenheim (SP?) makes most of his money from article marketing, and he makes a fair bit.

I'm pretty sure it's helping build his business, and I'm sure there are many more examples.

-Dan

[AndrewCavanagh]

Ezine Articles is great but Buzzle often gets better SEO results.

And you can get even better SEO results with an article page on a domain that matches a root keyword.

But this is not an either/or question.

You can do ALL of these things and if you're smart you can link them together for maximum effect with your own website being what you link TO.

That way long term you're building the value of your own website.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[Rachel Goodchild]

Originally Posted by AndrewCavanagh

Ezine Articles is great but Buzzle often gets better SEO results.

And you can get even better SEO results with an article page on a domain that matches a root keyword.

But this is not an either/or question.

You can do ALL of these things and if you're smart you can link them together for maximum effect with your own website being what you link TO.

That way long term you're building the value of your own website.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

That's cool info Andrew- thanks!

[Michael Lee]

Originally Posted by AndrewCavanagh

Ezine Articles is great but Buzzle often gets better SEO results.

And you can get even better SEO results with an article page on a domain that matches a root keyword.

But this is not an either/or question.

You can do ALL of these things and if you're smart you can link them together for maximum effect with your own website being what you link TO.

That way long term you're building the value of your own website.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

I find both Buzzle and Ezinearticles to get excellent search engine results. Each have their own pros and cons.

My article submitter told me it takes Buzzle a much longer time to publish the articles than other article directories. However, the adsense ads are below the article so your resource box will be seen (and hopefully clicked on) before they see the adsense ads.

As for EA, they approve articles faster than Buzzle, and have good support. But your article's resource box may tend to compete with adsense ads above and beside the article.

Nonetheless, I love both of them. And it's a win-win situation everytime we submit our articles to them.

[Vyliss]

I don't really like Ezine much to be honest.. they've never given me all that much traffic.. and it's definitely not consistent... have like 31 articles there and the rate they approve articles is just terrible. It's like 2 weeks! They're also very strict about the link you use... only allow top domain links? Then why does squidoo, hubpages and blogs get approved?

They aren't top domain links and my link isn't even an affiliate link.

[Chris Hunter]

Originally Posted by Vyliss

Then why does squidoo, hubpages and blogs get approved?

They aren't top domain links and my link isn't even an affiliate link.

You CAN use blogs (Blogger or Wordpress), Squidoo, and Hubpages. Even Weebly, if I'm not mistaken.

People use these all of the time.

[Vyliss]

Originally Posted by Chris Hunter

You CAN use blogs (Blogger or Wordpress), Squidoo, and Hubpages. Even Weebly, if I'm not mistaken.

People use these all of the time.

Yea... I said that they DO get approved.. which is why it's not fair because Ez is not suppose to allow links that aren't top level domains (domain.com) so anything that is domain.com/subfolder/ is not allowed, which is what Blogger, Wordpress, Squidoo and Hubpage links are.

[Daniel Scott]

If you're having problems with EZA just send them an email. I'd say 3/5 of my articles are initially placed in "Problem Status" but when I email them they fix it.

-Dan

[Dana_W]

I love ezinearticles. I'd marry ezinearticles if I could. They give me tons of traffic, they help my sites rank well, they even sent me a nice coffee mug. And I have not been able to find any other sites that send me as much traffic as ezinearticles - although associatedcontent.com has been a close second.

[AlexKaplo]

Wow, 900 articles that's impressive!

In terms of SEO I can only imagine what the results would be with 900 backlinks from all your articles! How long does it take you to write an article?... Anyways that is very impressive and it motivates me to start writing articles for myself. Have a great day!...


Regards,

-Alex Kaplo

[kenj]

There is one more thing I love about EA and that is the statistics they offer. This feedback is very valuable. It can show you your writing strengths and weaknesses and can also direct your future writing.

I use buzzle a bit for long wordy articles because they seem to work well there.

I have stopped submitting 10 minute articles because they were the ones that were poor performers. When I rewrite plr I do a complete job on it. The plr stuff just gives me the angle to write on and sometimes the keywords to work on.

[Michael Cruz]

There is some very good information here. Thanks to everyone for your participation.

Michael Cruz

[Angela V. Edwards]

Originally Posted by Vyliss

Yea... I said that they DO get approved.. which is why it's not fair because Ez is not suppose to allow links that aren't top level domains (domain.com) so anything that is domain.com/subfolder/ is not allowed, which is what Blogger, Wordpress, Squidoo and Hubpage links are.

It's not that EZA doesn't allow any links that aren't top domain; the rule is that if you want to post an affiliate link, it must come from your "top domain". I'm not sure how Squidoo and Hubpages and all that work out, but it's not true that you can't post ANY link that isn't "top domain". I have my own products that are not on my top domain and I have posted those links on EZA just fine.

[CodrutTurcanu]

Originally Posted by kenj

I am about 900 articles into a love affair with article writing and I have to say I am in love with Ezinearticles.

They let me put my articles on their website. From this website I have had a constant and almost immediate stream of visitors to my website. They just keep on coming.

I cannot ever imagine that I would not use this directory for my articles. Sure I have submitted many to other places but according to my stats the ones on EA get great clickthroughs.

What is more these 1,000's of visitors have cost me nothing but my time in writing my articles. I find that part very easy anyway.

What I do not understand is the list of negative posts about EA.

But they do say love is blind.

Who told negative things about EZA?

Also, getting clicks/traffic through this service is cool -- but, do you make money -- how , and what's your conversion ratio?

[marilyne]

I really struggle with writing articles. I don't think that I am a very good writer. I am just learning the internet business. Is there any easy way to perfect my writing skills. I hear about 10 minutes articles and such, but it takes me sometimes at least a couple of hours to write one article. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Marilyn Earls

[kenj]

Hi Marilyn

You should do what you are good at. For me writing is something I have always done - even before the internet.

For you, your skills may be elsewhere and you should use these skills to their best advantage.

Having said that you can learn to write articles. I have a close friend who hates writing but has an offline business with a blog. I have shown him what to do and he now writes very well. He does have lots of expertise in his field which helps.

You can structure your writing of articles in such a way that they write themselves.

For example you could decide that you use this format

Headline
Intro paragraph - 80 words
Content paragraph 1 - 80 words
Content paragraph 2 - 80 words
Content paragraph 3 - 80 words
Summary - 80 words

Can you write 80 words?

By breaking the task down you can write good articles.

[marilyne]

Thanks, Kenj. That does help alot. I never thought about doing it that way. It does break it up into more manageable proportions.

Marilyn Earls

[Zeus66]

Marilyn,

kenj gave good advice about making things more manageable in smaller chunks. I would add not to overthink your articles. That's almost always where I go wrong, to this day, and I've been writing online articles for about 10 years. When I find myself stuck (and what writer doesn't get stuck now and then?), I walk away for a few minutes (at least) and do something that is completely unrelated. Play with my dogs (doesn't work if I'm writing about dogs, LOL), play my guitar, give the wife a surprise kiss, whatever. Just do something to clear your mind.

Then, sit back down and just hold one main thought about the topic at hand in your mind. Start writing. Don't even pay attention to what's coming out of your fingers. Just write with that one main idea in your mind all the time. Pretty soon you'll have 100 words or more upon which you can build a full article. Works nearly every time. Hope that helps.

And don't overanalyze things when you're finished. Perfectionism is good when it comes to grammar and spelling and the like, but it's a killer when it comes to worrying about how profound your articles are. It's an article, not Moby Dick. Just get a solid point or two laid out, and be done with it. If you have other good points, use them in your next article. Readers value brevity (ignore my long-windedness here, please).

John

[kenj]

One more thing to do is write first and edit later. This can be hard if you are suffering from writers block but after the first 10 articles you get used to writing like this.

The editing usually involves checking that you have used your keywords and basic grammar

[Matt Hoey]

Originally Posted by kenj

I am about 900 articles into a love affair with article writing and I have to say I am in love with Ezinearticles.

They let me put my articles on their website. From this website I have had a constant and almost immediate stream of visitors to my website. They just keep on coming.

I cannot ever imagine that I would not use this directory for my articles. Sure I have submitted many to other places but according to my stats the ones on EA get great clickthroughs.

What is more these 1,000's of visitors have cost me nothing but my time in writing my articles. I find that part very easy anyway.

What I do not understand is the list of negative posts about EA.

But they do say love is blind.

I think it's that if you don't target the right popular keywords you don't get enough visitors to make any money sometimes. Obviously if you keep the quality up you're bound to hit a goldmine keyword if you're writing is good eventually.

I have an idea that when i find a good article that is making me money i'm going to socially bookmark it across about 40 sites and then use linkvana to build it up through the ranks.

I just had an article accepted and i thought it strange that i had 3 views and 2 clickthroughs already but when i read it i realised i'd written a cracking article which benefited from being 250-300 words long.

I just hope the keyword is good enough to attract visitors. I can't wait for the day i finally see how ezines can make me money. Up to now i've failed but i've not written that many articles.


Well that's my story