Duplicate Content Penalty?

Use the search and look up past discussions about duplicate content here - it has been discussed in detail here many times. An article is (or should be) and original piece of work and there is no problem with the article appearing on several sites.

Owners of major article directories - and those who have submitted articles for years - will tell you dupe content is not an issue on an original article you have written....yet someone will always argue about it. (Of course, some of those arguing are selling article spinners:p).

Dupe content might be the reason a PLR article is turned down by a directory but that's a different subject altogether - just uses the same word.

The duplicate content penalty never applied to articles but to the way some sites were built several years ago. It is not unusual for an article to move up and down in the SE's - search results are not static. New sites often do the same - getting indexed quickly and then disappearing for a few days or longer.

How many articles have you submitted? If you are tracking one or two articles, the results won't tell you much. Write and submit more articles.
What is important in article submission is the number of views your articles are getting and how effective your bio box is - that's what you should look at.

I usually add the article to my site first and then submit it to EZA and perhaps a couple more directories after it indexes on my site. That's what works best for me and others may do it differently. No harm in submitting the article to several directories - I don't mass submit my articles because it didn't seem to have a positive benefit. I just submit to the main directories.

kay