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Article marketing quick question

by CompGeek
18 replies
I haven't done article marketing in a few years but I just submitted an article to ezine and was wondering if it would be ethical to also put the same article on other submission sites. Is this against their ToS? I don't remember seeing it in there as long as you are the owner of the content.
#article #marketing #question #quick
  • Profile picture of the author Paul Hooper-Kelly
    Hi CompGreek,

    No, it isn't against Ezine Article's TOS to put your article elsewhere.

    The best first stop is you own site, so it gets indexed first there. And then put it on EA and a few other top sites.

    Warmest regards,

    Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author MagicWhisper
    I hate to say it, but you're wasting your time with article marketing. Google slapped article directories such as Ezine and Goarticles pretty badly. A lot of people who've built their income primarily by article marketing watched their businesses and income crash overnight. However, maybe not everyone experienced this. But if you're posting articles on this directories to give content, increase your search engine rankings, and/or to get sales, you're wasting your time. It sucks because I used to do it and enjoy it.
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    • Profile picture of the author myob
      Consider placement of that article (and others) in publications that are being read regularly by your target audience. In my experience, any commercially viable niche may have hundreds (or perhaps even hundreds of thousands) of relevant publications. And editors are usually hungry for quality, engaging content.

      People who built their income primarily by submitting articles to online/offline publications (ie article syndication) watched their businesses and income soar because this marketing model does not rely on Google or SEO for traffic. An excellent classic detailing this method is Turn Words Into Traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author asepkomara
      Originally Posted by MagicWhisper View Post

      I hate to say it, but you're wasting your time with article marketing. Google slapped article directories such as Ezine and Goarticles pretty badly. A lot of people who've built their income primarily by article marketing watched their businesses and income crash overnight. However, maybe not everyone experienced this. But if you're posting articles on this directories to give content, increase your search engine rankings, and/or to get sales, you're wasting your time. It sucks because I used to do it and enjoy it.
      Stop relying on Google... !
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by CompGeek View Post

    I just submitted an article to ezine and was wondering if it would be ethical to also put the same article on other submission sites. Is this against their ToS?
    No, it isn't.

    It isn't unethical and it doesn't breach their terms of service. Ezine Articles doesn't require unique content.

    It's probably entirely pointless and without benefits, though.

    Submission to multiple directories isn't article marketing, at all. It's "article directory marketing" at best, and that's been a pretty defunct business model for years.

    This post from earlier today explains it in much more detail (especially the two other posts linked to right at the end, which answer your question very fully!): http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post9248345


    Originally Posted by MagicWhisper View Post

    I hate to say it, but you're wasting your time with article marketing. Google slapped article directories such as Ezine and Goarticles pretty badly.
    They did. And that was of benefit to article marketers. That made things easier and better for us, not more difficult. You've confused article marketing with article directory marketing. Respectfully, reading the posts linked to just above will help you.

    Originally Posted by MagicWhisper View Post

    A lot of people who've built their income primarily by article marketing watched their businesses and income crash overnight.
    No, sorry but this is really completely mistaken. Those weren't people doing article marketing at all. They were people whose traffic-generation was based only on a total misunderstanding of what article directories are for, and how they work. Some of them may have imagined that they were "doing article marketing", but they just weren't. They were people actually trying to use directory articles to draw traffic and/or SEO benefits!! That isn't article marketing at all, and it never was.

    Thankfully for us article marketers, Google has effectively put a stop to that and made it much easier for us to use Ezine Articles for the purpose for which it's actually there, which is to attract publishers, not customers.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      No, it isn't.

      It isn't unethical and it doesn't breach their terms of service. Ezine Articles doesn't require unique content.

      It's probably entirely pointless and without benefits, though.

      Submission to multiple directories isn't article marketing, at all. It's "article directory marketing" at best, and that's been a pretty defunct business model for years.

      This post from earlier today explains it in much more detail (especially the two other posts linked to right at the end, which answer your question very fully!): http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post9248345

      They did. And that was of benefit to article marketers. That made things easier and better for us, not more difficult. You've confused article marketing with article directory marketing. Respectfully, reading the posts linked to just above will help you.



      No, sorry but this is really completely mistaken. Those weren't people doing article marketing at all. They were people whose traffic-generation was based only on a total misunderstanding of what article directories are for, and how they work. Some of them may have imagined that they were "doing article marketing", but they just weren't. They were people actually trying to use directory articles to draw traffic and/or SEO benefits!! That isn't article marketing at all, and it never was.

      Thankfully for us article marketers, Google has effectively put a stop to that and made it much easier for us to use Ezine Articles for the purpose for which it's actually there, which is to attract publishers, not customers.
      Except I don't think my articles attracted many publishers at all, if any. Most of my traffic, sadly, did come from EZA. At least that's what my AWStats showed. After EZA got slammed I was pretty much toast.

      What I don't understand is why my articles didn't draw more attention from publishers. You know how well I can write. The only thing I can think of is that the articles were just in the wrong niche. Maybe if I had been in something like dating or debt relief or, heck, I don't know, anything but MMO, I would have been okay.

      Anyway, it's all water under the bridge now. I've moved on to a "real" niche (LOL) and hopefully I'll do it right this time.
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  • Profile picture of the author davidmcsweeney
    I would forget about generic article sites completely as Alexa says, it's been defunct for years. If you have content to place, then approach other sites with a clearly defined topic which is relevant to your niche.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by davidmcsweeney View Post

      If you have content to place, then approach other sites with a clearly defined topic which is relevant to your niche.
      This - exactly.

      It's true that there's no harm in having one additional copy of the article in Ezine Articles, after publishing it yourself on your own site, just in case some interesting webmaster finds it there and re-publishes it to his relevant site (and I still do that myself), but once that's done, there's then no additional benefit from having it another article directory as well: not a syndication benefit; not a traffic benefit; not an SEO benefit. Not worth doing at all.
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    You can put your article else where and is recommended.

    You should put it on your website too.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Listen to Alexa. What you're doing is essentially a waste of time. Google has slammed the article directories so hard they're almost not worth using unless do what Alexa does, which is still a mystery to me. LOL

      Do yourself a favor. Put your unique content on YOUR site first. Let it get indexed. Then if you want, you can submit it to directories, though IMO it's a waste of time. Maybe Alexa can explain why this isn't so and how to go about submitting articles to directories so that they accomplish some purpose. Like I said, I am now clueless in this area.

      But please, put your stuff on your own site first. I think that's something we all can agree on.
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        Put your unique content on YOUR site first. Let it get indexed.
        Absolutely. No point in unnecessarily giving away those intial indexation-rights to anyone else, and especially not an article directory.

        Even Matt Cutts says so (and is right!).

        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        Then if you want, you can submit it to directories, though IMO it's a waste of time. Maybe Alexa can explain why this isn't so
        I almost entirely agree with it, Steve. The only tiny little thing that isn't a waste of time is submitting a "last afterthought copy" to EZA. I do actually benefit from doing that in that they can be found there by the occasional publisher of whose existence I was completely unaware, and republished by him, and therefore sometimes indirectly I might get a little extra traffic from it, via its future re-publication somewhere else. I only do it because it doesn't cost anything and it takes only one minute to do. It's only a minor afterthought, of course. I admit, I do still benefit from doing it, though. Publishers do look for usable content in EZA (I can't say I envy them because there's quite a lot of crap there, too!). It's only an afterthought.

        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        But please, put your stuff on your own site first. I think that's something we all can agree on.
        For sure. Clearly inadvisable not to do this.

        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        Most of my traffic, sadly, did come from EZA.
        Yup ... pre-Panda, you could do this.

        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        What I don't understand is why my articles didn't draw more attention from publishers. You know how well I can write.
        Obviously ... you were one of the people whose existence and businesses originally inspired me to produce money from articles.

        I think you had everything against you, niche-wise.

        I have no experience of MMO-related niches as a marketer (and don't want any!), but my guess is that it's about the worst area for this kind of marketing.

        To be honest, I actually suspect that people with MMO sites (who might otherwise syndicate articles as well-written as yours) are actually the ones least likely to understand the difference between duplicate and syndicated content. Really, some of them are so clueless they believe they'll get "penalized for duplicate content if they syndicate any articles". Ill-informed people told them this for years and a proportion of them lapped it up and believed it all, and some even propagated and reinforced it in forums. When I first posted about it here in 2009, I used to have incredibly tedious arguments about it with a whole bunch of people who had no idea what they were talking about at all, but were adamant that they were right, and some of them even misquoted Google on the subject! To their great credit, though, several of them spontaneously contacted me in 2011/12 and acknowledged that, and retracted it all!

        And to be fair, it was probably asking a lot, at that time, to expect them to listen to a then-18-year-old girl who was (with quite some exasperation and perhaps sometimes a little brashly ) telling them something tantamount to the fact that "they had it all wrong". You can understand people not exactly welcoming this.

        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        I've moved on to a "real" niche (LOL) and hopefully I'll do it right this time.
        Every confidence!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Rod Cortez
    Real niches rule!

    RoD "I've-had-too-much-coffee!" Cortez
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  • Profile picture of the author CompGeek
    I saw someone on ezine today that would post an article and have a website redirect straight to an amazon product and wanted to try that, anything think this could work?
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by CompGeek View Post

      I saw someone on ezine today that would post an article and have a website redirect straight to an amazon product and wanted to try that, anything think this could work?
      In the case of Amazon specifically, because the conversion-rate is so high (for affiliate marketing - in that everyone's already heard of and probably trusts the vendor), it might work to some small extent. It's better paid than just going out for a long, leisurely lunch and sleeping it off all afternoon, anyway. But that still doesn't make it a sensible thing to do. And it isn't. It's still based on a very fundamental misunderstanding of "how affiliate marketing really works". To call it a "second-best approach" would be being really polite and tactful. (Which, of course, I always am, myself ).

      .
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      • Profile picture of the author CompGeek
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        In the case of Amazon specifically, because the conversion-rate is so high (for affiliate marketing - in that everyone's already heard of and probably trusts the vendor), it might work to some small extent. But that doesn't make it a sensible thing to do. And it isn't. It's still based on a very fundamental misunderstanding of "how affiliate marketing works". To call it a "second-best approach" would be being really polite and tactful. (Which, of course, I always am, myself ).

        .
        I guess so. I'm trying to figure out a free method to making my first few cents before diving into paying for a website and hosting. Do you have any suggestions?
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        • Profile picture of the author Rod Cortez
          Originally Posted by CompGeek View Post

          I guess so. I'm trying to figure out a free method to making my first few cents before diving into paying for a website and hosting. Do you have any suggestions?
          This thread should give you some ideas:

          http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...e-traffic.html

          RoD
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        • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
          Banned
          Originally Posted by CompGeek View Post

          I'm trying to figure out a free method to making my first few cents before diving into paying for a website and hosting. Do you have any suggestions?
          You can get a domain-name for about $5 for the year, if you scout around for "discount coupons" and this sort of stuff.

          You can get free hosting at 000WebHost.com, or byethost.com, or freehostia.com, and install your own free self-hosted WordPress blog.

          Or if you can run to $1 per month for hosting, try hostica.com (they even have free, one-click WordPress installation available). It doesn't get much cheaper than that?

          Or, you can maybe provide some service via Fiverr.com and make a few dollars that way?

          Direct-linking from other people's sites to affiliate offers is really a very "second-best" idea, and it's so easy and so cheap to do something very much better than this? You can even start with a free site (freehostia.com) and a free subdomain, if you absolutely have to? Any of these things is far better than what you're discussing above? Just my perspective ...
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  • Profile picture of the author extrememan
    No, I wouldn't really do it. When submitting article directory content it's best to write your own content to avoid breaking any TOS's on any sites like this. They can be quite strict on what they allow to published. To save time you could outsource people writing content for you on sites like elance or fiverr. I've done that too.
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