Article Marketing -- 900 words or not?

Manie, had you phrased things this way in the beginning, you likely wouldn't have been called out at all. Even those of us who disagreed with the original context tend to agree that well-written, short 'teaser' articles do generate high CTR.

On a side note, unfriendly Private Messages happen from time to time. Often the best bet is to simply delete them and chalk it up to someone having a bad day, poor manners, whatever. Unless there is a compelling reason, it's often better to keep Private Messages private.

I do give you props for keeping your cool here, though...

This thread is getting out of hand and way off subject.

I also love how I've posted the things that actually work for me and haven't sided with a long or short article yet keep getting quoted for petty things then those quoting me fail to leave some helpful advice. So that others (and myself) can learn from the criticism.

I'm all for helpful criticism but If its not helpful why waste everyone's time?

I don't pretend to know the answers I was just trying to help with the long vs short argument. I am majoring in Entrepreneurship and have already have a few years worth of English and writing classes. I've also had a few articles picked up by blogs/newsletters. Does this make me an expert? No! Do I claim to be an expert? No! Do my methods work for me? Yes! Could they work for you? Possibly. Do I write short articles? Yes! Long ones? Yes!

Because as I keep saying I write both. I write to say what I want to say and accomplish my goal. Sometimes I do break longer articles down into two articles. Sometimes I only write articles for my personal newsletter. Others are for directories and my site. Some are ghost written for others.

What I keep trying to get across is that you have to decide what your goal is beforehand. Then you have to write it according to your style and ability not based on word count (exception would be directories that have minimum or maximum word count). Then you have to test it to see what works for you.

Not everybody can write a long engaging article like Alexa can. Some people have a hard time writing an email. For those people, writing a long article would probably be very detrimental to their conversion rate (assuming they even got some CTs). Also, some subjects are going to be hard to write long articles for. Also, just because an article is 'Long' doesn't mean it is good and vice versa. Anyone can take a PLR article or their own article and inflate the word count to make it longer. Would that be more effective? Doubt it. You can also do the opposite and chop a long article into a really short one. I don't think that would make it any more effective either.

So with that out of the way can we please keep the pettyness to ourselves and try to help each other. I personally think Manie was very polite seeing as how he was PM'd by a "6 figure marketer" and griped at for a comment he made (personally I think that is very rude). I understand some may have read the post and took it literally (I know what he said please don't repost it). But what would you have said if you received the same PM? We have made a big fuss over TWO words "must be", if it makes you feel better just pretend he said "should be" or "could be". I know I have personally seen several others on this forum say the exact same thing but no one jumped down their throat or the throats of those who came to offer their opinions.

***This is intended for the whole forum and not necessarily aimed at one person*** Yes I quoted Kay, but not because I don't like her or disagree with her.

I personally think I have a very helpful attitude I just don't like people being negative b/c it affects the whole group. I think you might find a few people on here who agree that I have helped them or provided them with helpful information (I mean the forum as a whole not necessarily this thread). I'm not here for self-promotion b/c as you can see in my sig file I'm not selling articles or article marketing courses (although I have several on my hard drive that I could sell). I guess I am giving away an article submitter so I could see how it could be misunderstood.

Lets stick to the long vs short argument and stay professional so we can all learn to become better marketers. If your method works, great! Tell us what you do and how you do it! If your thinking about disagreeing with someone or saying their opinion is wrong just hit the back button a few times and move on or you could start your own thread.

Thanks for reading. Hope we are still friends

***edit, just noticed that the requote of kay quoting me didn't show up. Sorry if this causes confusion*** (I still like you though, Kay :p)