Article quality in decline?

Agreed.

How many times do you see someone new to this forum ask how they can earn some money, and no matter how poorly-written, unintelligible, quasi-illiterate the post, they're met with, "Write articles!" or "Try bum marketing" or "Create some PLR and sell it as a WSO!"?

And so they do, and the crap-pile grows higher...

Yep as a matter of fact. If im doing research not even for my business but for personal reasons or other. If i see an ezine areticle in google I wont even read it. Ill avoid on purpose! Its the most ridiculous crap. The typical weight loss article:

How To Lose Weight So Fast Its CRAZY!

You want to lose weight right? Yes of course. Being overweight is not good. Its fun to lose weight. Losing weight is easy if you really want it. Have fun when losing weight. Lose weight in a box or with a fox. Dont overeat in your house or with a mouse. You will feel GREAT once you apply these very simple tips to lose weight now!

Go buy my diet product now and get a 50% bonus that you can ONLY get here!

Exactly my point.

One of the most prolific writers on ezinearticles.com
will post 20 or so articles at a time, with the most
general information rehashed 20 times.

I have always tried to only post articles that have
some kind of specific info, so that there is SOME
value to be had. I dunno, maybe I fail as badly
as those I am criticizing, but I don't think so...

I am always reluctant to ask for a refund if there is even
ONE item of value in a product that I didn't know before.

Feels like if you are in the information business, how can
you ask for a refund when you can't give the information
back. Just my own quirk, but frankly I am more likely to
just not buy from that particular person again.

One of the reasons I gravitate towards offers like the one
in my sig now is that the value is more tangible. Obviously
websites are still digital products, but you can see the product
even if you can't hold it.

This is a subject that gives me facial tics: articles that are written badly and filled with garbage. Some articles just tell you things you already know. Others are filled with 'information' that someone just made up around keywords.

I write articles for other people, and I use keywords. But I never, ever make up facts, and I care about spelling, grammar, punctuation and flow of words.

I don't know, but when I am looking at an article, a sales pitch, or any kind of copy, I am turned off by shoddy writing and questionable information. The person who wrote or posts such an article loses credibility with me.

I understand that writing is not a strong suit for some people, but there are ways to make up for this. There are spell checkers, guidebooks on how to write correctly, reliable ways to research information, and of course, outsourcing to people for whom writing 'is' a strong suit.

Okay, I'm done venting. Some subjects get me going.

I just got a 60+ page ebook. I print everything, but printing it was a pain. I converted it from PDF to TXT

I deleted all the excessive headers and footers. I now had a 21 page ebook.

It was recommended and more than one person praised it. For newbie, guru or anyone it was a waste of time. It had very little value.
Lots of fluff, filler and useless information.

The ones I hate are the ones written in 20 point font. like a 1st graders first reader and is just repetitious garbage.

I started to notice this a long time ago in the fitness section of EzineArticles. I even wrote an article about it! I'll see if I can dig it up and share it with you guys.

I've learned not to spend so much time focusing on things I can not change. All I can do is to focus on improving my own writing skills, so that my articles are chosen out of the bunch to be read, from beginning to end, over poor quality articles.

It doesn't matter if the content is good. Readers are aware of poor writing. It's the biggest turn off, on the web.

In my own educated opinion (opinion again! LOL), the whole issue disussed in the OP is due to all of the content "spinners" and "creation and distribution systems" that are out there today.

People who are trying to make a quick buck without doing their due diligence are using these programs and systems to get their links out on the internet. I could ask one of these "authors" a relatively simple question about their niche and they would have no idea what the answer would be. They scraped their content, spun it and published it. That's a bullshit way of doing business as far as a lot of people are concerned.

If these programs even work at all anymore, they will eventually fail...they always have and as far as I can tell, they always will.

If you want to succeed in the long term, do it the right way. If you want to make a few dollars only to see your "system" come crashing down to nothing...go ahead...be lazy. As far as article marketing is concerned, it's about honestly, hard work and integrity these days.

Allen Graves

Ezine articles and all the other sub-article sites are nothing more than "legal" doorway pages to whatever crap someone is pushing. Because of this, the writers can't give up too much information and therefore resort to articles that:

• Usually don't solve a problem.
• that are geared toward ranking and nothing else.

The end result is that the searcher has a choice:

1. either click on the link in the bio box for more crap
2. or click away and try to find real information.

The worst part is that most of the article marketing "gurus" out there actually promote writing like this.

Knowing this, why would someone invest the time and energy into producing a high quality article that has actual information? I mean, what is really in it for the writer, right? Hence, thousands of articles on "how to make money online" which basically lead the user, in most cases to misinformation or regurgitated content from some guru-wanna-be.

I hate to sound so terse but I really think that the whole bum marketing methods are completely overblown. Aside from the people who have something to promote about bum marketing (*ahem* it works, man..oh, by the way, I have an ebook showing how to do it) and make money by pimping some product on how to do it, I would be willing to wager my Audi that perhaps 3% of people doing this are breaking 6 figures and that is a very generous estimation.

People who do buy into the hype of article marketing do what the gurus tell them to....write 10-20 articles a day, every day, hope to get ranked and eventually you will make money online.

The big caveat is that aside from the very few, you may actually get traffic to your site (which, by the way, some of it comes from other internet marketers trying to see what you are doing) but for the amount of work that goes into it, you would have been better served creating your own site and working it instead of a parasite site like ezinearticles.

Maybe this works if you have your own guru-li-cious ebook product but in most cases, most people will find their efforts vs. reward to be less than satisfying.

Frankly, there are far more ways to make a quick buck online than writing a ton of half assed articles that are really no better than spam (after all, the reader rarely gets what they are looking for when they check out the article) and sending the sprawl all across the internet.

Just my opinion though.

This only makes it easier for me pull my articles higher than my competition...along with the rest of my tricks....

That's why I made my new blog post in the first place!!! Because every new article was so bland and off beat or not very useful. My blog post in my signature was designed to help people write better articles and get more traction out of them.

A good article gets found in the search engines and spreads virally almost entirely on it's own.

Dan

Some people here make it sound as if article marketing is the only type of marketing that exists online. I know many marketers who don't use articles at all, other than in their newsletters or blogs.

Yes, ezinearticles isn't what is used to be. Not too long ago it was the place to post articles. But just like everything else in life, you find something good and before long everyone floods in and ruins it. (Reminds me of the Eagles lyric... "You call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye.")

Anyway, I also think the people who are only willing to pay 3 or 4 bucks for an article are the ones to blame. They pay for crap, get crap, and then post crap. I wonder if the results they get are anything other than crap?


Chai

I have noticed the decline in quality corresponding closely with the fall in prices paid for content writing.

A year ago people were paying $10 per article at Digital point - now $5 seems to be at the high end - people are now writing articles for $1 - $3 and thinking this is OK.

As an indication of quality standards a few weeks ago a writer who had a good reputation with many tstamonials saying he wrote great articles felt that a buyer had mis treated him. He said that he had produced a perfectly acceptable article and this buyer was trying to pir him off by saying that his article wasn't good enough. so he posted his article for everyone to see. It was awful! Many native English writers pointed out that it was awful - and he was astounded - he thought it was fine, and said it was one of his best and many clients thought he was wonderful.

I have a horrible feeling that there are actually a lot of people who don't realise how bad some of the work really is.

I agree that the quality of articles has gone downhill. People seem to reproduce the same monotonous content over and over again. Aside from keyword optimization, taking content and rehashing it is going to do nothing for you.

If you are willing to write your own articles, take the time to find out what questions people have and then respond to these questions. Do some research and produce enticing content.

If you are going to pay for articles, it all goes back to the saying of you get what you pay for. While there are people potentially paying a few dollars an article, you cannot expect quality for that kind of pay.

If you want to have articles delivered to you that are well-researched and high in quality, you have to be willing to spend a little money. This is not to say spend $20 an article, but certainly more than a couple dollars or $47 for 250. Chances are you are going to receive 250 articles that have been fed through some automated machine that simply reworded hundreds of articles.