Ezine Articles Account Suspended!

Thanks for confiming that. I was also not able to find anything out on their blog and would not have even known people were having their accounts suspended had I not been emailed by a few folks.

Respectfully,
Tim

It's a hypothetical question, as I don't submit there.

If I did, I certainly wouldn't submit 1,000 under the same account.

Is this against their TOS? From what you said it is. It seems they can delete your account for whatever reason they choose, so risking all in one account seems rather shortsighted and naive.

I would have thought their main concern was quality articles and if someone had more than one account it was the lesser of two "evils".

No, the people whose account was suspended redirected the URL's...

I don't think I would personally spend time doing anything if they suspended my account to be honest. There are other sources of traffic out there that are BETTER than EZA at the moment.

It depends what you mean by "greed", Steven. That part's just a little subjective, isn't it?

Everything else you say, of course, is entirely true.

But not much of a criticism, really? They're running a business, after all: it's normal and surely (in a capitalist society) even commendable to do that so as to maximise the profits/returns for the company's owners, and to be alert to sudden external changes making swift alterations to the day-to-day operations desirable? There's also (in most countries) even a statutory obligation on companies to do so.

Given my fairly openly and vociferously posted statements about article marketing here over the last couple of years, I'm now keeping out of many of these slightly hysterical threads, for fear of inadvertently coming across as saying unsympathetically "I told you so" when that isn't my intention at all.

Nevertheless, in this instance, the blinding truth of what you've just said above compels me to mention (while obviously not referring to yourself!) that the time has clearly come for many marketers here, who imagined that their business model was based on "article marketing" when it was in fact based only on "article directory marketing", to consider a little more seriously the extent to which they choose to allow their businesses to be unnecessarily and most inadvisably dependent on the vaguaries and vicissitudes of third-party businesses whose management, operations and commercial decisions are entirely outside the marketer's control.

I personally think it's too late for them Steve. I don't see Google giving them a chance. The crud articles are still on the site, it doesnt matter what rules they force on authors going forward.

Exactly. Basically EZA is a content farm which Google just came down on hard. If EZA wants to continue to make 6 figures a month with adsense then they need to come down hard on their worker bees to give them top notch content. What do they have in the back of the house now? English and literature Phd's?

They banned my account too-no reason given and I haven't even submitted any articles there for months.

Agree completely, They used the content for their benefit, not ours. They now are desperate to do a Squidoo move in content quality. I do not use them anymore, could care less.

What's happening here is a bad situation, but I think Alexa makes the most important point: it's how they handle things going forward that will make or break the future of Ezine Articles itself.

You, me, that other guy, Ezine's editors... we all knew what we were doing. We were writing (and they were approving) content that was sometimes nothing more than a differently worded approach to a previously written article. But as long as these articles were well-written and still informative? They were readily approved.

Hey, upon article submission I never expected Ezine to go through my past 350+ articles and say "Whoa... wait a minute, this article has the same basic premise as that one..." That's wholly unreasonable, and I'm not sure it's even possible. IMO, Google needs to somewhat realize and concede that point.

At the same time, Ezine was definitely approving these articles. To turn around now and remove those articles because they're not what google wants? That's fine with me. Ezine is a business, and ultimately they're trying to do what's necessary to stay profitable.

What's NOT okay (and rather shady) however, is to arbitrarily ban people who've written such articles long after Ezine already approved them. This is a punch to the throat of everyone and anyone who's spent time submitting quality articles to their website.

It's like saying "Okay, we loved all the revenue your articles made us over the years, but now momma google's mad. Blame's on you. We can't hang out anymore."

Ezine would do best to adopt a resolution that would appease both google and it's dedicated authors. There are ways of satisfying both google's need for quality, unique content, and their authors' need for getting their articles out there for people to read and click-through to their websites.

Best case scenario if I were them?

1. Remove the content google deems unnecessary.

2. Flag those authors to receive notices (non-threatening notices, mind you) that explains why those articles have been taken down.

3. Explain to those authors that all future submissions must be more unique, and that re-worded content may violate future policies.

4. Identify which topics/niches are considered taboo, bad, less-desirable, or whatever they want to call it.

5. COMMUNICATE with their authors rather than maintain silence.

Letting us know where they're at will help us help them. Because right now? A lot of their best and most dedicated authors are either walking away, or afraid to make a move because they don't know what's going on in Ezine's head.

In any case, persecuting authors for past work Ezine already approved is an unprofessional and even finger-pointing approach that's only going to piss everyone off. They've already pissed off google... now might not be a good time to keep beating the hornet's nest.