Why you're using EZA incorrectly and wasting your time.

So true. I have alot of experience in writing both 'presell articles AND syndication articles. Although I do believe syndication has its place (in some niches more than others), I consistently get a much higher ROI from my presell articles.

Not everyone is good at writing a quality presell article that gets ranked, gets clicks, and converts readers to subscribers. For this reason many have turned to syndication, believing it's the only way of doing things. I prefer to keep my options open.

One doesn't rely on EZA or other directories for syndication, though, Jeremy. Sure, such directories can facilitate some "passive syndication", but one will normally always go out there and contact site owners directly, too, and promote/submit one's articles to them that way.

In that case, EZA often becomes little more than a convenient portfolio of one's work, where the articles are pre-formatted in a way that makes them all ready for republication (whereas, of course, the same articles on your own site would not be, since they won't have your resource-box links, etc).

And it's about diversification of one's traffic sources. One article that generates referral-traffic from 20 different sites on which it is published is inherently "safer" than 20 articles reliant on harnessing traffic through the search-engine ranking potential of the small number of directories (or from the same single one) on which they reside, no? And it usually is a small number, because 99% of directories are no good for this "bum marketing" style of approach, anyway: EZA, Articles Base, GoArticles and maybe a small handful of others, but that's about it. The rest make your articles no easier to rank than if you were attempting to do it on your own site. (And I'd now even question the usefulness of those I've just mentioned, in light of recent algorithmic changes at Google).

Hey Guys... Good to see the both of you contributing to this discussion.

First to Dave's point:

Article marketing is simply one more marketing tool.

Article syndication is simply a strategy that provides a lot of potential to the article marketing tool.

Getting published in a directory does not offer me the same bang for the buck that syndication to high-traffic websites and high subscriber-count newsletters bring. Getting syndicated to a website with a lot of traffic or a newsletter with lots of active subscribers brings with syndication a huge opportunity to see a huge reward for the work we have done.

Paid advertising by far is more consistent and reliable than article marketing.

Yet, article marketing brings with it the possibility of delivering a lifetime worth of high-quality advertising for the cost of writing and distributing the article.

When you write for the approval of an article directory, the bar is actually pretty low.

When you write for the approval of a publisher who might syndicate your content, the bar is quite a bit higher.

When I write an article, I always strive to get syndicated. If my article fails to achieve syndication in high-value websites and newsletters, I consider my article a failure.

What I may consider a failure, many more people will consider the pinnacle of their success. Different strokes for different folks.

If my article fails to reach the goals I have set for it, then I am left with only those benefits that "article directory marketers" profess:

• a back link that may or may not have value in Google;
• an article that "might" get some placement within Google;
• an article that could generate a decent amount of Click-through Traffic (CTR) on the smaller volume of traffic that an article directory will create for the article.

The business model that we use is not relevant to the discussion, because article marketing is simply a tool, and article syndication is a strategy used for our article marketing.

Article marketing, with or without article syndication, is only one marketing tool that I use in my marketing strategy.

My business is not defined by my marketing strategy, just as your business could never be defined by your marketing strategy either.


To Jeremy's point:

Article syndication truly is a marketing strategy that relies on a third-party to be effective.

In order for article syndication to be truly productive, you must lead with content worthy of syndication, and your article must be found by those people who we want to syndicate our content.

When you utilize syndication as part of your strategy, there are many places in which the process can and will fail.

My view is that if you want certainty, pay for your advertising.

But, if you are willing to roll the dice on the big payoff that article marketing with syndication can deliver, then mosey up to the table and roll the dice!

You can never win that huge jackpot if you remain afraid to gamble on the outcome and throw the dice.

If you are happy with smaller rewards, then "article directory marketing" can provide those kinds of results for you. And if that is your marketing model, then more power to you.

But I like to win big, so I am willing to gamble on huge results. Therefore, I take more time to make sure that the articles I write reach the goals that I want for them: publication in major websites and publication in newsletters with huge subscriber lists.

But as I have said before: article marketing is just one tool in my marketing arsenal.

I do a lot of paid advertising to keep the steady stream of traffic moving my way. And when I employ article marketing in my marketing campaigns, I invest more into those projects, with the hope that I can win big in the article syndication game.

Honestly, I don't believe that you and I are that much different. We both employ a lot of marketing tools in our businesses, and we don't get wrapped up too much in one marketing model. We throw a lot of stuff against the wall and some of it sticks.

The only real difference I see between you and I is that I am willing to invest more into my content creation, because I am willing to gamble more resources to win big in the article syndication game.

As to EZA, I don't rely on it, nor do I use it often.

My view is that pushing articles into an article directory is a "passive" means of marketing an article. I call it "passive" marketing, because you put the article into the directory, then wait, hope and pray that someone will find your article and syndicate it.

I prefer a more "active" means of marketing an article. Instead of waiting for people to find my article, I want to go directly to the people most likely to publish my article and to offer it to them directly. I find that in doing so, my chances of seeing my article syndicated to a prime location is greatly increased. :p


I think the greatest hindrance in EZA's TOS is not the "25 reprints per year", because I don't think publishers actually follow that guideline.

Instead, I think the greatest hindrance in EZA's TOS is that they have editors who don't really understand what makes it possible to get good syndication on the article. They have so many rules in their Editor's Guide Book that go against what I know to be effective in my business.

An interesting example is this article that I could not get EZA to approve... It was an article titled, "The Six Degrees of Internet Marketing", based on the scientific concept of the "Six Degrees of Separation". The article even explained that in its very first paragraph.

The reason that article would not pass the EZA TOS is because I used the number "6" in its title, but did not have a 6-point bullet point inside of the article!!!!

When EZA hires editors who cannot extrapolate the greater meaning of the words used in the title of the article, then EZA is always going to be a hindrance to my article marketing campaigns. :p

That particular article syndicated well, and was a success for me in that it found publication on many power websites and large-audience newsletters.

Given the experience of EZA with "The Six Degrees of Internet Marketing", all I can say is:

I know this, Dave. Thanks, though. :p

I'm just pointing out to Terry that it's not as cut and dry as "article syndicators are full of snobbery" (as he said/implied), and that it's really just a case of "article directory marketers" not liking any of the flaws/dangers/pitfalls of their approach being brought to light for the benefit of those who are perhaps new to this whole online marketing game.

Those with less experience are entitled to be educated about the potential risks of a given method, aren't they? And if "we" don't do it, who will? It's rare that someone adopting of a certain approach/mentality will go to great lengths to criticise it, if it means essentially criticising their own judgement and "facing up to certain unwelcome realities".

I don't really agree with this. If you look at the number of threads in which article marketing is discussed, what "form" does it usually take? It's not the form "we" talk about. It is not syndication. It is article directory marketing - the process of leveraging another sites' authority for easier search-engine rankings and "faster traffic".

Now consider how many of these threads are of a negative nature. As I've already said, stuff like "Article marketing is dead", "EZA has been shot down, the sky is falling" (because for them it possibly is!), and so on.

It's frustrating when multiple terms with different definitions are used almost interchangeably, causing the distinction between various methodologies to become hazy and unclear to those who don't know any better. And not only is it frustrating to stand by and watch the situation worsening in front of you, it is saddening to think that so many people who perhaps don't post will read these threads and become another statistic - one that possibly won't even be counted because of their remaining forever anonymous, and their failing to succeed going completely unnoticed.

And once again, this is little to do with this thread. I'm just explaining why article syndicators often feel the need to draw attention to the fact that there is "another way", for the benefit of sheer volume of unfortunate souls who are forever failing to attain success with "article marketing", or who are continually stumbling from crisis-to-crisis, living a perpetual state of fear of everything crashing down around them every time Google rolls out a new algorithm update. :p

Anyway, time to do some reading, eat some garbage and get some beauty sleep. Night all.