Is Ezine articles still effective?

Alexander,

Lexy has given you sound advice and her post confirms my own experience.

I personally think that the benefit from posting to article directories comes by way of those web site owners and digital publishers that read your article and in turn publish it on their own sites. Said another way, you are after wider distribution of your content rather than exposure to niche prospects at this stage of your marketing.

Original, fresh, authoritative content in your niche, especially articles of 800 to 1500 words, seems to be the "sweet spot," in my own experience, for getting your articles re-published on other important sites.

The very best to you,

Steve

same here. My traffic increase daily because of it.

Not really? I doubt if anyone posting above seriously or strongly disagrees with you?

I do actually find it worth dumping an additional, afterthought copy of each article in EZA after everything else I do with them, simply because I do still often get a bit of extra syndication out of it, which can help; it takes only a minute to do (I don't have anything like as many articles as you - just 20-25 per month!); and it is free, after all? That's one of my favorite prices ...

No, it's free to use.

(The authors of the articles don't get paid for submitting them there, and don't have to pay the site, either.)

The site makes its money (mostly) from the AdSense clicks of all the people who don't make it as far as your site-link in the resource-box. In other words the site's objective for their traffic is directly opposed to that of the people unwise enough to put articles there in an attempt to attract customer traffic to their own sites (who would obviously be far better off attracting those readers directly to their own sites in the first place).

If you're asking as a potential re-publisher of their article-stock, then the articles are free to use and to re-publish (and that's what they're there for), as long as you do so in accordance with their terms of service. The important ones are to be aware that you must use the entire article, not amend or alter it in any way, and you must include the author's resource-box with its link(s) in clickable format.

We post quite a few of those articles on our web site and it has had a positive results with traffic. Even gained ranking on specific keywords and search terms.

I also wrote a few on Ezinearticles and it used to earn some nice affiliate income. For me at least, not the case anymore, though I don't submit new articles.

The easiest way to get your articles syndicated is to first write articles worthy of syndication. I'm not being facetious here. You must write within the expectations of your targeted publishers.

You may get the occasional passive syndication from simply posting articles on EZA, but the real power of EZA has almost always been its name recognition and for leveraging your author status, profile, article portfolio etc.

And rather than "dumping an additional, afterthought copy" (LOL Alexa!), consider using EZA as a marketing tool for showcasing your articles to potential publishers. EZA does provide a perceived sense of credibility among publishers. It is well established for sourcing articles.

As part of a post-Panda marketing strategy, EZA can be very effective, even more so today than it was in its "hay day" of SEO spammers. But instead of passively waiting for publishers to find your articles, you must market your articles to find prospective publishers in very much the same way you promote your products.

Keep in mind, there are lots of publishers looking for quality content just as you are looking for publishers. It's not essential to submit articles to EZA, but I highly recommend it especially when first starting out. Each of my articles get picked up passively by new syndication sources on average about once or twice a week.

Submit your articles to EZA and begin building up a portfolio. Also, have a complete profile of your expertise and accomplishments on EZA as well. This is important for reasons given below.

It may seem trite, but publishers do pay attention to these details and weight their choices significantly on author profile and status along with article quality and relevance. Using EZA as a showcase for your writing ability, you are prepared to approach potential syndicators.

What has always worked astoundingly well for me for the last 12 years was to include an article and link to one of my EZA author profiles and portfolio of previously published niche-relevant articles when querying prospective publishers. My article marketing actually never had anything to do with ranking in the SERPs or SEO.

Even though minimum standards for article acceptance are quite low, having an author status of "expert" or "Diamond Expert" (oooh, yeah!) does get attention. Seriously, it can be very effective when querying prospective publishers to include a link to your EZA articles and profile with this recognition.

No article marketer is going to give Ezine Articles unique content, Sarah. They neither require nor expect it.

Publishing articles on your own site first, before submitting them to an article directory, is one of the very few absolute fundamentals of all models of both article marketing and article directory marketing. Giving EZA unique content is a no-gain ploy, compared with all the alternatives: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872

And those are the ones to avoid.

For obvious reasons: if they came into existence only recently, then they're obviously not the ones that potential publishers of articles are familiar with, where they routinely look for content when they need it. That one is called Ezine Articles.

Once your article is in Ezine Articles, there's no more to be gained by putting it into any other article directory as well. Publishers look in EZA first. It's the one everyone's heard of. End of story.

(The one possible exception to that might be if you find one that's specific to articles in your niche only. But I've never found one of those, myself.)

Interesting "first post" from a new member.

Welcome to the Warrior Forum, Marion.

That isn't the idea at all. You've missed out the "middle 99%" of it - all the things you do after publishing the article on your own site and before putting it in EZA. Those things - everything that you've missed out - are the things that make it "article marketing". What you've described above isn't article marketing.

If what you've said above is your idea of "article marketing" or "content syndication" then yes - that certainly won't work for you, just like it doesn't work for anyone else!

If, on the other hand. you want to see what article marketing actually is, this might help you: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794

What you've described above is stone dead, and every real article marketer here has been saying so for years.

Here's the point you've missed: that isn't "article marketing" (and it obviously isn't "content syndication")!

It's probably not for you, then: like many of the methods which large numbers of successful Warriors use to make their livings, it's not for everyone.

Internet marketing's a bit like that. I sometimes glance at hundreds of threads here, posted by members whose business models are dependent on Google, one way or another, for their primary traffic, and I just say to myself "Well, this certainly isn't for me" (and to be honest, I sometimes even think to myself "I hope all my competitors will try this kind of business" ). Different things suit different people.

It's interesting, though, how over the years whole successions of new members with something of a bee in their bonnet about their perceptions of potential problems with article marketing register here and make their very first posts here pointing them out, always from an SEO-related perspective, even though article marketing has nothing to do with SEO.

It's also interesting that all of them seem to misunderstand exactly the things that you misunderstood in your initial post above, and in exactly the same ways, and even express their misunderstandings in strikingly similar wording.

It's all a curious coincidence, but ultimately not one that detracts an iota from the successful marketing activities of the large and growing numbers of Warriors making our livings this way.

Anyway, now we've all appreciated that you originally described something that notoriously doesn't work at all, and that you were under the total misapprehension that what you described was actually "article marketing"(!!), and that misunderstanding's been explained in some detail, perhaps it will be a little clearer both to yourself and to others reading the thread.

Here's a recent one: http://www.warriorforum.com/member-c...ndication.html (it's just a fairly typical case study by someone who set out to make about $1,500 over a particular period of some weeks late last year, and actually made a little over $3,500 during the period, as I remember ).

But again, Marion, I think it's probably not for you: given your thinking about the subject, I really do think you might be better advised to ignore it completely and seek other ways of making money from internet marketing. I really wouldn't let it take up any more of your time at all, given how "shaky" you seem to find it.

I do not think Ezine is any more effective now, even if quality articles from ezine do not provide link juice now, so no SEO value to me at least.
Cheers

Thanks Gavin, there were some really good suggestions in there and great ways of re-purposing content. I'd hit the thanks button, but I don't have one. It's refreshing to have suggestions that are clear to understand and easily actionable.

For "article directory marketing"? No, absolutely useless.

For the last-afterthought stage of "article marketing" (i.e. to get some additional, passive-only syndication of your articles to relevant sites and ezines with pre-targeted traffic)? Yes, effective, still, if you know how to use it.

I'm making some money by using it, and so are plenty of other people. (It represents only a small part of my income, I'm sure, but it's free to do, and I have the articles anyway, so why not?).

Seriously? for SEO, I don't think Google take that stance, I think you'll find it's the polar opposite.

Here's the thing...

As a publisher, I still use EZA. But not for random articles by random writers. I'm looking for writers I can trust to go back to when the need arises. In other words, I'm not looking for content. I'm looking for talent.

If someone did as myob suggests and offers me content, credentialed with an impressive portfolio and profile on a third party site like EZA, he's going to get my attention. If the style and content are a good match for my publication and audience, there's a very good chance of syndicating more than one article over time.

The SEO folks would be very disappointed, as those articles would most likely be published in an email pub or behind a password for subscribers.

As a writer, I have article on EZA from 9 years ago that are still generating clicks to sites that no longer exist. I should probably pull them down, but it isn't a high priority for me right now.

And for those who doubt that EZA still has some rep among publishers, let me tell you. We see the threads whining about how tough EZA editors are, same as you do. But to us, that, as Martha Stewart likes to say, is a good thing...