It has been a long time since my last post but I was very busy with so many projects. I am back and I was following the news.
Google finally attack those content farms.
One of them was ezineArticle. I showed it before. They are a content farm. Today they send an e-mail to bring more quality in their network.
This is the e-mail:
We are not stating anything new when we say that quality matters in your articles.
It does.
It always has.
That’s why we’ve made some tough decisions lately and instituted some changes that will impact you immediately. The end user-experience is important to us and should be to you. The value you provide in your articles matters since it’s not only an investment in your future as a credible author, it’s an investment of time to your reader. Getting traffic today isn’t worth the cost if your reader quickly realizes that you’re not in it to help them – that your intent was selfish – and they’re gone as quickly as they came.
In an effort to help you succeed even more as an expert author in your niche, we’ll be moving forward with 5 changes that will be effective immediately. This is round one.
Effective Immediately:
Increased Quality Checks – We’ve doubled the review time per article that our Editors are allowed to focus on format, grammar, spelling, and consistency.
WP Plugin and API – We will no longer be accepting article submissions via these tools.
Deadlink /Link Diagnostic Center – If your article contained a dead link, we previously would unlink it within 35 days of your first notification and send you 5 notifications to encourage you to fix it. This process will change and if after 2 weeks your link has not been fixed, we will unlink it. You can always edit your article at a future time to update your link.
Basic Plus Membership level – You were previously allotted 25 article submissions in this membership level if you did not meet the Platinum membership requirements at the end of your first 10 article submissions. This level was established to help you gain the additional experience and understanding to achieve the Platinum level (quality with quantity). What seemingly occurred was a vicious cycle of the continuous adding of 25 submissions if you still did not meet the requirements. This is no longer effective.
The standard 25 now becomes 10. We’ve done this so that we can monitor your progress more efficiently and help coach you on what it will take to earn Platinum. It also weeds out those who fail to or unwilling to learn. If after those 10 additional submissions we feel that you are not gaining momentum, you will not be allotted any more submissions and we will no longer accept future article submissions from you. Your value in using our platform is to increase the effectiveness of your writing. While not always an easy feat for non-writers, we all need to learn.
New Minimum 400 Word Count – We’ve been talking about this for a few years now and made the decision that effective immediately, we’ve increased the minimum word count to 400. While we know that we run the risk of frustrating a few experienced high quality authors who can write well in fewer words, we feel that it is the best choice to make. We have not discounted the fact that quality can come in 250-399 words and we are working on an idea that spawned four years ago (but never became live) where we’ll offer another membership level and reward those authors who define the high standards of quality. In fact, along with other amenities, this membership level will be hypersensitive to quality and NOT quantity. More on that will be discussed in the following weeks.
For now, these are the changes that will immediately be going into effect. Watch this Blog in the coming days and weeks for more information.
First it is clear, I was right, ezineArticle is a content farm and this e-mail prove it.
Can they improve their quality?
I do not think so because money will always be a problem.
Mahalo tackles this problem by paying their authors.
Therefore they make sure the quality is there. I was a big Mahalo hater before but now they raised the bar. It is not perfect but it is 10 times better than the average.
I will wait a little bit but right now I cannot recommend ezineArticle.
My best alternative is wordpress.com with your own domain name.
