Article Marketing is About as Dead as a Hundred Dollar Bill
So I was talking about article marketing the other day with Isabella (who frequently comments here). She told me that she noticed a lot of people who were once trying to get all the low ball $2 article writers, were now waking up to the realization that they couldn’t use that tired, re-hashed content everywhere anymore.
People are looking for quality content – and they’re willing to pay for it. But why?
Why the sudden a change from 250 words of fluff, to “can you make this sound really professional?”
Clues From the Larger Article Directories
I recently started hearing some rumbling over at eHow. eHow is an article site that offers an Adsense revenue share arrangement to its contributors. Whenever someone clicks on an Adsense ad in your article, you get a cut.
Anyway, eHow has been taking drastic efforts to clear the site of spammy, poorly written articles. They have a certain guideline that you have to work within, and if you deviate, they’ll delete the article. Yeah… even if said article is making a shit load of money.
When I started seeing eHow getting progressively tougher, a little signal went off in my mind. eHow makes a ton of cash from Adsense clicks.
So if they’re cleaning house it’s because:
- They want their articles to continue to rank well in Google. Quality content means consistent ranking for a long time.
- By maintaining quality content they keep people on the site longer, and they keep people coming back. More Adsense clicks.
- They can outdistance themselves from the other schmuck article directories that aren’t maintaining quality control. They want to be known as a no BS quality article site. Period.
So I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear that a couple of days ago Chris Knight – owner of EzineArticles.com – announced that they’re cracking the quality whip a lot harder over there.
EzineArticles, like eHow, is Adsense dependent. Though because EzineArticles was a lot more lenient in what they accepted, the site basically degenerated over the years. Articles used to get Google rank in a matter of hours at EzineArticles. That’s not been the case over the past few years.
But they’re waking up now. Perhaps they too are watching eHow’s evolvement, and deciding that they must up the ante significantly if they don’t want their Adsense cash cow to be slowly lured away by the sexy eHow bull.
Now EzineArticles wants submissions to be 400-600 words. They don’t want short and sweet anymore. All of those little 250 word hit-and-run articles that don’t say anything – no more!
I’m personally ECSTATIC to see these changes.
Happy as a lark, you hear me!
It means that you’re going to see a resurgence in the way Google treats sites that are self policing themselves. I already see it with eHow.
It means that you’re going to see the value of your articles going up again.
It means less competition.
It means SEO content writers will have to change to match these higher standards. And if you do write SEO content, now’s the time to make sure you understand all these new rules so you can be prepared to tell your clients.
What you’re about see happen in article marketing is the exact same thing that happened with the dot com crash.
Tagged with: article marketing
Filed under: Bullet Point
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Sorry to hear you’ve been sick. I’m in the middle of a few projects and I’m absolutely *drowning* in the production process. It’s all good – another week of pushin’ it and I should be laughing maniacally soon
Woo – I got mentioned! On the great Queen DBO’s blog? *fans self* OK, ego moment over.
Moving on – yes, I really think that people are waking up to the fact that $5 for 500 word articles are not cutting it anymore. I’ve explained to my little circle that these articles are usually more expensive in the long run. When’s the last time you’ve purchased a $5 article that didn’t require massive editing? That didn’t have to be rewritten? That passes Copyscape?
The articles that people find the most intriguing are the ones that have great lead-ins, that flow beautifully, and feel more cohesive and put together than a crochet blanket.
Can you buy a $5 quilt? Sure you could – but I highly doubt it would be of fantastic quality. The work that goes into one of those masterpieces is similar to what goes into a good article. Open up a magazine sometime – that’s where we’re going online. I already see it, and I highly doubt someone’s going to realistically write a piece of that length, style, and depth for $0.01/word.
I knew you were busy. Busy is good though. Can’t wait to hear the maniacal laughing.
You make such excellent points in regards to the editing that goes on with an el cheapo article.
A lot of IM’ers have this fantasy that they can get everything for cut rate prices, or put forth BS work, and make a million dollars overnight. (yawn!)
As with any other form of online marketing, if you do things right the first time, you don’t have to worry about doing it 100 times.
Writing a few really good articles is better than distributing 200 articles that really don’t say anything. The Google rank for the good articles alone makes the extra effort worth it. I’ve got 6-7 year old articles that still deliver traffic. Quality pieces, not articles that could lose street credibility with the next Google update.
So maybe I’m old fashioned in that way, but so be it.
Alexis
I recently started writing articles for EzineArticles. I thought it was funny how much they emphasize quality content and an extensive review process, while a quick look through their archives turned up more spam than you can shake a stick at.
I think 400 words is a perfectly fair minimum. It’s possible to communicate something of value in fewer words, but it just doesn’t happen often. Setting the bar at 400 will hopefully scare away the people who can’t be bothered to put in a modicum of effort.
Thank goodness! Although I’ve stayed quite busy with my $15 to $30 prices, there are still a lot of people who wonder why I don’t write for $5. Quality writing is always going to be more valuable…and I’m glad that Ezine articles is starting to see that. I agree with Hunter…what I’ve seen there has been downright pitiful.
Can’t wait to see more of this series! And huzzah for quality writing coming back to the forefront!