Anyone else got this e-mail from EZine articles - I had to laff!

[drax2009]

Sorry for the long post but this really got my hackles up. I got this e-mail and have included my response - I feel a ban coming on now

Hi Dave,

After a recent review of your account it has come to our attention that many of your articles are lacking unique, informative, content.

Please review your account and delete what you feel fails to deliver on quality. Moving forward, we are asking that you proof all your articles and be sure they include unique content that provides value to your readers.

As a reminder:

Our minimum word count has not changed however, it is very difficult to deliver quality in ~250 words. A good size article is 400-500 words. This is not long and allows you enough space to get key points out. Your traffic will come when you build trust with your readers, not in delivering short articles that don't provide enough value. They may provide a burst of views for you in the short term but in the larger picture, you will lose trust and credibility with your readers and eventually, they will stop coming.

We also require all articles to be 100% original and unique. We will not accept further articles that contain the same information as your previous submitted articles, even if worded differently.

In the future, please be sure that each article is unique and that it delivers value so that you can build trust and credibility with your readers.

If you fail to clean out low quality, rehashed articles, you will forfeit your Premium Membership and be placed at Basic Plus Status.

My response - too much perhaps?

Ben,

I am very upset and angry to receive this e-mail. When I compare and contrast my articles with the vast amount of poorly written and grammatically incorrect rubbish that passes for content on EZA these days I take this kind of criticism very personally indeed. Perhaps you would care to point out to me how I can improve the 'quality' of my content and, more pertinantly, explain to me who decides what is and what is not, good content? My decent CTR rates is surely a testimony to the fact that people are at least interested in the information that I am passing on.

If this is a general clamping down then the number of authors receiving this e-mail must be significant, or am I being singled out? It saddens me that, after many years of taking content from people, and making money from it, not to mention having your loyal customers pay for the priviledge of faster approval (of which I am one), EZA deems it necessary to turn its back on the very marketers who made it such a popular service in the first place. C'est la vie.

If my status is revoked back to Basic Plus, I will, of course no longer pay for a Premium membership although given the attitudes of EZA staff these days I doubt anyone will worry about another piece of lost business.

I will, of course, continue to try and improve my offerings but after all, I wont hide the fact that I am spending money with you every month in order to make it back. Thats what we do in business. I would advise you that, before sending out threatening emails like this in the future that it would be a good idea to prune out all of the absolute detritis that passes for content from the site - I refer to articles that are barely even English, let alone informative. Search for them, they are not hard to find.

Sorry if this is an overly inflammatory response but I feel very strongly about this.

Regards

Dave

 

[richjerkoff]

They probably got a bollocking from Google saying that they are allowing too many crap articles and if they don't clean up their act they will drop in rankings. Just protecting their own back.

 

[drax2009]

Yeah your both right, just pi$$es me off - felt better tho'

 

[mirrorer]

They probably got a bollocking from Google saying that they are allowing too many crap articles and if they don't clean up their act they will drop in rankings. Just protecting their own back.

This is not possible

 

[theleadsource]

I am also a premium publisher with ezine and my articles, like yours, are generally shorter in order to get the reader to the resource box and my links.

I didn't get that email but I did have a bunch (43 actually) get removed from the most read section because they were less than 400 words.

Now, I just write the articles so the length is no less than 400 words and play the game that way. Although I am ticked that they removed those articles from the most read section, it appears that they did that to any article under the 400 word threshold.

It's just time to retool and work their program that way.

And I agree about the lack of quality that you mentioned in your email to Ben... ezine has some real stinkers in their database.

 

[Biscut]

This is not possible

Why is this not possible? Google did this to Squidoo. Who's to say Google won't do this to any other site they feel is providing useless or spam content that contributes to a bad user experience.

They banned a large number of Adwords accounts for one reason or another. These are the people who give them money!!! If they're willing to drop paying customers they sure as hell will drop organic listings that they feel don't meet their level of quality.