Ezine Articles is Banning People Like Crazy, Are YOU Next?

Ezine Articles is firing Premium Members as not being a good fit. Will you be next? If you're not delivering real value in your articles--i.e., useful information that people can actually benefit from--then you're likely to be targeted. Why risk having your account downgraded or have your articles rejected or banned from Ezine's site?

Prepare for my rant--not against Ezine Articles, but against the junksters who waste my, and your, valuable time.

I'm going to provide the source of the controversy that's raging over this, and I'll weigh in right now with my own firm position on the matter: If you're a junk marketer/spammer or completely clueless newbie who's trying to sell the crap that we all see in our spam folders every day, or, you use "articles" you got from some free "15000 niche articles mega-pack" without working them over and making them truly useful (yes, it's OK to use them, just turn them into something useful and don't copy them verbatim), you deserve to be banned from Ezine Articles.

I'm all for what Ezine Articles is doing. Hell, I'll even volunteer to help! I'm tired of wasting my time on junk: yes, junk from newbie marketers or just completely clueless, greedy idiots who jump on every offer they see on Twitter, Facebook, etc. and then spam everyone about them; junk from Squidoo and Hubpages spammers who think they can write bogus "reviews" and somehow get me to buy some useless product; and, junk in my email from spammers who think I'm stupid enough to believe that I can actually lose 100 pounds by eating berries or drinking the juice from same.

Mind you, I don't fall for any of this junk, but it takes a click to delete it. One click takes one second. If I have to deal with 1000 of these things, that's almost 20 minutes of my life that has been wasted. And I don't appreciate that. I'm a busy guy and can spend my time doing much more valuable things.

Read and heed what Chris Knight had to say in the blog just a few days ago:

"We’ve been firing an average of 2 Premium members every day now as not being a good match. In some cases, we’ve had to fire members who were Premium, got fired, bought again and then had to be banned from Premium membership. We’ve had members plead to pay any price for speed or to be unbanned. One guy yesterday offered us $36k to accept his articles on top of our Premium membership fee with one exception: He wanted us to accept derivative content. No way!

"Key Issue: Our team has been at great odds with ourselves because we want to deliver excellent service to our Premium members, yet a high percentage of our Premium members are not ideal EzineArticles members. We’ve essentially accelerated the speed at which our worst members can submit low value, thin content [emphasis added] into our system."

Later in the post, he explains further:

"Our next big pass at curbing low-value content submissions will come in the form of banning certain types of content that are currently in too high of market supply (think “Acai berry” type articles) and other commonly spammed articles with highly derivative content (think penis enlargement, get your ex back, dating articles, some types of finance articles). We’ve been slow to reach this point because we’re looking for ways to allow legitimate good ideal members to submit content on these topics while singling out the gamers who only want to submit really thin low value content [emphasis added]."

What do YOU think?

Cheers!
Ken "The IM Geek" Harthun

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ahmet asar on November 19, 2009 at 3:48pm: All of your concerns are valid.

I would like to introduce our new niche articles directory that you can be part of.

We are a new article directory specialized in hot niche topics. Feel free to submit your article to our directory. We do proactive promotions for our content (submitted articles).
Ezine Articles Submission Directory - Massive Exposure for Quality Niche Articles
BuzzingNiches.com is an online human edited niche articles directory for both publishers and authors, started in the year of 2009. Our goal is to become a leader in the world of online publishing by providing syndication services to website owners and ezine publishers.

Quality free content for publishing on websites and ezines. Submit your articles today and get seen by search engines ,publishers and readers.
Excellent hub linking publishers and article authors. All articles submitted are manually reviewed. BuzzingNiches.com is one of the web's leading FREE CONTENT article directories, Submit articles, search and find free website and ezine content.
In addition visitors to BuzzingNiches.com will find a huge online resource of free informative articles covering a wide variety of subjects.

http://www.buzzingniches.com; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Shirley Landram on November 24, 2009 at 7:01pm: I agree those types of e-mails are very annoying. Ones for penis enhancement when I am female. Hot girls available and I don't swing that way. Dating sites that I have no interest in. I have gotten the same e-mail from several people about some 60 year old company that needs workers. Not interested. Even tried unsubscribing to different things but they still keep coming. I am just hoping it can stop. I am a business person and have no time for garbage.
Thank you for letting me vent.

Shirley Landram; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dom Mogavero on November 25, 2009 at 6:08pm: As we all know, there is a product produced in the USA called SPAM. It is often referred to as "spare parts animal meat". Regardless of what it may really be, its reputation as a poor quality food is well known. It is no surprise then, that the crap emails we get are referred to as SPAM!!!

Poorly written emails are bad enough to receive, but the quality of what is being offered in those same emails is downright insulting. It is unfortunate that there are those using this and other avenues to prey on folks just to make a buck.

This business should be about quality, and if one doesn't possess that, they should get out, or be taken out.

Thanks Ken for bringing this to the forefront and taking a stand. With more people who support quality, and getting rid of the trash, all of us in this business will benefit, and so will the market place.

Dom Mogavero; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ken Harthun on November 25, 2009 at 6:40pm: Dom, thanks for your kind words. Being an IT security geek amongst my many other hats, I maintain email accounts that I purposely don't filter so I can monitor the state of SPAM and what content is being sent. It's unfortunate that because of those spammers who claim to be "Internet marketers" and send out streams of useless junk just to con a sucker out of a few bucks, those of us who are committed to quality products and honest dealings suffer. Some people consider Internet marketers to be even lower forms of life than buy-here-pay-here used car salesmen.

Over the years, I have answered thousands of technical questions and saved hundreds of people from wasting their hard-earned money on useless software, bogus "tech support" and bad, but well-meaning advice from their friends. I've received many sincere thanks in the process. I never charged anyone a dime, but I've never failed to receive enough in voluntary donations to keep my site up and running.

People appreciate quality when they see it.

A favorite science fiction author of mine, L. Ron Hubbard, once said this in an interview about how he approached his writing: "So learn this as a first lesson about life. The only successful beings in any field, including living itself, are those who have a professional viewpoint and make themselves and ARE professionals."

I think that's the attitude this business needs.

Cheers!
Ken "The Internet Marketing Geek" Harthun
ken@kenharthun.biz
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859.652.3596 (Google Voice)

P.S. My new site, "Ask the Internet Marketing Geek" will be launching soon. Sign up for the list to be notified when it launches and get some freebies and good tips in the meantime.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Shaun Lindbergh on November 27, 2009 at 1:49am: That's very good news for good writers. Addressing both ends of the Ezine Articles pipeline, entry and premium, should have a significant positive impact.

P.S. How does the posting of internal links work on the blogs? I understand there's a Sta.rtup policy against it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Trisha Dingillo on November 30, 2009 at 5:10pm: I think this is great, no more junk! Have you noticed the icons on every listing in a google search? (comment, promote, remove) Click the little X and poof! the listing is gone. Its a great feature, and its been there for about a year i think, so Im assuming google is using the data. lets kill bad content together, remember to click the x :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Lynne Gordon on November 30, 2009 at 6:50pm: Hi Shaun, It is my understanding that an internal link in your blog is referencing another of your blog posts, much as internal linking on one of your webpages is a link to another page within your website.

Lynne Gordon; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Craig Nathanson on December 7, 2009 at 9:17pm: Thanks for the information.

People who spam with articles are banning. Not everyone. I have over 100 articles at ezines.

http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Craig_Nathanson

Thanks,
Craig; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Craig Nathanson on December 7, 2009 at 9:19pm: thanks for the link. I will submit too.

Craig Nathanson; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ken Harthun on December 7, 2009 at 9:19pm: That's great, Craig. Obviously, you are one of the good guys. Keep it up and the best of success to you!

Cheers!
Ken "The Internet Marketing Geek" Harthun
ken@kenharthun.biz
Follow me on Twitter
Friend me on Facebook
859.652.3596 (Google Voice)

P.S. My new site, "Ask the Internet Marketing Geek" will be launching soon. Sign up for the list to be notified when it launches and get some freebies and good tips in the meantime.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Clint Steiner on December 17, 2009 at 7:10pm: Yup I am ready for the firing to begin...that just means the good quality stuff moves up in the rankings and gets seem more often.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ken Harthun on December 17, 2009 at 7:53pm: Yep. I'm glad to see it, too. Far too much useless spammy crap out there.

Cheers!
Ken "The Internet Marketing Geek" Harthun
ken@kenharthun.biz
Follow me on Twitter
Friend me on Facebook
859.652.3596 (Google Voice); ▶ Reply to This