A Publisher’s Rant – Why I Hate Your Articles
by: Halstatt Pires
I’m a publisher for numerous sites. I HATE many of your articles. Here’s my
rant and what you can do to change my mind.
Don’t Send Me Your Articles
First of all, don’t send me articles. I only take them from directories. The
purpose of this article is to give you a better idea of what I’m looking for in
articles. It is not to create an assault on my email account.
You’re Killing Me
Okay, "hate" is strong word and I probably shouldn’t use it. It is, however,
the word that comes to mind when I blow an hour in an article directory trying
to find usable articles!
As an Internet marketing firm, we beef up client sites by adding article
content. This means I handle the article sections of more sites than I wish to
admit. Because of this, I spend most of my time hunting for good articles. By
"good articles," I am talking about articles that are formatted and arranged in
a manner that makes them ready for publishing. I am NOT talking about what you
write, just how you organize and format it.
Building article pages on sites is a tedious process. If dealing with your
article is going to require me to make a lot of modifications, I will not
publish it. More so, I will NEVER look at your articles again. Despite your
captivating headline, I will simply bypass it as soon as I see your name.
Whether you realize it or not, you have a reputation with webmasters, publishers
and editors.
But I Need You
I hunt through article directories because I need your content. New content
equals happy visitors for the sites I work on. With the exception of a few of
you, however, I loath the very ground you walk on because you make my job
miserable. Yes, miserable. The problem I have with your articles is you create
them in a style and format that makes my teeth grind. Again, I am not talking
about WHAT you write about, just HOW you put it together.
When I look for articles every two days, I am trying to find something I can
slap onto the sites as quickly as possible. This means your article should be
formatted to make meta tagging and hyperlinking as easy as humanly possible.
Keep in mind that I am publishing hundreds of articles a day, not one or two.
Time is at a premium. If you make the job easy for me, I will snap up articles
as fast as you can post them.
Why Should You Care
You should care about my gripe because many of my peers feel the same way.
When we get together, bitching about your articles is a popular subject. That
hurts you from both a readership and link building perspective. You want to get
publicity from your articles and we want to give it to you. Comply with our
demands and we will paste you all over the net. Don’t and you can watch the
proverbial tumbleweed continue to roll by your site.
Now, you’re probably thinking none of this applies to you. In truth, I
suspect it applies to 90 percent of the authors publishing in directories. Yes,
this is even true for the authors publishing hundreds of articles.
I am going to publish a series of articles on this subject all at once. These
articles will cover in detail what I want to see in each section of your
article. I pray that you will read them and ease the misery of all of us lowly
publishers.
About The Author
Halstatt Pires is with the Internet marketing firm -
http://www.marketingtitan.com - a San Diego Internet marketing and
advertising company. |
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