Don’t Waste Your Time Writing Bad Articles
Posted by Editing StaffFor every article that we review and accept here at Content Caboodle, over 35,000 to date, it seems like we review and reject 2 others; and it’s not as though our submission guidelines are very strict compared to other article publishing venues.
The sad truth of it is that a lot of people have a very short-sighted view of article publishing, and don’t realize that it can be utilized for much more than just a cheap backlink for their sites. By seeing article publishing as just a means to cheap backlinks, they justify submitting garbage articles, often written (or spun) by software, and that aren’t readable by humans at all.
I’m not writing this to pick on anyone’s strategies or methods, but as an editor for Content Caboodle who, like all of the editors here, is willing and eager to help authors get more value from their efforts, I feel it’s part of my job to inform people who submit those type of articles that they are wasting all of their article publishing time, which can never be a good thing for any person or business.
The bottom line is even if it only took someone 10 seconds to have a software program spit out some keyword rich paragraphs, if those paragraphs don’t make for a readable article when you submit it here for review, then they’ve wasted that 10 seconds, plus the time it took to copy and paste the article into our submission form.
A Better View of Article Publishing
Sure, backlinks from author’s resource boxes are a primary consideration when publishing articles, but reaching new groups of human eyeballs with your content and perspectives should be equally important to you.
And it isn’t just the traffic from the article directories like Content Caboodle that you have a chance to impress with your articles, but also the traffic from thousands of eZines and Newsletters out there that often use “well written” articles from sites like ours as filler content.
To demonstrate how writing the best articles that you possibly can could benefit you, I have a real-world example to offer.
I’m personally into exotic pets. I love animals, and I’ve always enjoyed having very unique pets in my home. and I belong to several eZines and discussion groups that focus on exotic animals/pets.
Over the past 2 years I’ve seen numerous articles taken straight from Content Caboodle and with the proper attribution links attached, used in several of those eZines/Newsletters and linked to from multiple discussion groups. In fact, the articles of one author here at Content Caboodle, TamanduaGirl have appeared over and over again.
And what’s really interesting is that TamanduaGirl only has 5 articles published on our site, but they are each very well written, highly informative and incredibly entertaining. And because of that, eZine and Newsletter publishers gobble them up because they know their subscribers will love the content.
With only a handful of articles (and we all wish TamanduaGirl would publish more soon), this author has reached tens-of-thousands of real human readers directly on our site, and I’d be willing to bet twice as many or more from the various eZines and Newsletters that have reused those articles.
Not too bad for publishing just a handful of articles, huh?
While at the same time, we also have authors on Content Caboodle who have submitted dozens and dozens of articles, but have reached just a couple hundred readers with them on our site, and in all likelihood haven’t ever had their articles reused by eZine/Newsletter publishers.
The difference is strictly in the quality of the articles
You don’t have to be Ernest Hemingway or Norman Mailer to get great results with your articles online, you just have to put in a minimal effort to make them informative and entertaining. The web is full of “noisy content”, fluff pieces and even software spun garbage. That means that there is a ton of competition for mediocrity out there, but it’s also an opportunity for you, because it also means that with just a little bit of effort anybody can make their work stand out from the crowd.
Read your own articles before submitting them and ask yourself, “being interested in this topic would I be glad to have found and read this article, or would I feel cheated by it?”
If you truly believe you would be happy to have found and read it, then your article is ready for publishing.
