Ezine Articles Premium: You Can’t Schedule for Day End

Posted on 12. Mar, 2009 by joefission in Article Marketing, Tips

As un-flashy as it might sound, I still like to drive a lot of traffic through article marketing — especially using the “Big 12.” It’s actually not 12 anymore, but that’s still how I refer to the more effective article directories.

Ezine Articles is clearly the best. I’ve had articles in other directories bring more traffic, but on average, my best results come from Ezine Articles. Several months ago, I started timing my articles so that they would appear on the “Most recent articles” section overnight. I had a moderate amount of success, and when I heard about their premium service, I decided to give it a shot.

The premium service features very fast trunaround time for article approvals, keyword statictics at month end, and the ability to schedule posts. So I figure, what the heck, I’ll schedule all of my articles to post right at the end of the day, so I’m virtually guaranteed top position overnight.

Ezine Articles Premium Didn’t quite work out that way. Here’s what I observed: My articles were released at approximately the time I specified, as indicated by their appearance in the category’s RSS feed. But they never made it into the most recent articles list.

Here’s what I think happened: the most recent articles list is the result of a cached SQL query that looks something like this (irrelevant parts removed):

SELECT Articles WHERE ScheduledDate > NOW, Approved = TRUE, 
ORDER BY Article ID (or ApprovedDate) DESC LIMIT 15;

Essentially, ‘grab the latest 15 articles that are approved and supposed to be posted to this category,’ where latest in this case means either the highest article ID or latest submission time. But the problem (I think) is that scheduled articles, even though they are not yet released, have an older approved time or a lower article ID because they were submitted earlier.

So when a post is scheduled, its publishing time would put it in the latest list, but because it was reviewed and approved by an editor hours, days, or weeks ago, it never makes it into this list. It does, however, make it into the RSS feed because the feed just pulls the latest articles. That’s what I assume happens behind the scenes.

So if you were thinking abouyt getting the Ezine Article premium membership inthe hopes that you’d be able to schedule your posts for these hot times, then you’re out of luck. I will say, however, that turnaround times for editor approval have been lightning fast. So although it can’t be automated in advance, if I begin submitting articles between 45 minutes and 2 hours before the final review time (5 PM CST), they’ve been sitting pretty overnight.

Tags: Article Marketing, ezine articles

18 Responses to “Ezine Articles Premium: You Can’t Schedule for Day End”

Vishal

08. Apr, 2009

Yes Joe, I really agree that EZA Premium is the game of Hit & Miss. If you are lucky enough to get your article on most viewed list then it is worth this membership otherwise its just a waste of your time and money.

Also it depends on the niche and particular categories to which we submit articles. So I think one should be thoroughly clear about why and how he is going to approach article publishing when having premium membership.

Vishal’s latest blog post..Guinness World Records Chooses ‘Super Mario Kart’ as the Most Influential Game in History
A. Waxler

14. Apr, 2009

Thanks for your input on EZA Premium. I had been thinking about joining in ordert o schedule posts for these “hot times”, but it looks like it may not be worth it. As for getting articles approved faster…I have notcied something very interesting lately. The more articles I post the faster the seem to get approved. I used to post roughly an article or two a week and it seemed to take several days for approval. Now that I post 2-3 articles a day the seem to get approved usually by the next day…or least within a couple of days
Sandy

23. Apr, 2009

Your articles are really enriching. A blogger newbie here. Loves your clear and concise reviews of the various products. Thank you!!
FN

29. Apr, 2009

Do people actually go to the ezinearticles latest posts section?

I can’t see why anyone would do that, aren’t we posting there to get the flow on traffic and links?

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Shaun Taylor

30. Apr, 2009

Absolutely, yes! Whether this means anything to you really depends on the type of site you operate. But you will get an immediate surge of traffic (e.g. 200 views vs. 20 in the first 24 hours a hot niche) and longer-term benefits like the most viewed section.

For good niches, I might get a 40 percent click-through rate on my articles. If the article presells without selling, I might get a 5-10% sales conversion on clicks. That works out to $100 to $200 per article overnight. I shoot for 3 articles a night, so the return for that hour or so effort is definitely worth it to me.

Shaun Taylor’s latest blog post..Sometimes We Need a Little Reminder
Diety

02. Jun, 2009

I agree, articles are great for driving the traffic. If you have time to write them. You could also try guest posting - this is even better.
partimalzemeleri

01. Nov, 2009

Your articles are really enriching. A blogger newbie here. Loves your clear and concise reviews of the various produ
Den Har

04. Nov, 2009

Hi, I just consider to join premium membership as EZA is very good for me to drive traffic. If the premium status make us can schedule to publish our article at the end of the day so that it can place at the most viewed overnight, I will join as soon as possible. But if there will depend on the approval time of the EZA, I won’t join this.

Anyway, thank to your sharing about this good information.

Kindly Regards, Den Har
Joe H

12. Nov, 2009

Joe, Great article I would never worked that out in a month of Sundays as I’m no coding expert. What sort of results do you get from getting in the recent articles section? does it increase traffic by 10%, 20% or more?
china hosting

12. Jan, 2010

Best investment I’ve made this year. Ezine Articles is awesome! It’s incredible.
gochi

18. Jan, 2010

I’ve been thinking of writing for a content website and I have Associated Content and Ezine on my list. Based on your recommendation, Ezine seems to be the better choice. No, I’m not going to buy a membership just yet, but I’d like to try and see if I can make it in the most read articles list.
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10. Feb, 2010

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John H

13. Mar, 2010

I agree, articles are great for driving the traffic. If you have time to write them…
Eric Giguere

20. Mar, 2010

I’m of two minds when it comes to EzineArticles premium. One advantage is that it certainly motivates you to write — otherwise you’re wasting the fee (not cheap if you pay monthly, try quarterly at least). But when your output slows to a trickle because of other things it’s somewhat annoying to realize you’re spending money on a service you’re not using.

But the quick turnaround time is heavenly, especially when there are problems with the articles. If you’re serious about article marketing, I do recommend it.
John Philip

02. Apr, 2010

I’m not a big article writing guy but I still use the free service
SFaith

02. May, 2010

Thanks for posting the amazing results you’ve gotten with this. I had no idea this kind of traffic bump and conversion rate was possible from Ezines.

I have only used the free service and I am happy with the sales I’ve made this way.

Now I’ll have to seriously reconsider the paid membership. It might be well worth the fee if I could make it work for me the way you’ve made it work for you.