Did You See The Latest EZA Changes?...May GREATLY Affect CTR

Thanks Steven,

That's good to know.

My first reaction is that it shows where EZA's priorities lie - they don't care about the authors, only the money the authors can generate. But, it's really a double-edged sword. They need to treat authors with some respect otherwise they start losing fresh content. And they are among the fe sites that actually send physical products as a way of saying thank you.

After thinking about it, they can do just about whatever they want, however, they should send a notice out to every author (maybe they did). In effect, they are changing the article. This will gice every author the chance to pull their articles if they are not happy with the change. Kind of like being able to cancel a credit card if the terms change.

By making it Title, AdSense, Content; they are implying that the AdSense is part of the artilce. Look, the idea of Title, Content is as old as printing itself. People are conditioned that way. EZA isn't evil, but all in all, I think this particular change stinks.

All the best,
Michael

Well that sucks, lol. I guess I'll run a few tests to see if marketing on EZA is even any good any more.

It's definitely worth a shot. I may look into that later on as well. So many projects and clients right now though.

Hmm. I don't know when exactly this started (had to be within the last few days), but I have just checked on some CTR rates for established articles that get a lot of daily views. Sure enough, CTR has dropped noticeably on ALL of them. That sucks. But as someone above me mentioned, it's their property and they can do what they want with it. I might start focusing a bit more on my 2nd and 3rd directory choices, but honestly they still don't even come close to the juice I get from EZA.

So, deep breath, shrug of the shoulders, and soldier on.

John

Wow. Thanks for the heads up Steven I hadn't seen that. It definitely seems like that will decrease response rates for our articles. I'd be interested in seeing others' results as time goes on. As of this point -- I agree with Michael

Hey John,

I just wanted to say "thanks" because what you revealed has saved me some time. So we know CTR has dropped due to the change. Question now is can we make up for it through other means?

I wonder if longer copy would make a difference. I guess that's still something to test out and see.

Oh no, EZA becoming Squidoo'ish.

Maybe their Adsense earning are declining like majority of the people so they have to make adjustments.

Thanks Steven. I wonder when exactly this happened. I have also noticed what seems to be a big decrease in my views for this week in niches that were usually quite popular. I think it may have happened last week too. I thought maybe it was just flukes since my previous week was amazing.

Interesting. They are so strict on what they will accept then they seed it with AdSense. Could become to busy and confusing for visitors to stay, perhaps.

That's a bummer. When I submit articles it is mainly for link juice although I also enjoy the traffic I get from EZA (or maybe I should say "used to enjoy"). The only thing that comes close is Buzzle, but you can only have 3 articles in your queue at a time and it takes them forever to approve so it's really not that great of an option.

If you want better click throughs to your articles then consider website-articles.net because there are NO ads on the articles and the resource box is highlighted at the top plus you can have links in the last paragraph of the article along with the resource box. It costs $10 a month, but seeing the way EZA is going it might be worth it. I know it doesn't have a lot of link juice yet, but I can get my articles to rank pretty good if I give them some links. Not as good as EZA but maybe the overall traffic would be better due to higher CTR - sounds like a test is in order!

Lee

Wow! The articles look like cheap garbage now.

Thanks!

Look, EZA is a free tool to submit your articles and at the end of the day, EZA also wants to make money from those ads. Nothing wrong with that.

If you don't want to submit anymore articles with them, then that is your choice.

I don't know, maybe this is not bad thing after all.

Tal

I abandoned EZA some time ago. Terry H is right, you can do much better by posting the articles on your own websites. Times are hard and everybody is trying to squeeze as many pennies as possible. EZA is no different.

Another point...has anyone checked the quality of many of the articles posted to EZA lately? Unimpressive to say the least!

Calvin

They've made a business choice folks. They are allowed to do that.

What everyone needs to remember is that for each person that hates the new format and leaves EZA, there will be a hundred who stay and a hundred more who submit.

Might there be repercussions? It's possible. But on a large scale, not likely at all.

The thing no one wants to say is that EZA is being smart. When you have that much web real estate and exposure, it makes total (Ad)sense (pardon the pun) to capitalize on it.

My advice to everyone complaining: Stop worrying about their business choices and worry about yours.

Ken

Thank goodness I stopped doing bum marketing several months ago. I now use Wordpress to make my affiliate sales with. I still submit some to EZA; however it is only for backlinks.

Yikes, they look like those made for adsense sites now...which I guess is what they are becoming...really a shame.

But like someone else mentioned..try Exclusive Article Marketing Community it is owned by a warrior and the page layout is much better, $10 a month is pennies compared to all the lost sales from the now bigger leak on the EZA site.

I personally really like WA and have used it from the start...not to mention, I submit an article and most of the time its accepted that day, I expect that would change slightly with an influx of authors but still more than worth it.

When things change, you've got to change or be left with the dent in your bottom line.

Sylvia

Looks like a Made For Adsense site now.

you know what my hops at clickbank have decreased by at least 50% in the last few days. I have just under 600 articles driving traffic to my sales pages. I think this may have something to do with it. That sucks, but they are probably suffering from the recession as well and are doing whatever it takes to stay afloat.

I bet they will offer a different layout to the premium authors very soon!

Without me going to look, what's the limit on ad units on a single page?
Looks like EZA has at least 7 on their pages...

Be Well!
ECS Dave

Oh goodness, thanks for this notice. Now, i need to keep an eye on my stats.

The Adsense block after the title has definitely become bigger after the latest change. The article doesn't start until more than halfway down the page! Bad bad bad.

To be realistic, EZA will probably earn more in the coming months. They will get more clicks. Over the years, this will be a bad strategic move if it is not corrected soon.

One thing's for sure: the articles, as the way they look now, will drive more people away from not just our sites, but EZA's as well.

Just goes to show...DON'T put all your eggs in one basket.

Fabian

I have stumbled Stevens article - and twittered about it - and drawn the #HAHD community attention to it!

To expand on the the above post, I do get more than 30% of my traffic from EZA. Judging from the recent change, I expect a drop to at least 20%, meaning you may have to divert your time, energy and money into the other traffic sources that are working for you NOW.

Here are the list of things I will be expanding on:

1. Do more JV's

2. Expand PPC campaigns

3. Submit articles to other article directories

4. Put Video Marketing's SEO power to use

5. Expand Blog Marketing and SEO

6. Expand Banner Advertising

7. Take part in more giveaway events

In a nutshell, spend less time or money on article marketing and use those resources on other tactics that are working and expand on them.

You are probably not taking part in as many giveaway events as you can.

Your PPC keyword list is probably not as big as it can be.

You have probably not submitted your articles to as many directories or authority sites (think Associate Programs for affiliate marketing articles or even Evan Carmichael's site) as you can.

Now's the time to do all these things.

Failing that, you can always start a petition and hope for the best. I know I will take things into MY own hands.

Fabian

Well, for me, this is a real wakeup call. While I'm making decent money writing ezine articles, I know deep down that I'm not building anything for myself. And I'm certainly not creating passive income by ignoring my own virtual real estate. If I take a few days off from writing articles, my clickbank earnings tank. So really, I've just created a job for myself.

Working for article directories and web 2.0 sites may get you some cash in the short term, but you pay a price for it - and you'll never build any monentum that will produce residual income. Don't get me wrong, I value the traffic I can get from places like ezine, but lately it just seems as though I'm working twice as hard and making less money.

So from this moment on, I'm going to concentrate on my own websites, get back to creating content, grass-roots seo, backlinking, and so forth. I don't feel as though I have much choice.

Steve

This is an interesting thread on EZA.

Does anybody think this move will this add some energy to the eHow site?

Well, we didn't anticipate this reaction, but I will respond to some of the issues.

First, Steven... Maybe you never noticed before, but directly below the WORD COUNT, we had a 468 AdSense ad panel that included 2 vertical text ads within it. That's been below the word count and above the article body for more than a year now. It's not new.

The change we made is we went from 2 vertical text ads in that 468 spot to 3 horizontal text ads. Net effect is 1 additional text ad was added to the existing 2 text ads.

At any given time, we're running hundreds of tests. Always have. Most of the time, you don't notice them because they are subtle. This time, I think you noticed it because it forced the article body down a half inch lower on the page and some very low resolution monitors may not have as good of a user experience as those running 1024x768 or greater.

End-user experience is very important to us and something we're constantly evaluating.

Second, most marketers would say that a good CTR to receive on any ad campaign is between .5 to 1% CTR.

Our members CONSISTENTLY see 2-12% and most warriors see even higher CTR's. What I find odd is that some have come to expect us to deliver 20-30% CTR's and then cry foul if they get a measly 9-12% CTR. As competition continues to climb, expect overall CTR's to lower but I'd expect them to continue to beat normal direct mail campaigns: ie: Better than 1% CTR. This is not a promise as there are too many variables that effect CTR.

Keep in mind one of our top internal goals:

To be your HIGHEST non-search engine referrer of traffic.

Third, sorry... we didn't think this change would have a material impact on the traffic you receive from us. If we believed that, we'd have at least put a blog entry up about the test.

Fourth, we did lower the total ads being displayed on long word count articles by up to 3 less ads; but this change most likely won't impact the under 1000 word count article that most submit.

Lastly: Zeus66, you are right. We are constantly evaluating terabytes of data combined with member and user sentiment to figure out the right balance of getting every stakeholders needs met.

Everyone can be assured their voice is being heard and we'll be weighing your input, our members/users input along with our data/analytics to determine where to go from here.

Thanks Chris for your response - and your willingness to engage us here.

I was getting a bit worried!

I was seeing this a few days ago and wondering. I have read, more than once, that Adsense TOS will only allow three ads on a page. Yet, I see way more than that on EZA. What gives. I guess they must be special or something. But I didn't think anyone was big enough to get special treatment from Google. And I know that EZA isn't that big of a deal, is it?

EZA is a pretty big deal and they do get special treatment from google

i meant special adsense treatment not search engine results treatment. The top publishers get alot more options then the guy with a few niche sites. More ad blocks and different sizes then what is the standard.

WOW that's what the problem is about... I recently submitted a new set of articles - 10 articles on EZ and since then they have been steadily making me $50+ every single day. Suddenly $0. I haven't checked that EZ account as it is only a drop in the sea, but was wondering what happened. Your suggestion explains it all!

I think that the results being shared by intermediate to advanced article marketers in this thread tell the whole story...at least the story on which this particular thread is based.

I guess when you don't have 8,000,000,000 authors and 40 trillion articles to manage and compete with, the world is a MUCH better place!

Allen Graves

Here's what I don't understand:

Why don't they remove ads off the $97/mth account submissions?

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the post.

I think by looking at all these changes on test based content sites, I would focuf more on video and pod casting based content distribution to make more traffic for the time spent.

Would u agree?

I was thinking if it is possible for u put the link to the blogpost or video clip highlighting the same thing and share the link here.

It will help us share the word in twitter as well as other social media sites.

looking forward to hear back from you.

Regards,
-Gaj

I have been submitting more to amazines now and seeing what happens. Approval time is quicker and they rank well for may articles anyways. I still will use ezinearticles because i think that they are still the best and continue to gve me the most traffic then any other article directory.

Just seeing what happens if i diversify more.

Of the 585 articles i have published my CTR has never been under 16.25% and i just went back and checked and its now at 16.4 %.

Not great but hold steady, for me anyways.

Guys and girls, I noticed today that the number of ads at the top has dropped from 3 to 2. I'm not sure if it's for every article but that's what I'm noticing. That means the block is now smaller.

Fabian

I Have AN IDEA People!.....

On EZA where it asks for your feedback- it says says:

What's on Your Mind?

Please tell us how we should improve the EzineArticles membership interface

...Lets all Tell them how to improve by 'Not doing this new adsense format'- and going back to the old format:

If enough of us complain, they might get the message and go back to the old style. This has worked in the past for other sites- not saying it wil work, but its worth a try.



Just tell them that--

1. when the word gets out about this new format,
2. the best authors will not like this change
3. These expert authors will change article directories to another one (article base for example)
4. Leading ezine articles to slowly good publishers, which isnt a good idea for the long term creditability of Eza.

What do you think of my idea people ?

You can go right ahead and test that.

I'll sit back and watch you get mad at all the fraudulent clicks coming your way from Google's content network.

Seriously, it is Mike Knights site, and he can do what he wants. Problem is how long will it be before visitors get ticked off by it, and Google themselves drop the hammer?

Is there a limit as to how much adsense you can have on a page?

These earth-shattering "changes" have been in place for a while now, I don't see a problem. People are getting "Adsense blindness" the same way they've developed "banner blindness".

Personally, I only use EZA and the like for backlinks. I never count on meaningful traffic streams from articles, if it comes, fine. I definitely ALWAYS post my articles on my own sites first, tweak them some, then post them on articles sites.

I have not had any noticable differnece...

This got brought up on our coaching site and I've been tracking it for 2 weeks now and have not noticed any changes to speak of in my CTR.

bottom line is they are a business and if we don't like it we can use others like them. They can and will do what they want.

Personally i have noticed a huge drop in my CTR and am looking for alternatives but until one comes along i will live with it. I have over 600 live articles there and looking at my stats i can say the last few weeks the CTR went into the toilet after being a steady 16.25% since 2007

bottom line is they are a business and if we don't like it we can use others like them. They can and will do what they want.

Personally i have noticed a huge drop in my CTR and am looking for alternatives but until one comes along i will live with it. I have over 600 live articles there and looking at my stats i can say the last few weeks the CTR went into the toilet after being a steady 16.25% since 2007

they are premium adsense publishers and have different adsense rules then the average person witha fe niche sites

i will check, but i use the same resource box for my niche and recently alot of articles have 50-60 views in the first day or two with 1 or 2 click throughs. That never happened before and it seems to have started a in the beginning of April

Although i did start a new pen name account in a diferent niche and the ctr for that is account is just under 15 with 7 articles published. Its hard to get accurate numbers from only 7 articles though.

Well, it's back to 3 ad blocks at the top now. Sweet

Fabian

Honestly if your article is of quality, intelligent readers have probably already programmed themselves to skip over or ignore ads and only look at the content.

I know, losing any amount of sales isn't good, but ezine isn't going to die.

If they lose authors they'll change it.

This is the internet.
There's always a workaround...

Quite sad about the new layout, It's becoming like a spam site with advertisement. I'm sure my CRT will be afffected because of this, but we have to move on because EZA is still currently the best article directories.

Why do people surrender control of their livelihood to third party platforms?

Build Blogs, build lists, get backllinks, get traffic from MANY sources.

It's cool that Chris has contributed to this thread. Change or no change, EZA is still the don of article directories and Tim Gorman has confirmed no reduction in earnings recently which is a good barometer for the mere mortals submitting a few articles here and there Fabian also doesn't sound too stressed out. Ad layouts are going to change it's just another factor beyond control. I wouldn't say it's minutae as that ad block at the top of the page is an example of prime placement which I would expect has an impact reducing CTR for authors but it's not something that will keep me awake at night. I don't foresee a mass exodus to another directory at this stage and am still a big fan of EZA

Dean

I can't say if my CTR has gone down because of this change as I have only recently started submitting articles.

I will say, that I didn't even notice the ads there until I read this thread. I personally never click on any ads like that and always ignore and skim over them. I know I am not most people, but that sort of advertisment never works on me. I don't even read them. I hate them in fact.

Is 1 hit in 6 reads low? Maybe you get a low CTR because your content is not up to par...

Al,

You don't notice them because your brain screams out "Adsense ad" as a result of being fully aware of what adsense is, what an ad looks like and being involved in IM ( etc ) but normal web surfers looking for information do so an ad block below a headline is going to lose some visitors clicking away in an area of prime placement. That's Life, as Esther would say.

Dean

EZA should have a feature where the location of the articles are rotated randomly when the page is loaded.

this keeps people from getting "blind" to the ads, which is the way EZA makes money.

EZA, if they would ask me for advice, should be doing three things:

1) allowing people to pay money to put more anchors in the text

2) allowing people to pay a premium fee, monthly or per article, that their articles would come up without ads on them (to greatly increase click through rates)

and,

3) create a feature where they would "vouch" for the author of the article as a leval above the standard "expert author". levels based on article quality ....

Article Marketing sounded like a good idea 4yrs ago but with all these cut and past tools out here now. Its very easy to see your article on someone else's site with no credit to the original Author

Well, I have to say I don't like it either. Just looked at one of my articles and 3 ads on top is a bit much. Sorry Chris but come on.

Thank you, Chris.

I believe other companies many of us use (we know who they are) would benefit by following your lead.

All the best,
Michael

thanks for the heads up steve!

It's always good to have a diversified and multiple source of traffic.

Because of changes like this. Same with SE traffic.