The Sun Came Out And So Did My Spare Domains

Lots of sunshine this week and everything seems brighter. More new writers for my article directory and the plagiarism has declined but not completely stopped. I stopped smoking but I must admit that I got stressed one day and caved in and bought a pack of 10 cigs. The next day my mouth tasted foul so I guess that taught me a lesson.

Instead of smoking I started to build a new site around an unused domain that I had at www.cashwrite.info It's not brilliant but I was experimenting with designing ads with adobe photoshop and using several smaller ads instead of an header. I had only used photoshop once before so for a beginner I'm quite pleased with the results.

I've decided to give the article directory a new look next month and I might use the same type of ads on the site to make everything look more coordinated. I didn't alter the design much when I installed the directory because I had never worked with anything like that before, but now I feel more comfortable with making alterations.

BB Articles has seen a steady increase in traffic. Quite gratifying considering that I've not had a great deal of time to promote it. Realising that you can't sit still I've been looking into ways of increasing traffic and came across a new traffic exchange programme that I actually totally understood and because it involves advertising the traffic that you get is targeted rather than random. It's early days for seeing how well it works.

One of the things that put me off the traffic exchanges that I've seen before is the feeling that untargeted traffic is worth squat and that I'd rather have visitors who are interested in my sites and are more likely to spend time on them and of course spend.

Another good thing to happen today was that I found a use for another spare domain www.dumpthatad.co.uk I got it a few months ago when I was trying to figure out how to get an advertising media that I used to run offline on to the internet. The idea is fun but a bit complicated for the internet, so I used the site for playing around with ads. I've been a bit stubborn and haven't been cloaking my affiliate links, but today among the masses of products that I own I found a link cloaker with a website and decided that the dump that ad URL would be perfect for the link cloaker site.

I've decided to give the link cloaker away free as an incentive to opt in to my mailing list. Lots of work to do there because I have a few ideas to add to it.

I've got some more spare domains lying around, I just hope that I can get everything else done before I happen upon a use for them!

Banging My Head Against A Brick Wall

Today was the pits. I got home from a hard days work, logged on and saw more new writers and more new articles than any day since I stopped automatic submission. I should have been pleased, I was pleased until reality snuck in.

Despite adding a paragraph in red above the article submission page about not accepting anything that is plagiarised etc. 27 out of 36 articles submitted I suspected were plagiarised. Some of the same writers that I had deleted their accounts for that reason signed up again and submitted more plagiarised articles. 6 of the articles were not written in English and as the site is all English I had to decline them. 3 decent articles left and a heck of a lot of my time wasted.

I have come across article directories that have suspended submissions because of spamming or plagiarism and I don't blame them.

Because so much of my time is being wasted I have less time to promote the site and write my own articles. That will have an effect on the genuine writers and of course my business. One little ray of sunshine is that I found a very low cost article writing service which I am now recommending to the cheats. I've no doubt that most will ignore me, but maybe some will get the message.

Newsletter and Forum

I have been so busy moaning that I haven't added the highlights to my month. I started a newsletter at the beginning of the month and it was quite well received, no complaints anyway!

I'm only going to send the newsletter out monthly, that's enough. I get newsletters from some companies almost daily and have stopped bothering to read them, but I still look at the less regular ones. Apart from the newsletter being about article marketing I want to encourage new ideas and will give anything new developed by subscribers a mention in the newsletter.

I have plans to publish an online magazine in the future, but I need to free up some serious time to develop the idea properly.

I will also be adding a forum to the site in the near future. I wasn't really into forums until I joined a really good forum last month. You get free advertising for posting and I've learned quite a lot and made some good contacts there too.

I'm looking around for a good script, may even get one made if I can't find exactly what I want in the meantime I'll continue getting free ads on my favourite forum.

What Next?

This blog is turning out to be more of a moan than a blog but I guess we all have to get things off our chests somehow.

During the last couple of weeks a lot of my time has been wasted checking articles for cheats. Something like 3 out of 4 articles submitted have been plagiarised fully or partially and the amount has been growing.

At first I felt sorry for some of the posters, I know that not everybody can write acceptable quality articles and I know that a lot of people cannot afford to pay for ghost writers. I feel that these cheats want to jump on the article marketing bandwagon and plagiarism is their only option.

I can't condone plagiarism though. I know that some article directory owners have been threatened with the law for accepting plagiarised articles and I am not prepared to put myself in that position.

Some of the cheaters have had the nerve to try it on more than once. I've deleted accounts and they have just signed up and cheated again. I have now added a notice about plagiarism to the article submit page. It is going to be one strike and they are out. I know where I can get a script to block people and I will install that if necessary.

I wonder if these people think that because I am relatively new to owning an article directory I have no experience of spotting cheats. If so they can think again, I've been writing on internet sites for years and can usually easily spot plagiarised work. There are lots of tells to look for and google does the rest.

To end on an high note my 2 and 3 year old grandchildren came visiting today. We went to the park and did lots of sliding and playing on the swings. Much more fun that checking plagiarised articles!

Fresh Start?

Thankfully the automatic article submissions stopped but only when I took the script out. Articles are still filling up my inbox despite me emailing the article submission company several times asking them to stop sending them. I have deleted hundreds of articles, a waste of my time and I wonder how many good articles I'm losing because of this.

I've tried blocking the company but the email address they are sending from is hidden and with my email account used being on my domain you can't get at the source as you can with hotmail.

What I feel like at the moment is pulling the site down and starting all over again. A new design and far less articles. If I did that it would take time but the pros are starting to outweigh the cons.

Less articles would mean that the site would be faster and all of the functions would work. I would be able to get rid of articles that I don't want, for instance about weapons. Reduce the amount of categories and have all of the articles in the correct categories which would be better for the rss feeds and better for the writers. I would also lose all of the articles with incomplete resource boxes. In hindsight it would be like that now if I hadn't opted for the automatic submission company doh.

The only con really is time. I would have to save the old site on another server and gradually move the articles submitted manually and the best articles to the new site. But, I have been spending a lot of time moving articles to the correct categories etc. and I would guess that if I continue it will take me longer to go through all of the articles than start afresh.

It would be nice to have a fresh start so maybe I've talked myself into it!