First, before we get into the why's and how's of the way that EZA thinks, here are some statistics to bring you up to speed.

EZA currently has just over 200,000 authors, and this is growing rapidly by the day.

Of the 200,000+, less than 15% have achieved their coveted Platinum status.

You will require between 10 and 25 acceptable articles, with NO mistakes, to receive Platinum status. I had originally been told that it was 10 only, but Chris Knight now says 10-25.

Between 400-500 people go Platinum every month.

The average click through rate is between 2% and 12%.

The EZA site receives 30,000,000 visitors every month.

40%+ of all articles are rejected outright.

NOW PERHAPS YOU UNDERSTAND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO DEAL WITH EZINE ARTICLES AND WHY YOU SHOULD ACHIEVE THEIR PLATINUM STATUS.

Let's deal with one thing at a time.

Right off the bat I will tell you that the information contained herein has come right from Chris Knight, the owner of Ezine Articles. I didn't make any of this up.

EZA has become the article submission site leader by demanding excellence from their authors. It is true that other article sites may appear to have almost identical guidelines, yet none of them are even close to EZA in quality or volume.

With over 200,000 authors submitting a massive daily volume of articles, you might think that yours will get lost in the shuffle. Not so. If you write your article correctly and pick the right keywords, you WILL get views, and lots of them.

EZA Platinum Status

If there is one thing above all else at EZA, it is critical that you do everything within your power to gain their highly coveted Platinum status.

The main benefit is that you will receive much faster approval for your articles. Typically 48 hours or less. Occasionally, you may even receive an approval within just a few hours.

This might mean the difference between an article getting approved and working for you in a timely fashion, or missing the boat all together because it was published too late. Recently, possible due to the HAHD challenge, (hundred articles in a hundred days), there have been lengthy delays reported by basic and basic plus members.

There are 1,500 authors competing in this challenge.

Your options to avoid these unfortunate delays are to get Platinum or pay for the premium service. The premium service will cost you $99 a month. It would appear that unless you are submitting a huge volume of articles that it might not be worth the expense. Premium members get priority over Platinum members with respect to approval time.

However, you do not have to pay for Platinum status, and usually, the approval times are very good. And one other thing - you cannot buy Platinum status.

In order to demonstrate that EZA is serious about their commitment to author excellence, Chris Knight says that less than 15% of all authors ever receive Platinum status. That means that more than 85% do not get there.

If you intend to use article marketing in your business, then you need to make it an absolute priority to go after Platinum. Whatever effort it requires will pay off. The constant frustration of waiting for articles to get approved is enough to drive the best of us to distraction - something you do not need in this business.

Originally, I was advised that it took only 10 perfect articles to attain Platinum status. "Perfect" meaning that your article complied 100% with all the EZA guidelines. You can find these guidlines at the EZA site.

In a recent interview Chris stated that Platinum may now require anywhere from 10 to 25 articles which adhere to their guidelines. Whether this has changed recently or not, I don't know. But I do know that you can gain Platinum status with 10 articles, and that is what you must shoot for.

You want to be one of the 4-500 currently reaching this coveted status every month.

The Average Click Through Rate (CTR) is between 2% and 12%.

That seems to me to be a pretty wide range to be considered "average", but that's what he said. Whether or not this has something to do with the category, he did not say. But, I would have thought that would boil down to an average of 6 or 7 per cent.

One example mentioned was an author with some 2.5 to 3 million views. He had 400,000 click throughs. His CTR would be somewhere between 13.3 and 16%. And while you may hear authors claiming to have much higher CTR's, those are the facts quoted by Chris.

EZA receives 30,000,000 (thirty million) visitors every month!

Do you suppose you might like some of that free traffic?

No kidding, of course you would. And here's the good thing. No matter what you are writing about, no matter how obscure or oddball your subject, people will read about it. That is just a fact as a result of having over thirty million visitors every month.

And, by the way, it is the visitors who are Ezine's customers - not the authors.

40% of ALL articles are rejected outright by EZA.

But there is much more to it that that.

Ezine keeps each and every one of these articles in their database. Along with the names of the authors. What EZA wants to be able to establish is a certain level of trust between itself and the expert authors. It is in this way that you help to get your articles approved more quickly. If you treat EZA with respect, they will return the favour to you.

There is an even more disturbing statistic regarding internet marketing articles.

80% of all internet marketing articles get rejected outright! Eighty per cent! Which means that 20% get accepted, that's all.

This does not mean that just because you are an internet marketer that your article has only a 1 in 5 chance of being published. That only applies if your article is about internet marketing. So, let that be a lesson to all at WA. It might pay to write about something other than internet marketing.

Why does EZA reject your article?

Let's point out some of the reasons why EZA will kick back your article.

Obviously, one or more of their guidelines has been compromised. All this means is that you have done something to upset the EZA gods. Usually it is something very minor which can be fixed. And under normal circumstances, EZA will send you an email pointing out which transgression it is that you have committed. Fix it, re-submit it, and wait. That's what you need to do. Don't go getting all in a huff about it, just remember all that lovely free traffic you will be getting.

Now, I will say this. They are not always right! Even Chris admits that on occasion they do make mistakes. After all, it is two people who are reviewing your article, not a machine. If you feel you are correct and they are in error, approach them politely and explain why you feel your article has not breached their guidelines. Snapping at them won't do you much good.

One of the main reasons that articles get an automatic rejection is the use of either a PLR article, or something that you have spun from another author.

EZA has some pretty sophisticated software to detect this. Get caught and it's bye bye. Don't do it. However, the first thing they do is something you can do yourself.

They pick any two random sentences, put them in quotes and do a Google search. If they get a positive result, your article is chucked.

This does not apply if you are the author of the article that they find. If you wrote it, or if you own it, that's OK. But if someone else wrote it...you're in trouble.

And that brings up another point here. You CAN submit the identical article to another article site as long as it is your own. You do not need any changes. They prefer that you submit to their site first (naturally) but you will not be penalized if you have previously submitted the identical article elsewhere first. It could be something that you wrote years earlier and have forgotten all about, so it does happen. So, again, the bottom line is if you own it, you can submit elsewhere without raising red flags. Just make sure your name is on it at the other site. In other words, don't get your pen names mixed up.

Do NOT trust Copyscape when it comes to submitting a PLR article. Chris says it doesn't work.

EZA buys all the article spinning software out there. Then they reverse engineer it and apply it to the articles they receive. I don't believe they do this with all articles, only those they may have a reason to suspect. And this is where developing a level of trust with EZA pays off. The more trust you can develop, the less problems you will encounter.

How many articles before it pays off?

There was an interesting point that Chris brought up concerning article volume.

Specifically, it was the number of articles an author needed before seeing a positive return. For each niche you are writing about, the magic number falls anywhere between 250 and 2,500 articles!

While the numbers might shock you, it shouldn't really come as too much of a surprise.

We have always been taught that article marketing is a numbers game. The more you get out there, the more views, the more clicks, the more sales.

Once the volume is turned up, there is no way you can shut it off, even if you want to.

Top ten in your category.

If you are able to achieve a top ten ranking in your chosen category, your views will increase exponentially. The example Chris used for this was again the internet marketing niche. Now, in order to rank in the top ten authors, you need to have written more articles than the guy in 11th place. Simple, right?

Except in this case you will need to submit 971 articles. No doubt, by the time you have done that, he will have done a few more, so it will be back to the drawing board as it were.

But don't let something like that dissuade you. Let me give you one of my own numbers

A couple of weeks ago I ranked 350th (groan) out of 6,328 in one of the IM categories. Last week I jumped to #168. Today, I see that has risen to #85. These stats and many more are available inside the author's area at EZA.

...and one final thing.

Chris pointed out one thing that many people overlook.

Your article title is a promise on what your article is going to deliver. Frequently, this is not the case. I have an easy solution for you with this one. First, write your article, then pick out the title. You can hardly fail there.

Good luck and thanks for reading.