8. Articles: Repositories Aggregators

I knew nothing about domain name registration, webhosting and renewal. After Corey

delivered I proudly clicked through to my product’s site and I read, PARKED. My

Product Website had long been frozen. My online empire had gone with the wind. A

big lesson learnt.

Articles Repositories

Ewen Chia had a long list of internet service providers as an appendix in his book. I

quickly learnt about article repositories and aggregators. You can make millions

writing articles internet gurus touted. At the end of each article there is a resource box

with a link to your website. The link would draw visitors in droves to your site and

they will be falling over themselves to buy your products making you an instant

millionaire. My Expert Empire was clearly in sight. Indeed it was a match made in

heaven. I jumped in.

Of the articles aggregators, the friendliest was Ezine Articles so I pitched my tent

there, September 2011. My first article: The Top Five Lies About Service Excellence.

It was a matter of time before my Expert Empire exploded. I was playing to my

strength. I love writing. While others wrote short pithy articles, mine were serious,

dense and long. They ranged far and wide. I had no particular focus. I wrote on

anything and on any category that caught my fancy - society, productivity, customer

service, self-improvement, tourism and hospitality. Average article length = 1,200

words.

Ezine articles dot com loved my articles so by 2015 I was elevated to Platinum

Author, from Basic, with 41 articles to my credit. It was an achievement worth writing

home about but it never sent one visitor to my website, except spammers.

But one of my articles was so popular it was featured on many other websites. The

Title: How to Make Nigeria A World’s Tourism Giant. The trouble was my name was

not on the article as the writer. It carried the names of the site owners and other

bloggers that stole it. One blogger was from India. Another appeared to be based in

Sweden. They ran tourism blogs. I sent them mails asking why they commandeered

my article. I got no response. Beware, safeguard your intellectual property.

Meanwhile before Ezine articles, I’d started posting on Blogspot.com and there too, I

wrote on anything that caught my interest. Another big lesson learnt.