Article Submission: Why Was My Article Rejected? Part 1

One of the most common questions that reaches my inbox comes from folks wanting to know why their wonderful articles were just rejected by an article directory or submission service. There are several common reasons for article rejection, and it’s really not a mysterious thing. It’s simply a matter of reading the sites’ guidelines and paying attention to the rules.

Article Rejection – Reason 1
Your Article Reads Like A Sales Letter

In my article directory for coaches (which is on hiatus), I can’t tell you the endless amounts of blatant self-promotion that was submitted. Articles that read like press releases or sales letters came in by the dozens everyday, and they were of course all rejected. The point of any human-reviewed article directory is to host high quality articles that people will actually want to read and that ezine owners will want to use for their publications. Otherwise the directory simply becomes a link farm.

Now I understand that many of you have decided to use article marketing as a strategy to position yourself in your marketplace, but remember that you want to position yourself as an “expert” in your niche. Not as an expert advertiser. So to be considered an authority in your niche, you need to write relevant and informative articles all teaching your prospects something about your topic.

The point of writing articles is to solve the problems of prospects in your niche. Once you solve a problem, you begin to build trust, and once you build trust you can then start to market to that prospect — but not until then. So not only is writing a “salesy” type of article against the rules and guidelines of any good article directory, but it just doesn’t make good business sense. You don’t want to try and sell to a prospect upon your first interaction with them. Statistics prove that you have very little chance of converting people at that point into a paying customer.

So re-read your articles. Did you rip them straight from your sales letter copy? Or did you write a thoughtful and information packed article that would peak the interest of your marketplace? If your articles sound just like your sales pages or your press releases — offering only information about your service or your product — then that is probably why you faced rejection. And I would recommend to re-frame and re-write those articles as purposeful press releases and submit them to PR sites such as PRweb.com.

Next Up: Article Rejection Part 2