Thursday, 11 March 2010
Editorial Guidelines PDF Print E-mail
Written by Administrator   
Sunday, 04 March 2007

Editorial Guidelines For Submitting To AmysArticles.com

These editorial guidelines are designed to help you understand what we accept and don't accept for inclusion in our article/story database. Before you submit to our site, we'd appreciate if you'd read this page first.

  1. AmysArticles.com Editorial Guidelines: (CONTENT QUALIFICATIONS)

    To Be Qualified For Our Site, Your Article/Story:

    • MUST BE AN ORIGINAL ARTICLE/STORY THAT YOU WROTE. If you work for an author as an employee or contractor and are submitting the Article/Story, please submit the Article/Story as if it was from the original author including his or her email address and name.

    • MUST NOT BE AN ARTICLE/STORY YOU RIPPED-OFF FROM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN OR BOUGHT. If you did hire a ghost writer to write your articles/stories, you MUST have an EXCLUSIVE LICENSE that *only* allows your name to be associated with the articles/story produced for you. Do not waste your time or ours by buying article/stories packs that have non-exclusive licenses as we reject those articles/stories. Why do we do this? #1) It makes you look like a fraud because you're putting your name on someone else's works that already may have hundreds or thousands of other authors who already put their name on the exact same works and #2) We do not want more than one copy of any Article/Story in our directory.

    • MUST CONTAIN NO MORE THAN 1 AFFILIATE PROGRAM LINK. See Section #3 below.

    • MUST BE informative or entertaining and share your unique expertise. Include tips, strategies, techniques, case-studies, analysis, opinions and commentary in your articles/stories.

    • MUST NOT be a press release, advertisement, sales letter, promotional copy, or blatant and excessive self-promotion or hype.

    • MUST HAVE proper English, spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and sentence structure. While we know there is a variation in what is considered "proper English," we ask that you at least be consistent within your Article/Story. Your Article/Story must also be proofed and double checked for accuracy. If English is your second language -- we strongly suggest that you have it proofed by someone who has English as their native tongue before submitting your Articles/Stories to us.

    • SIMPLE PUNCTUATION RULES: One or two spaces after each period, colon, or semi-colon; Periods should be inside of quotes; When doing "..." -- you should use only 3 dots minimum and maximum; When using dashes, use two in a row, ex: "--"; There is never a space BEFORE a period or BEFORE a comma.

    • MUST NOT contain pornography/adult material, hate or violence-oriented, suggest racial intolerance, advocate against any individual, have insulting-obscene-degrading tone, or contain excess profanity.

    • MUST NOT contain information on: hacking/cracking content, auto-surf program advocacy or promotion, bomb creation, support for terrorism/ radicalism/ religious fanaticism, illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia, steroid use or advocacy, weapon/ firearms/ ammunition/ balisongs/ butterfly knives or brass knuckles, or the promotion of hard alcohol/tobacco-related products or prescription drugs.

    • MUST NOT contain any content that is a violation of any law, be considered defamatory, libelous, or infringes on the legal rights of others.

    • MUST NOT be a submission of the exact same article/story as one that you already submitted. Some authors have submitted the same article/story multiple times with only a few words changed in the body -- we reject these and ban authors who engage in this practice.

    • MUST NOT be a reply to a personal email, letter or other correspondence.

  2. AmysArticles.com Editorial Guidelines: (FORMAT)

    • TITLE: Your Title MUST Be In Upper and Lower Case Letters With The First Letter of Each Major Word Capitalized. (Proper Case)

      1. If you submit your TITLE in all CAPS, we will change to "Upper and Lower Caps."
      2. It is ok not to capitalize common words such as "a" - "the" - "to" - "for" etc...unless you want to. We accept these either way.
      3. Please do not put QUOTES around your entire TITLE. This makes very little sense to us. If you want to use a quote or an apostrophe to call attention to one word or a phrase, this is ok, but the entire TITLE must not have quotes around itself.
      4. Do NOT end your TITLE with a period.
      5. Please do not submit Microsoft Word smart quotes in your title. This includes quotes, apostrophe's, double dashes, and 3 dots in a row. Replace smart quotes with standard quotes/apostrophe's/double dashes/or 3 periods in a row.
      6. Refrain from excessive repetitive punctuation in your TITLE. One exclamation "!" or question mark "?" is enough to make a point.
      7. We do not allow HTML tags of any kind in your TITLE.
      8. We do not allow spaces in your TITLE before you begin your TITLE. In other words, your TITLE should begin with the first word flush to the LEFT of the TITLE submission box.
      9. We do not allow your AUTHOR NAME or any WEBSITE URL to be in your TITLE.
      10. Please do NOT repeat your TITLE in the Article/Story BODY.
      11. Your TITLE must not be keyword stuffed (too many redundant keywords used over and over again), but rather should read as a natural language TITLE that any human could easily appreciate. Do not over-optimize your TITLE please.


    • YOUR FULL AUTHOR NAME: You must include your first and last name as the author of the article/story.

      1. Your AUTHOR NAME must have a First name and a Last name.
      2. We do allow "First name - Last initial" or "First initial - Last Name."
      3. We do not allow two initials for your AUTHOR NAME.
      4. Your First and Last name must begin with a Capital Letter.
      5. We do not allow company names to be your AUTHOR NAME.
      6. We do not allow email addresses to be your AUTHOR NAME.
      7. We do not allow adjectives or nouns or descriptors to be part of your AUTHOR NAME.
      8. You may NOT include your title after your AUTHOR NAME unless you hold a doctorate-level degree (Dr., MD, DDS, PhD, etc.)
      9. We do not allow religious titles before or after your name.
      10. We do not allow more than ONE author name to have an account. If your article/story was CO-AUTHORED, then please put the CO-AUTHOR's name in the RESOURCE BOX.

    • ARTICLE/STORY BODY: Must be a minimum of 250 words and no more than 3,500 words. For us, an ideal article/story size is 400-750 words.

      1. Please do not repeat your TITLE and/or AUTHOR NAME at the top of the ARTICLE/STORY BODY. We will remove it.
      2. Copyrights must be at the bottom of your article/story. If you put it at the top of your article/story, we will move it to the bottom of the article/story body.
      3. If you include a REPRINT RIGHTS statement in your article/story, it must be at the BOTTOM of your article/story. If you put it at the top, we will move it to the bottom. Keep in mind our Reprint Terms of Service when you write your reprint rights statement as we will not accept articles/stories that have REPRINT RIGHTS statements that conflict with our posted Author Terms of Service.
      4. If you sell hard in the Article/Story BODY by including your URL or product pitch or blatant self-promotion, we will toss your article/story without notice. The RESOURCE BOX is where you get to pitch yourself or your website address.
      5. The following HTML TAGS ARE ALLOWED in the ARTICLE/STORY BODY:

        • <b>BOLD</b>
        • <i>ITALICS</i>
        • <u>UNDERLINE</u>
        • <br> is used to force a hard line return. Use this HTML tag to prevent our system from trying to wrap your short sentences together into one paragraph.
        • <pre> and </pre> To make a text table look right.
        • <blockquote>TO INDENT A PARAGRAPH</blockquote>
        • <OL> and <UL> tags to create a NUMBERED LIST or a BULLET POINT list. These are OPTIONAL tags as you can always just left justify a numbered list or * asterisks for bullets and it makes your article/story much simplier to reprint.
        • HTML TAGS NOTE: Be sure to CLOSE every tag that you OPEN. A common mistake that an author will do is OPEN a BOLD tag and then forget to CLOSE it causing the rest of their article/story to look BOLDED when they didn't intend for that.
        • We do allow ACTIVE website URLs in the body of your article/story. Please read the section below on "WEBSITE ACTIVE LINKS / YOUR URL" for a detailed explanation of what is and is not allowed.

      6. The following HTML TAGS ARE NOT ALLOWED in the ARTICLE/STORY BODY:

        • <p> and </p> are not allowed anywhere in your article/story. To accomplish the same thing as the <p> tag, just make sure there is one vertical space between each of your paragraphs. Our system interprets vertical spaces between paragraphs as an indication that the paragraph has ended and we insert behind-the-scenes the <p> tags so you don't have to.
        • <JAVASCRIPT> is not allowed in any form.
        • <IMG SRC> Image tags are NOT allowed.
        • FONT SIZE changes or COLOR tags are NOT allowed.
        • <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc. tags are NOT allowed.
        • The <HR> horizontal line tag is NOT allowed.
        • Microsoft Word Smart Quotes are NOT VALID HTML code. Do not include them in any of your HTML statements (or your article/story in general if you can help it).

      7. Please do not submit articles/stories with excessive HARD LINE BREAKS. A hard line break is when you use the HTML <P> or <BR> tag to force a carriage return rather than allowing each line to wrap naturally. We may either reject or convert any articles/stories that are sent in with hard line breaks. It's ok to force a hard line break when you're making a small list of items but it's not ok to arbitrarily force hard line returns on every single line at a certain character width.

      8. At the very END of your ARTICLE/STORY BODY, please help us by removing any excess vertical spaces and do not include any HTML tags that would create or force the creation of additional vertical spaces after the end of your ARTICLE/STORY BODY.

    • WEBSITE ACTIVE LINKS / YOUR URL: We allow a maximum of 3 "Self-Serving" Links/URLs, active or inactive, in your article/story. A "Self-Serving" Link/URL is a link/URL to a website that you own, control or have an interest in.

      Whenever possible, please try to confine your self-serving links to your RESOURCE BOX.

      There is a total active link limit of (6) active links per article/story, i.e.: A maximum of (3) "Self-Serving" active links that you have a relationship with and a maximum of (3) active non-self serving links.

      1. We do not accept articles/stories with active or inactive links in the first 1-3 paragraphs or above the fold of an article/story. Please put your active links in the resource box below the article/story body. The article/story BODY is your "GIVE" and the RESOURCE BOX is your "TAKE."
      2. You can use HTML code to make your link active but be sure to not include font attributes or break tags (<br>) in your HREF statements.
      3. Double check your active links before submitting to be sure they work. Your article/story will be rejected if your website links do not work.
      4. Microsoft Word smartquotes are never valid HTML code. (ie: Do not prepare your HREF statements in MS Word)
      5. We *DO* auto format valid URLs that are in your RESOURCE BOX.

        Example of an invalid URL:

        Your-Company-Name.com
        www.your-company-name.com

        Example of a valid URL:

        http://Your-Company-Name.com/

      6. We *DO NOT* auto-format URLs that are in the BODY of your article/story.
      7. Your links may NOT contain a file to be downloaded of any type.
      8. We do not knowingly allow any URLs in any of our articles/stories that are banned by Google or if your website engages in questionable SEO practices -- we may reject your articles/stories.
      9. We do not accept articlearticles/stories that have the same ACTIVE link more than once. Do not submit duplicate identical URLs.
      10. We do not allow articles/stories which have strategic keyword anchor text links in the body to your domain that do not add informational value to the article/story. If you put all 3 of the active self serving links that we allow in the body of your article/story, we will reject it. Any use of anchored text links to websites that you own should add value to the article/story topic rather than stand out as an obvious abuse an anchored text link. The goal with this policy is to be a good netcitizen by only allowing articles/stories that add value with the anchored text links rather than for pure SEO reasons.
        Example: Within your article/story, you link the word "tropical fish" to an article/story that you wrote about tropical fish. This is a good example of an anchored text link vs. linking the same text to your home page as it doesn't really add value.
      11. We will not accept articles/stories with links (in the Article/Story Body or Resource Box) to adult-oriented websites, including but not limited to websites that include pornography, adult-oriented sexual content.

    • EMAIL 'MAILTO:' LINKS: We highly recommend including a link to your website but do not recommend including a mailto: or email link to your personal or work email account. Spammers will abuse it. It's better to include a valid website URL and let potential customers find your email addres on your website.

    • ADDING KEYWORDS: Adding the top keywords related to your article/story helps us to bring more traffic to your article/story.

      1. Please make sure you put a comma between each KEYWORD.
      2. Ideally, your keywords should be optimized based on the most commonly searched keywords as published by Overture.com for your particular niche. It helps to use a good keyword research tool to help you determine which ones are best to use.
      3. You should have a minimum of 4-5 keywords and a maximum of 25.
      4. We do not accept keywords that are completely unrelated to the content of your article/story.

    • ARTICLE/STORY SUMMARY: Every article/story must have a 2-5 sentence article/story summary. The purpose of the ARTICLE/STORY SUMMARY is to give an abstract or summary of waht your article/story is about.

      1. If you don't know what to put in your summary, just use the first paragraph of your article/story.
      2. We do not allow HTML tags of any kind in your ARTICLE/STORY SUMMARY.
      3. We do not allow blatant self-promotion in your ARTICLE/STORY SUMMARY.
      4. We do not allow your AUTHOR NAME to be in your ARTICLE/STORY SUMMARY.
      5. We do not allow any website URL or Email Address to be in your ARTICLE/STORY SUMMARY.

    • ARTICLE/STORY Category or SUB-CATEGORY: Please choose the best category or sub category based on the theme of your article/story and not the theme of your business. Here are some general hints on how to select the best category for categories that are often confused:

      1. Home based business articles/stories are only allowed in the Home Based Business category. We do not want to see home based business articles/stories in the BUSINESS category or sub-categories.
      2. Internet business related articles/stories MUST be under the "Internet & Businesses Online" category or sub-categories. We do not want to see Internet articles/stories under the BUSINESS category or sub-categories.
      3. MLM or Network Marketing articles/stories can only go under the Home Based Business category.
      4. We do not accept Home Based Business articles/stories in the Entrepreneurialism sub-category of Business.
      5. Internet Joint Venture articles/stories should go under Affiliate Marketing in the Internet & Online Business category.
      6. Articles/Stories on Nutrition should not go in the Weight Loss sub-category, but rather should be in the Nutrition sub-category. Supplement articles/stories should not go in the Nutrition category but rather should be in the Supplements sub-category.
      7. The Coaching sub-category of Self-Improvement is designed for articles/stories about "how to be a coach" rather than articles/stories about coaching a person on a particular topic.

  3. AmysArticles.com Editorial Guidelines: (AFFILIATE PROGRAMS)

    Only 2 Affiliate links will be allowed. Your affiliate link must follow the rules about links listed in the above section WEBSITE ACTIVE LINKS / YOUR URL. Only 1 affiliate link is allowed in the body of your article/story.


 
[ Back ]