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Ezine Articles Christopher M Knight Interview
By: Ed Howes
Email Interview with Christopher M. Knight, operator of Ezine Articles Dot Com, Early September 2006. First of three parts.
1.) When and why did you decide to market articles?
C.M.K.) EzineArticles.com was originally started in 1999, but it wasn?t until July of 2004 that we scrapped the entire site and rebuilt it from scratch and in October of 2004, we had our first membership system.
Why market with articles? Because it works. Marketing or selective syndication of quality original articles produces qualified visitors back to your website. Since we knew the concept worked for ourselves, we thought it would be cool to help hundreds, then thousands and now, tens of thousands of others to enjoy the same success that we had with article marketing.
2.) What was competing for your attention when you made your decision?
C.M.K.) Affiliate marketing was our highest revenue stream prior to EzineArticles.com.
3.) How much time passed between making the decision and operating the business?
C.M.K.) 2 weeks.
It was really a timing thing because the site was started in 1999 and was largely ignored till August of 2004 because of other business priorities. We were involved in running a 100+ server email list hosting data center and prior to that we were involved in being an ISP and web hosting/ development provider.
4.) What was required to advance from the desire to the reality?
C.M.K.) In the 3rd week of July of 2004 it was decided to narrow our focus to rebuilding EzineArticles.com from scratch.
It would benefit from the CMS (Content Management System) that our dev team began producing in 2003 in response to not finding any available in the marketplace that we liked.
5.) Why did you choose free content over paid?
C.M.K.) We started out free, and tried the paid model between September until the end of December 2004. The paid model was getting in the way of our growth objectives, and the risk or gamble decision we had to make was whether we wanted to walk away from the thousands of new customers we would have taken on in 2005 as a paid article syndication site (classifying ourselves similar to being a public relations service provider) vs. the influx of new members that a free-content model would attract.
6.) EzineArticles.com has grown at least twice over, the past ten months. What do you consider your turning point?
C.M.K.) Starting the expert author membership system on October 20th of 2004 was a significant turning point because it allowed us to forge a deeper relationship with our expert authors.
We have internal server & software milestones that have been met along the way as we invest enormously in systems that most members and end-users never see. All they need to know is that they can come and get value on demand, every single time they interact with us. It?s about delivering confidence.
Much of our recent growth has come from the snowball effect of running a consistent quality operation, day in and day out, coupled with a growing passionate expert author membership who proudly tells their clients, prospects and members about their expert articles on EzineArticles.com. It?s viral for sure.
(Interview continues with Ezine Articles' Christopher M. Knight II)
Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic http://EzineArticles.com/ directory. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links intact, giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a free membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit/:
Ed Howes sought and found, knocked and entered. Now he sees things differently. To see more of what he sees, please visit http://www.justanotherview.com or do an author search here at Ezine Articles. |
