Ads v Word Count

Hiya,

Can I just check something please?   In ad modules, you can go up to about six products.   I know that it's 50 words per ad, but does that mean items or module?

If you had a carousel with 6 items, would you need 300 words?   Or would it be 50 all told?

yours

Jo

xxxxx

Hi Jo, it's per item - not per module.

I thought it might be.

I really hobbled myself with that six card carousel earlier then!   You wouldn't believe how many times I had to keep going back and adding words to my lesbian cards article. :)

Oh Dear,  This post got me thinking and sent me off to check. I created the spoofs wizz on keep calm and carry on.  I second guessed myself and realized my word content may not be high enough.

I had 22 adverts if you count All Posters = 1100 words. I posted 714 words. But if we only count the Amazon modules, then I only had 10 adverts = 500 words. in the clear or should I add more content?

Here's the link

http://wizzley.com/keep-calm-and-carry-on-spoof-posters/

Can't you remove some ads, Katie?

The point of this rule is to have content-rich pages that are not overly-promotional. It's up to you. 

If you don't have enough words per item, the editor won't publish. It sends you back to write some more.

Once again I'm misunderstood 

I think that Katie is right.  The word count isn't factoring in All Posters modules.   I'm pretty sure about that now.

I let the editor tell me if I go over, Generally I like to have my articles look professional and informative with some ads around it that don't necessarily look like ads, but I try to make sure there is plenty of content surrounding the ads and I mean good content not fluff statements. If they land and it feels like your trying to sell them a radiator, that's not good, but if it feels like a good informative article on radiator technology, for example, then you have a lot of radiators to show them to illustrate your points and see details, the ads become integral in achieving what you and the customer want. Adding the right amount of ads for max revenue but also balancing it for google aesthetics :) is an artform, definately. One I'm learning more about every article :)

What Jerrico just said, is really important: ads work in general much better, if they are hard to distinguish from the actual content. It's most efficient, if they blend in nicely.

The editor will tell you on publish, if you've typed enough words. As Jerrico correctly mentioned, we don't count AllPosters. That's because AllPosters main reason is to give you a source for otherwise hard to get images. With AllPosters, you can't make money like with Amazon. Don't even try overloading your articles with AllPoster images - it's not worth it.

Consider: There are lots of SEO rumours, Google is punishing articles that have too many affiliate links! Don't overdo it. With ads all over your articles, you probably get more clicks, but you also will probably get less revenue from those. "Confused" readers are likely to click such ads "on error" and will then leave Amazon immediately without buying anything. Yes, you have your cookie placed for  24 h on Amazon - but it won't help you a lot. There are Amazon affiliate links all over the web and yours will quickly be overwritten.

The far better approach is: give your readers the information they need, tell them details about a product, inform them why to buy it and then show the correct Amazon page. They are more likely to go there and buy it.

I should think that every author here wants their articles to look professional and informative.  But word count doesn't always equate lack of fluff.  In fact, it promotes it.

Let me throw in a case in point here.  With the best will in the world, there's not a lot that you can say about greetings cards.  The obvious routes are describing the very card that the reader can see for themselves.  When we buy a card IRL, we enter a store, look through the display and pick one based on the picture, slogan and verse.

By ensuring 50 words per card, I wrote a LOT of fluff yesterday.  But that's by-the-bye and all in-keeping with the Wizzley rules.  I'm not quibbling it.

However, the point that Katie was making is that none of us knew that AllPosters wasn't counted as adverts in the word count.   That publishing stop filter is a really useful mechanism, which I should imagine the majority of Wizzley authors use. 

We waffle away, then attempt to publish to see how many words we have left.  I did this on that greetings cards article several times yesterday.   I kept going back to write 500 more words, then 289 words, then 127 words, then 3 words.   When it went through, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, and trusted that I had enough text to go with the adverts.

But what if, instead of Zazzle and Amazon, that article had been full of All Posters ads?  It would have gone through without the requisite words, but with the author unaware. It's not a malicious thing, nor a kind of hack to get through sub-standard Wizzles.  It would be a genuine mistake.

Now that we know that All Posters isn't counted, then we all know to pay attention to the word count ourselves.  Trust Wizzley's mechanism on all of the others, but watch out on that particular one.

Very well said Jo, you get my meaning. Thank you!

I've altered the numbers (removed adverts) to balance regardless that they are not counted. this is exactly what I wanted to examine.   

The site and our credibility is always of the utmost importance to me while creating wizzes.  I created an attractive page using the value of images All Posters contributes.  

It can sometimes get away from writers during the creative process. I really only wanted to point that out for constructive purposes.

Thanks to all for your thoughtful and helpful feedback

NOTE - I do like to balance, I often write articles like my most recent How to Become The Go to Online Writer with absolutely zero adds, then once I go to publish I get that prompt to add amazon products.  I go back and dribble one or two in for visuals. 

BUT, I do write stuff that is purely informative to contribute rich content free of or very low in adds. I work to create a balance of the two.

What say you all about that?

I really don't think a lot about it, I just build the wizzle and add amazon where possible especially as a header image to a section and a bunch of smaller galleries beside a set of text. I keep one set to every two paragraphs for the side bar gallaries, and headers are usually 1-4 paragraphs.

Jo, shame on you for adding fluff, I'd of thought you could pluck your creativity and researched for some more nuggets to add  :) hell if you can't think of facts for your articles just PM me and I'll throw my research skill-set into motion and help ya. 

In one of my greenhouse articles I actually had 2-3 for each keyword i.e. irrigation had 3 irrigation articles out there (these were once one of my big sites before migrating to HP on greenhouses)- they were each too small, 400 words, so I consolidated them to create one long article with more details on the topic removing redundancies (each was on a different angle of irrigation)... 

In saying that, I used my own content but if you run out of ideas and have 500 words but need more for more card ads, what you do is go out to the web and Google something like "Unique greeting card imagery" or "sayings" or something to that effect, tag "ezinearticles" to the end of your search query:

"unique greeting card images ezinearticles" for example

Someone on ezinearticles has likely not only written a really powerful article but they did all the research to find great angles for it- read a bunch of those to spark ideas for more angles to add to your article. Other articles contain often a collage of ideas in them, often one angle will not be explained out, that could be your cue to add that angle to your article thus adding words...