Articles

Requesting them from authors

[whozyodaddy]

Hi all,

I have a fairly new website and I'm looking for articles to put on them. I have found a couple great sites with very good articles that I wish to use on my site. How should I go about contacting the author for permission to reprint them on my site? Is there any tips, suggestions, templates, etc for this? What have you done about doing this?

Thanks.

[martinibuster]

If the website is not volunteering to lend articles, then don't ask.

[whozyodaddy]

Eeek, what is your reason for saying so?

[Swebbie]

Unless a site explicitly invites you to use articles they have posted, you cannot. They own the copyrights (unless otherwise noted on each page). That doesn't mean you can't ask them. If they don't agree to let you use existing content, perhaps you can pay them or barter something to get some equally great content they write solely for your use. Try 'em.

[martinibuster]

>>>what is your reason for saying so?

Because if I wanted to share the articles I paid people to write (or took up to a week writing myself), I would say so.

It's bad to share content that's already on a website. It's what makes my site valuable. Why would I want to dilute my value?

Don't mean to be rude but I detest requests to copy my content. My content is high quality and some of those articles took a week or more to create. No freaking way I'm going to share it with some stranger.

The better question to ask (in my opinion) is if the site operator is interested in providing unique articles for syndication on your website with attribution and a link. I (and I suspect others too) only enter into partnerships like that with site owners who have decent traffic and are well established.

[Robert Charlton]

My content is high quality and some of those articles took a week or more to create.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who's that nuts. ;)

There are times when I deliberately set out to make an article the best resource of its kind on the web, to keep visitors and to attract links and spiders, and that is how long it can take to write such a piece.

It's one of the best long-term SEO investments you can make, but it is a long-term strategy.