Does bidding make a big difference in how much your articles get picked up and distributed or syndicated?

Answer

First, let me explain that articles on IdeaMarketers are sorted first from highest to lowest bidder and then by the expiration date of the bid (or the date the article was submitted if there’s no bid on the article). This gives top bidders prominent positioning on the most popular pages of the site – the home page and the channel pages. The top bid articles also recommended on other articles that are in the same broad channel category. For example, the top 8 bid articles in the Business category will appear on all business-related articles.

In relation to syndication and distribution, bidding for article promotion does the following:

1. increases your chances of having your article (and thus your web site) picked up by spidering search engines ;
2. increases the chances of your article being picked up by webmasters, editors and print publications, because it’s more prominently placed on our site;
3. increases the chances of having your article syndicated through our category syndication. The articles we stream out to other sites are sorted first by bid amoun and then by date. We syndicated out roughly 3 million page views each month to other web sites. Bidding helps bring you toward the top of those syndication feeds;
4. increases the chances of having your own syndicated column picked up because if you have a bid running on at least one of your articles, we promote you as a syndicated columnist on your profile, your articles, and also on www.SyndicatedWriters.com

To learn more about the bidding process, go here.

This question was submitted by Dennis AuBuchon of www.myqualitywriting.com :

“I was reviewing my articles in the edit/remove screen and it indicated that I had 2 syndicated hits for my Free Speech and Integrity article.  I would like to know who the hits were by if that is possible.  I did not have any requests in my account where it states view requests unless I am not looking in the right location.  When you click on the view requests link on your site where does the information appear.”

There are 3 types of statistics we offer you on your articles.

1. Requests. The first is under the “Tools/Stats” and “View Requests” in your writer login area. This link shows you only the people using our Publisher’s Toolbox system who have put your article in their basket when building a newsletter. It doesn’t mean they actually printed your article or published it in any way. It only means they added it to their basket for possible publication.

2. Hits on our site(s). Whenever your article is viewed on our site(s), a hit counter is incremented so you can tell how many times someone has opened the page for your article. (Under Tools/Stats, Article Stats)

3. Syndicated Hits. Whenever your article is shown on outside sites through either our Writer Syndication or Category Syndication systems, this hit counter is incremented. If you’ve never received an email saying someone has picked up your syndicated column, then most likely your article was viewed through the Category Syndication.

We syndicate the top 15 articles in Business, Marketing, Tech, Home/Family, Personal Development, Christian, etc… The top 15 articles in each channel category are sorted from highest to lowest bidder and then by date. You must mark your articles as “syndicateable” in our system to be included in our channel category syndication program. Site owners pick up a snippet of code from us, put it on their sites and then the top 15 articles for a category will automatically stream onto their sites. This is a live feed from our database so the stream can change from moment-to-moment. Also, people who use our Publishers’ Toolbox service can select individual subcategories and syndicate those out onto their web sites.

In your situation, most likely your article spent some time in category syndication.

There’s no way for us to tell you exactly who ran your article when, but you will receive an email anytime someone picks up your personal Syndicated Column or anytime someone fills out a “Request to Reprint” form on our site.

If you have an article on the home page of IdeaMarketers and you have changed either its title, summary or the photo that goes with it, the change will not take effect immediately. Our site is on a periodic update to prevent strain on our servers. But, you can refresh the home page yourself by logging into your writer account and going to Article/PR Admin and selecting Update Home Page. Once you do that, the home page will refresh.

If it still doesn’t refresh for you, then you can press F5 on your keyboard to refresh the page in your browser.