Writing Don'ts
#1 No Spam
This one's not new, but it's worth saying again
For a few years now we have had a very strict and enforced stance against spam. That's staying the same, and if anything, getting even more rigorous.
What's spam?
The kind of spam that the world is (unfortunately) the most familiar with is email spam. Unwanted, irrelevant, selfish, and often automated email from scammers and tricksters and people out to waste your time. From people who don't have your permission to talk to you. Over the last few years, this has metastasized into blog comment spam and social network spam.
Spam is also commonly defined, and more generically, as the act of tricking people with useless content. It's is an aggressive act. It means stuffing pages full of keywords or links to trick search engines. It means masking links to surprising places. It means redirecting traffic. It means lying to your readers and taking advantage of them.
We don't tolerate spam at Indie Nova. If you find spam, please tell us. If you find a great Article, tell everyone.
If you spam people with your Indie Nova Articles, either by email, or in blog comments, or by stalking and harassing people on Twitter, or by tricking people with the content in your Articles, we'll probably just lock your entire account.
#2 No X-Rated or Porn
1. X-rated content is unfortunately more attractive to spammers than to participatory readers and good content creators.
2. While X-rated Article stend to get decent traffic, they make practically no money for the community or the people who run them. Advertisers on our site also avoid these pages. It's not a practical financial move to sustain these Articles any longer.
3. We get a disproportionate number of DMCA take down notices and spam reports
and various legal complaints about X-rated Articles. Our team is just too small to justify this added work, and we'd rather focus our spirit and energy on the good stuff.
Please don't try publishing X-rated Articles here. We'll just take them down. Thanks.
#3 No junk topics
Rise above the junk. Junk is what happens when people try to take a shortcut. When they copy&paste content over and over again. When they pump out empty Articles that they never improve. When they make Articles on topics that are clearly just out to scam (if not necessarily spam) someone. When they publish on topics that have worn out their welcome on the web because of aggressive and selfish affiliate programs.
Sure, quality is all a matter of taste. Sure, one person's junk is another person's treasure. Sure, you might not like the same Articles I like, and vice versa.
But there are still some standards.
Junk topics are topics that have demonstrated an overwhelming attraction to spammers, like (just for example):
Free movie downloads.
Hoodia Gordoni.
Acai berry sales.
Toenail fungus sales.
LoseBellyFat!
Pharmaceutical sales.
WoW gold farming.
Forex reports.
Adult content.
And on and on.
You know it when you see it. In fact, this stuff can be so bad that most people just skip calling it junk and go straight to calling it spam.
So, we're making it a lot harder to publish Articles on junk topics. We will also be retroactively locking existing Articles that exist on these topics.
Chances are, your Articles on these topics will get locked, no matter how developed and highly-rated. And we'll be far less inclined to unlock those Articles for you.
So our best recommendation: Don't bother with topics like these. There's plenty of stuff to write about and recommend online without having to go near the edges of what we've got going here. Thanks.
#4 A limit on "overly promotional articles"
An outbound links limit on articles
But junk Articles are often described by the relentless number of outbound links to the same exact domain. Being overly promotional rarely works. "Buy here buy here buy here!" never does. Whereas a few curated, commented and spotlighted products or links are most often followed.
So to help you focus your Articles, and sell even better--and to help surfers find our pages more useful overall--we're introducing a limit to the number of outbound links to the same domain that you can have on a Article. If you have more than 9 links to the same domain on a single Article, your Article could get locked for review.
That doesn't mean you're limited to just 9 outbound links total on your whole Article... just 9 to the same exact domain. Any links generated by Indie Nova modules (like the Amazon module or the Wikipedia module or the eBay module) don't have a limit, nor do feed modules (like the RSS module or the Zazzle module) or modules that your readers post in (like Guestbook and Plexo and Duel modules). It's up to you to moderate the links your readers post on your Articles and decide if *they're* being overly promotional on *your* Article.
Furthermore, if your Article does have more than 9 links to the same domain, excepting the cases above, and it gets locked -- you'll be able to easily request a review of your Article. Chances are it could get greenlighted forevermore, and you will be free of the limit. Chances are also good it could stay locked. So if you'd rather not wait through that review period, pare down your links to the same domain. We're not just trying to be stingy for no reason: less really is more.
Last, and of course, we have TONS of domains that are whitelisted out of this (meaning, you can have as many outbound links to them as you like), as well as sites that are blacklisted (meaning, even a single link to that domain will get your Article locked).
Two special cases of note: Allposters and Clickbank. Lots of writers use Allposters.com to punctuate their Articles with photos, as well as to make money from the Allposters affiliate program. For the most part, you do it fairly and well. You don't take advantage of your readers and you properly cite your sources. So Allposters is on the Whitelist for now and you can have as many outbound links as you like. But a word of caution not to overdo it.
Similarly, many writers find personal success with their Clickbank Articles. However, the number of people using Clickbank and spamming their Articles around the web is ruining it for the good guys. So while we're not blacklisting Clickbank on Articles, we're also not Whitelisting it right now. This means that the "No more than 9 outbound links to the same domain" limit applies to you. So be selective with your outbound linking and don't overdo it.
#5 Plagiarism takedown
This can be a great thing. If you're out to spread ideas, you should absolutely encourage people to quote and excerpt and link to your pages and content. And most people will, happily and fairly.
But if you find a Article that you can demonstrate beyond doubt has clearly ripped off someone else's content, word for word, without credit, please let us know.
If we get a report that your Article is the one plagiarising, we'll unpublish your Article.
Writers are responsible for the content they put on their Articles. As the hosts of a user-generated content site, it's not up to us to mediate disputes and determine copyright. So if there's an argument about the origin of the content of your Article, it's up to you to handle it directly. Otherwise your Article will remain unpublished and eventually get deleted for good.
#6 No aggressively duplicated or unoriginal content
#7 A special note about affiliate marketing writes
Even if you have a Article that has been published live for a while and even earning royalties, previous publication does not intend that we accept or approve or endorse the topic. It's entirely possible that a Article will get unpublished even after it's been active for a long time. This is because our systems for finding these types of Articles are always evolving and improving, and because we reserve the right to unpublish or remove any Article that violates our rules over time.
A good rule of thumb is this: Ask yourself if your Article is supporting an affiliate program; if your Article is using content that someone else gave you to add to the page; if your Article is trying to make money by pushing readers to an affiliate program; if your Article is really on a topic that you're interested in, have direct experience with, and isn't JUST trying to turn a sale. Once you answer these questions honestly to yourself, you'll probably have your own answer about whether you should spend your time trying to publish those kinds of Articles here or not.
A representative list of topics we don't allow on Indie Nova, and why.
These topics can show up in droves when a specific affiliate program directed people to come paste their cloned content on our site. Or because they appeal to people trying to get quick traffic to bad stuff. Even if you think the topic is okay in a specific case, or if the Article looks technically well-crafted, it's not okay to use Indie Nova as a way to bludgeon the web with non-authentic content.
Once a topic has earned a bad enough reputation (usually as part of an affiliate scheme that encourages unsuspecting and otherwise innocent affiliates (like you?) to make money through bad actions), we ban them from Indie Nova. This means there are topics we're just not going to let people write about. We wish we didn't have to do that, but it's the best plan available to remove the bad actors that want to take advantage, while keeping the site open for passionate people with authentic opinions.
Even if you have a Article that has been published live for a while and even earning royalties, previous publication does not intend that we accept or approve or endorse the topic. It's entirely possible that a article will get unpublished even after it's been active for a long time. This is because our systems for finding these types of Articles are always evolving and improving, and because we reserve the right to unpublish or remove any Article that violates our rules over time.
A good rule of thumb is this: Ask yourself if your Article is supporting an affiliate program; if your Article is using content that someone else gave you to add to the page; if your Article is trying to make money by pushing readers to an affiliate program; if your Article is really on a topic that you're interested in, have direct experience with, and isn't JUST trying to turn a sale. Once you answer these questions honestly to yourself, you'll probably have your own answer about whether you should spend your time trying to publish those kinds of Articles here or not.
A sample (not complete) list of Don't topics
These are basic categories that have topics we can't support.
This is NOT an exhaustive list, it is just a roundup of examples of topics that will probably result in your Article getting unpublished.
The biggest offenders in the spam world, and topics that aren't okay on Indie Nova, are:
--Pharmaceutical, drug, and diet aid reviews and diet pill sales. (Examples: Viagra, Hoodia Gordoni, Penis Enlargement pills, acai berry etc) Plus whatever the latest miracle cure drink happens to be, and affiliate/salesy Articles thereof.
--Yes, weight loss and dieting Articles are far more often spam than good--especially when they're selling something, or promoting an affiliate site. Acai berry reviews have earned a rotten reputation elsewhere on the web, for example, and that's seeping into Indie Nova as well.
--MLM, network marketing, pay per click projects, traffic exchanges, and even quite a few affiliate programs that have earned bad reputations.
--Ebooks and affiliate programs for "medical cures." This means yeast infections, PE, snoring, hair loss, augmentations, asthma miracle cures, etc. Of course we hope all our visitors are in good health, and we'd love to rid the world of toe nail fungus, too. but 99 times out of 100, Articlesabout ebooks and affiliate programs selling medical cures are awfully scammy...
--Likewise for help with love life, sex life, dating sites, etc. If getting your ex back (who might be gone for a reason) requires paying $29.99 for a PDF, we have to say no.
--MLM and network marketing systems, tips, and products. These are almost always flagged as spam, or actively spam others, and we tend to keep a pretty tight rein on them. Wait, did you say this one already?
--Gambling Articles. (Yeah, that means you, TexasHoldem Articles. And most poker Articles. We'll probably overcorrect heavily on these, and can't guarantee that we can move swiftly to re-publish false positives. Your best bet is just to stay away from gambling and lottery Articles or the topic in general).
--Downloading movies, tv, or games; watching movies, TV, or satellite online; copying DVDs, games, and programs. Not only are these against our TOS, they're against DMCA laws. Yes, you can link to Hulu episodes or Amazon DVDs for sale, but make sure you don't mislead people to think something is free if it's not.
--Video game illegal downloads, copying and sharing, game gold generation, affiliate program "make gold doing XYZ" ebooks, etc. If it doesn't offer something new of value, or share your experience with the game, stay away.
--Dealing with credit card debt, cash gifting, envelope stuffing, mortgages, currency trading, Forex, Regenesis, etc. There's a clear way to make good stuff on this topic, but alas, most people just make spambait on it.
--Hate Articles. Sure, you can give negative reviews. But spewing hate at a person crosses the line, and if we get contacted about them we might unpublish them.
.
--Ringtones Articles. Free (and so-called legal) movie download Articles. Free Mp3 download Articles. Yikes. These exploded in the last year, and we've never seen ONE that's worth anyone's time. Really.
--Adult Articles. Porn Articles. X-rated Articles. Or even just Articles with supremely mature content or violence. We don't want to unpublish Articles with bikini-clad girls on them, but be cautious, because many of our advertising partners can react badly to Articles of scantily clad lingerie models and tend to ask us to remove them.
--Lyrics Articles. Watch out for serious copyright issues. If you have an entire account dedicated to lyrics Articles, make sure you're adding a significant amount of personal review and curation, quoting correctly, and don't steal from someone else on the web.
--Traffic exchange, pay to click, banner ad sites, and other advertising or artificial traffic boosting systems. Not only are these not allowed, using them to promote your Article may be a violation of our TOS.
--Promotion of and reference to illegal activities, such as drug use, hacking, etc., or promotion of ways to get around illegal activities, such as "legal drugs," black hat systems, copying and hacking, free games and tv, etc.
--Promotion of activities that could be harmful to health, such as encouraging readers to become anorexic or induce a miscarriage.
--And a few that are harder to generalize, but obvious when we see them. That means even if they're not listed here, if Indie Nova HQ finds a demonstrable reason why articles like these are relentlessly low quality, spammed, or harmful to the community, they're out.
--With so MANY awesome topics we'd love to see more Articles on, it's just not worth it to try to create Don't Articles. Try browsing our top 100 lists for ideas
You can't build any content in these areas on Indie Nova.
So the deal is: You can't build any content on these kinds of topics on Indie Nova.
If you are interested in these areas, it's entirely possible you will bump into our filter (we call it the Don't filter). If you do, don't be surprised if your Articles
get unpublished or your entire accounts get suspended.
No, we're not trying to censor anyone. No, we don't like mediating. No, we're not trying to keep the site Puritanical. We're just trying to keep it something that we're all proud to be a part of. So if that means you're left scratching your head over editorial choices or standards, we apologize in advance.
What to do if your article gets unpublished
If your Article gets unpublished, you will see a notice on your writer dashboard letting you know. In most cases, the Article will receiving a warning first before getting unpublished, so this shouldn't take you by surprise.
You will be able to login to your account and view your Article Workshop and export your content to save it elsewhere.
Please do that within 60 days, because locked Articles get deleted after 60 days.
We very rarely overturn our locking decisions, because our systems and our human reviewers have gotten much much better over the last few years since starting the Don't program and enforcing other Indie Nova policies, like our policy for hosting original, not duplicated content, and more.
Extra help: Things to AVOID
if you care about making a good article, don't do this stuff.
* Spam. Obviously.
* X-rated content.
* Spamming. No matter how good your Articles are, if you spam the verb, you're out.
* Copied Articles.
* Or even worse: mean-intentioned Articles.
* Undeveloped "starter" Articles with no personalized content.
* Articles that sell selfishly (Articles that yell at the reader, or flash BUY ME BUY ME in all caps).
* Being meanspirited or malicious on the forums. Regardless of how good your content might be.
* Typo-riddled Articles.
* Empty or expired modules.
* Lots of modules with generic default titles like "New Amazon Plexo."
* Tricking your readers into clicking on links they weren't expecting.
* Articles on Don't topics, like pharmaceuticals and ringtones and gambling and weight loss pills and Yuwie and various affiliate marketing programs.
* Empty introduction modules.
* No writer photos.
* Anonymity hurts.
Diigo
