Rejected & suspended in minutes. Is my article that bad?

[HannahD]

Hi,

I submitted three articles today (had two articles accepted previously). Only minutes after I get my article rejected and my account permanently suspended! How is that possible? I'm posting my article here. Is it that bad? Is there anyway out of this?
Can anyone help me figure out where my "grammar errors, spelling errors, problems with awkward wording, or other errors" are?
By the way, I used the same formatting as the previous accepted articles.

"How to Build a Reputation When You've Just Started Your Business"

You have just kick-started your new business. You are yet to build your image and credibility. You surely don’t have a list of satisfied customers. How do you go about the dilemma of building a reputation when you don’t have any?

Here are a few helpful tips on some basic start-up strategies and how you can eventually get real client reviews, with your own hard work. Finally, there are some little dirty tips and tricks for online businesses. While they can provide some social proof, they are not recommended as a sole strategy on the long term.

Improve Your Online Image

Your website does not necessarily need to be very sophisticated, or cost you a ton of money. You only need to focus on making it clean, simple, functional and professional.

Use a Professional Email Address

Use an email with your name and your web domain. It shows that you are taking your business seriously.

Highlight Your Experience

When you are just starting out, focus on your experience, your proposed approach and your current capacity. The best place to shout it out is your “About” page.

Communicate What You Do Clearly and Confidently

Do that both on your website and when you meat people in person. Imagine you’re in a cocktail party, and someone approaches you with the question “Well, what does you company really do?”

If you give a lengthy sophisticated answer and use phrases like “We kind of do this”, and “It hard to explain what we do”, chances are, your prospect client will close the door. Get them interested first, explain later.

Get Client Reviews

Offer your services for free or for a discounted rate for three or six clients, in exchange for real satisfied customer reviews. Publish that on your website!

Get Press

If your business is unique, you can pitch it to local press. Another angle is to find some popular bloggers that serve your target demographic, and see about pitching them a story to do about you, or maybe you can write an article for them.

Once you get some press, get those fancy logos and put them on your media page to get some street credit. These logos can be grouped under the title “as seen on”, or, “as featured on”.

Pay for It!

This method may be suitable for marketing some online businesses. It can give fast results, but it is not recommended for a long-term success.

Find a website that provides small gigs like Fiver. Blast your Facebook account with thousands of likes for a small amount of money. Create a button on your website and link it to your Facebook page. The button can display something like “4,000 people liked us on Facebook”, for example. Set up a Google Places listing and do the same thing.

Another gig you can pay for is to have drip feed reviews for 3 months. Put all this on your site. After some time, you get real reviews and you’re set.

Just keep in mind that while paying for online marketing gigs may boost your online presence, you can only build your reputation using real marketing strategies.

[stelle]

Hi HannahB! I'm sorry that you've been suspended. I took a look at your article, and while it doesn't seem terrible to me, there are multiple small errors and it doesn't always flow well. Take my feedback for what it's worth; I'm no expert. and other writers will surely disagree with some of my suggestions. (Also, I regularly participate in writing critique groups. If you don't, then you might find this response overly harsh. It's really hard to have your work critiqued for the first few times. My goal really is to be helpful, not to be overly critical.)

You have (kind of awkward and formal-sounding. "You've" would work better here) just kick-started your new business. You are yet to build (have yet to build) your image and credibility. You surely don’t have a list of satisfied customers (yet). How do you go about the dilemma of building a reputation when you don’t have any (one) ?

Here are a few helpful tips on some basic start-up strategies and how you can eventually get real client reviews, with your own hard work. Finally, there are some little dirty tips and tricks for online businesses. While they can provide some social proof, they are not recommended as a sole strategy on the long term. (This part seems a bit unnecessary. It's a short article, so I don't think you really need a 3-sentence summary before you get into the meat of it.)

Improve Your Online Image

Your website does not necessarily need to be very sophisticated, or cost you a ton of money. You only need to focus on making it clean, simple, functional and professional. (This honestly doesn't seem very helpful. You're claiming to give tips...so give tips. "Improve your online image" isn't a tip. It's what people want to learn from your article.)

Use a Professional Email Address

Use an email (address) with your name and your web domain. It shows that you are (for informal web-writing, stick to contractions. "you're" reads better than "you are") taking your business seriously.

Highlight Your Experience

When you are (you're) just starting out, focus on your experience, your proposed approach and your current capacity. The best place to shout it out is (on) your “About” page. (an example might help here. Again, you're telling me to highlight my experience, but if I'm the web-unsavvy audience that you're trying to reach with this article, then I probably need more help than this)

Communicate What You Do Clearly and Confidently

Do that both on your website and when you meat (typo: meet) people in person. Imagine you’re in (at) a cocktail party, and someone approaches you with the question “Well, what does you (your)company really do?”

If you give a lengthy sophisticated answer and use phrases like “We kind of do this”, and “It (It's) hard to explain what we do”, chances are, (awkward here. You'd be better to use "that" instead of a comma) your prospect (prospective) client will close the door. Get them interested first, explain later. (a lengthy sophisticated answer and "we kind of do this" are pretty much opposites. You wouldn't do both at once)

Get Client Reviews

Offer your services for free or for a discounted rate for three or (to) six clients, in exchange for real satisfied customer reviews. Publish that (those) on your website!

Get Press

If your business is unique, you can pitch it to local press. Another angle is to find some popular bloggers that (who) serve your target demographic, and see about pitching them a story to do about you, (awkward phrasing) or maybe you can write an article for them.

Once you get some press, get those fancy logos and put them on your media page to get some street credit(malapropism: cred is short for credibility, not credit). These logos can be grouped under the title “as seen on”, or, (too many commas here) “as featured on”.

Pay for It!

This method may be suitable for marketing some online businesses. It can give fast results, but it is not recommended for a (don't need "a" here) long-term success. (If you don't recommend it, then you probably shouldn't include it in your article at all. An article is meant to be helpful or to provide answers, so why include tips that aren't helpful?)

Find a website that provides small gigs like Fiver. Blast your Facebook account with thousands of likes for a small amount of money. Create a button on your website and link it to your Facebook page. The button can display something like “4,000 people liked us on Facebook”, for example. Set up a Google Places listing and do the same thing. (Careful with suggestions like this. Panda and penguin and all of Google's cute fuzzy little animals are making these sorts of scams much less profitable. I'm not sure that CC would reject an article based on this sort of suggestion, but I would personally never suggest it.)

Another gig you can pay for is to have drip feed reviews for 3 months. Put all this (a bit awkward and unclear) on your site. After some time, you get real reviews and you’re set. (This doesn't mean anything to the web-unsavvy. Consider your audience when making suggestions. Also: remember to always keep fuzzy animals happy.)

Just keep in mind that while paying for online marketing gigs may boost your online presence, you can only build your reputation using real marketing strategies. (Is this the end of your article or the end of your excerpt? If it's the end of your article, then you need a conclusion.)

Do I think that you should have been permanently for this article? I don't know. I'm not the editor. I don't think it's terrible, and I do think that you have basic writing skills.

But there are a lot of sloppy errors, typos and awkward phrasing. At least some of these could easily have been caught by carefully proofreading your work before submitting it. If you've shown a pattern of submitting articles with these sorts of errors, then the editors might decide to suspend your account. Providing detailed feedback about multiple errors simply takes too long. The eds here aren't really editors who work with you to improve your craft - they're checkers who make sure that your work flows well and is error-free so that CC and its writers can keep demanding fair prices for high quality work.

I hope that this was helpful - and not too harsh. (Although, as I mentioned at the beginning, all writing critiques feel harsh. We pour a lot of ourselves into what we write, and it sucks to have our mistakes pointed out.)

Good luck!

[HannahD]

Thank you stelle for taking the time to give such a detailed answer. And no, you were not too harsh. The fact is, I submitted three articles today when I should have only submitted two. That third article came out very sloppy indeed, and not written with passion as well. My first two articles needed minor corrections however, mainly commas. One article was sold relatively fast for a newbie like my self for $60.

While I believe that CC editors had every right to reject this article all together, I still feel it is quite harsh to suspend me permanently for this reason alone.

Anyway,I guess I got too excited and I wanted to work at a faster pace. I only have my self to blame for that.

[stelle]

Maybe they'd be willing to hear you out. If you've already had articles accepted and purchased, you'd think that they'd give you a chance to improve. Good luck!

[HannahD]

Well, I don't know.. I guess writing isn't for me.
I'm doing some soul search right now and trying my hand at a number of things to see what it is that I really like. I still feel passionate about writing, but maybe it's just not what i'm best at.

Anyway.. I did check this one little thing. Street credit exists as a term and it what it means here is points or scores you get for doing something that street people like.

Bye Stelle and thank you for being a sweet breeze on a bad day

[stelle]

Don't decide that writing isn't for you based on this site. Content writing is a very specific type of writing. I know plenty of very good writers who would have a hard time writing here - not because writing isn't for them, but because THIS type of writing isn't for them.

Good luck with whatever it is that you decide to do!

[evaku]

Sorry about your suspension Hannah. Man I must have been quite lucky to not have been suspended for my first few articles. I started years ago but I am so happy I took a couple of years to improve after I submitted my first 3, because honestly I think nowadays I may have been just permanently banned. Don't give up on writing because of this! My first and foremost goal has always been to write novels, and I have already tried my hand at publishing one but faced rejection everywhere I went. It doesn't mean that I shouldn't be a writer, just that I needed more work so I am focusing on doing this for now so that I can actually make some money, but one day I hope to try publishing a novel again. There are always different ways to do what you love!

[AndreaT]

This just happened to me too. Seriously?? I wrote two articles, neither were accepted and it was in minutes. I am so confused!