Long Summary + Articles with Illustrations

[ninarajanism]

Hi! I'm new to CC and I've been familiarising myself with the site for a couple of weeks now.

I've got a couple of questions:

1) How much of the article am I allowed to include in the Long Summary?
I know the writers' tutorial says this:
"The long summary should contain approximately 1/3 of the article. This summary is not indexed by search engines."
However, when browsing through the site, I noticed that some writers included the entire article in the Long Summary. I'm intrigued by this; is this done so that customers can make a more informed decision? I'd love to do the same, but I'm curious about the risks involved and any precautions I should take.

2) Is there any way to submit articles with illustrations?
I'd really love to write some tutorials that teach the reader how to perform a task, with the aid of (original) illustrations. (e.g. "How To Tie A Quilter's Knot".) Should I submit the article in pdf format (which is discouraged), or should I submit the entire article as an illustration? Or just scratch the idea?

Thanks for any advice!

Nina

[jadedragon]

I'd not bother with illustrations. There are sites to earn adsense on photos though.

[michaelsmoker]

I include as little as possible of my article in the sample summary, and usually include material that makes the customer want to read more, which means not necessarily from the beginning of the article. If there is any essential information in the article, I try to allude to it in the sample summary but not provide it.

The samples have been lifted by scraper sites and republished on their own site in the past. You should frequently google your article titles and keywords to see whether a scraper has stolen your CC content and alert Eric if that happens. CC is a LOT better about helping authors who get plagiarized or copyright infringed than any other site I've been on (most sites don't care because they think it's the writer's problem, not theirs).

Michael

[ninarajanism]

Thanks for replying!

Yes, I thought CC might not be the most suitable place to sell tutorials with illustrations. I just thought I'd ask anyway if it was possible at all; there seems to be a dearth of tutorials with illustrations online (e.g. how to install a camlock), and I thought maybe I could target that niche. Or maybe Murphy's Law strikes whenever I'm fixing up my house and need guidance...

Also, thanks for the tip about including material not necessarily from the beginning of the article; I hadn't thought of that.

Nina

[jadedragon]

I don't want to detract from CC in any way, but if we are discussing different markets for various types of articles Infobarrelis a great place to post articles that have step by step illustrations. They have a nice template designed just for that. As many know I'm a big fan of passive income too, so some revenue share articles always make me happy.

[michaelsmoker]

I think there's nothing wrong with discussing other writing opportunities. CC probably doesn't expect us to submit every single article we write to CC. I myself write for revenue share sites as well. If an article gets rejected by CC I typically submit it to one of my revenue share sites, where it has been accepted 100% of the time so far.

Michael