Free-Content List Administration

You will receive this notice monthly to remind you of the policies
of the list and to serve as a reminder to use Free-Content to
effectively promote your business or your site by contributing
on a regular basis to the 3700 list members represented here.

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Contents:

|||> FR*E CONTENT LIMITED TO BUSINESS RELATED CONTENT
|||> Linking restrictions
|||> Policies, summaries, restrictions and formatting
|||> Free Text to HTML Converter available to List Members
|||> List archive available as member resource at all times!
|||> RESOURCE BOXES LIMITED TO 10 LINES AT 64 CPL

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TOPIC OF FREE-CONTENT IS BUSINESS RELATED CONTENT ONLY

This list is well publicized, but often new members are unaware
that the topic of this list is "SMALL BUSINESS RELATED ARTICLES"
and it is an article distribution list, not an announcement list.
Issues that address matters of concern to small business online
such as marketing, promotion, search engines, staff or personal
development, site design, time management, incorporation, taxes
software (no geek speak), partnerships, start-ups, joint venture
resources and other small business topics will be considered.

We've expanded topics slightly to include finance, real estate
and investment articles, but will scrutinize those submissions
more thoroughly for link spamming abuses described above due to
the prevalence of finance, investment and loan related splogs
and auto-generated sites of any kind intended solely to display
Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network ads.


LINKING RESTRICTIONS

Articles including self promotional links in the article body or
promotions of affiliate programs will be deleted. If the link to
affiliate programs is included in your signature or resource box
it may be included but links are limited to three. NO promotional
text, autoresponder addresses or self referencing links within
articles will be allowed. No new website announcements or
ebook offers. No more than three links of any kind allowed in
resource boxes. You cannot own domains referenced within article.

It has become necessary to restrict and limit links due to
search engine spamming abuses emerging in article marketing.

Article Dashboard sites in linked articles not accepted.
Plug In Profit sites in linked articles not accepted.

We reserve the right to delete articles based on redirects or
splog URL's used in author resource boxes. URL's that auto-
matically redirect to secondary sites not allowed. Links are
checked in Whois records for ownership by authors and domains
linked from resource boxes will be limited to three sites owned
or controlled by the author. If those domains are reserved with
proxy registrars or information is hidden in Whois records, the
articles will be deleted. Writers or marketers distributing an
article on behalf of clients must state in usage restrictions
or the resource box that the linked sites belong to clients.

POLICIES, SUMMARIES, RESTRICTIONS AND FORMATTING

Articles full of bizarre characters that result from writers
cutting and pasting directly from word processor
software into an email to submit to the list. Plain ascii
text cannot reproduce much of the punctuation from WP
software so you must first paste it into Notepad and remove
those characters first before submitting to the list.

Further Reading on this can be found at the following URL:

http://shorl.com/benystulogrubri (redirects to article)

Articles which use any phrase repeatedly in an attempt to gain
rank for that phrase will be deleted without comment. A rule of
thumb would be no more than one use of any keyword phrase
per 100 words. If your article is 600 words long and you've
parroted a keyword phrase more than six times - that is too
many uses of the same phrase. (And it's poor writing)

Duplicate articles are expressly forbidden and this should
serve as notice that if that is detected, you will be banned
from the list when duplicates are detected. Changing titles to
submit duplicates is not acceptable. Duplicates are detected
by content management software upon distribution to our new
site at http://Publish101.com and will result in your removal
from the list.

Please remember to include a short summary of your article, along
with a word count and resource box to facilitate publishers
contacting you directly through web site links and e-mail links.
Mention any publication restrictions and requests for copies of
publications that your articles appear in.

One of the most critical issues for list members is FORMATTING!
A free resource allowing cut and paste or file upload is at:
http://www.formatit.com Please use that source to format because
when you cut and paste from many word processing programs, the
"hard return" is not saved and formatting is lost. Always use
a hard return at the end of each line, with lines no longer than
64 characters. If your posts are not formatted in this manner,
your articles will be deleted. No publishers will spend the time
to format your work for you.

Email readers wrap text at 64 characters. IF you lines are
longer than 64 characters without a hard return - you'll get
alternating long and short lines to your text. It's very hard
to read and will stop most editors from using your work.

Finally, a resource box linking to your website is the best
value you get from distributed articles. Make certain that
your URL is complete in the resource box so that automated
content management systems can hyperlink it so you get
"credit" for your work. A complete URL will not be created
unless you include the http:// ahead of www.domain.com
So the proper URL is http://www.domain.com

Also don't include periods or punctuation after a domain as
it will cause an error when linking to your site in most cases.

Please resubmit once notified of rejection of articles to:

mailto:free-content@yahoogroups.com

RESOURCE BOXES LIMITED TO 10 LINES AT 64 CPL (INCLUDING SPACES)

Here is an acceptable example from my own resource box.

1 -------------------------------------------------------
2 Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization
3 Specialist practicing ethical SEO for Online businesses
4 http://SEOptimism.com
5
6 Take our Search Engine Quiz to test your Skills Level
8 http://SearchEngineOptimism.com/search_engine_quiz.html
8 email link: http://privacynotes.com/cgi-bin/M/msb.cgi?2
9 -------------------------------------------------------

This is 9 lines including spaces and separator bars. Maximum
will be 10 lines at 64 cpl. Please limit your resource boxes!


AUTOMATICALLY CONVERT TEXT ARTICLES TO HTML FOR WEB PUBLISHING

No HTML is allowed within the article body, it will be provided
by our content management system online and we tell list
members where to find this tool to insert HTML code into their
online uses of articles. Please don't add it to your submissions.

Easily convert articles to HTML format for use on web sites.

This great tool automates these normally tedious tasks:

* Adds mailto: to email addresses
* Inserts paragraph tags <p>
* Allows ordered lists or bullets
* Adds clickable hyperlinks to URL's
* Sets headings to bold text
* Allows links to open in new window

This tool is free for list members and can be accessed here:

http://website101.com/cgi-bin/t2h/Mt2h.cgi

LIST ARCHIVE AVAILABLE FOR MEMBER RESOURCE AT ALL TIMES

Remember that Free Content is a permanent archive of all articles
accepted for distribution and the 12000 articles remain as a valuable
archive for publishers to access and draw from at any time. So be
certain to mention if the article is time-sensitive or contains
dated information which may become *out-dated*! This archive is
accessible from the main page at:

http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/Free-Content

By scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking on the number
which appears under each month, you can access previous articles.
Posting to the list means that you understand your posts are
available at any time to the list membership.

One submission per article only please. Don't resubmit
previously distributed articles repeatedly. Once approved,
articles are archived and remain available at all times for
members. If there are multiple copies in the archive, search
engines penalize us for duplicate content and lower the value
of the Free-Content site and your articles are downgraded in
rank.

We have an archive of over 14000 articles at the Free Content
list at the following address.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Content/messages

PUBLISHERS:

Please respect the copyright of list members who make their
work available for distribution and follow their terms of use
published with each article. Make CERTAIN that you link back
to the author's web site and make those links LIVE hyperlinks
from your web pages or HTML emails. You are in violation of
copyright if you use articles outside of author terms of use!

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Thank you to all writers for contributing and all publishers for
your consideration of the quality work represented by list members!


Mike Banks Valentine
Free Content List Owner
http://Publish101.com