Like any new eHow’er, when I first started writing articles I lurked in the eHow forums reading and learning.

The following dialogue would happen over and over again, seemingly on a weekly, if not daily basis.

Newbie24 “I have 32 articles but I only made .06 cents last night, why??”

Veteran3 “I checked your articles, they are all only a few weeks old, you need to wait until they age at least a month or two before you’ll start making money off of them”

Well, what the hell does that mean??  This isn’t wine, it’s words!

When I first read this I didn’t believe it, I though it was foolish to say that.  After all, once Google indexes your page nothing more needs to be done, right? wrong!

I’ve read books and visited sites for the last few months and gradually I came to realize that articles do indeed age, in fact it’s only after about 12 weeks that you can really say an article is nearing it’s full potential.

First off, let’s talk about the reason Google exists.  Believe it or not Google does not exist solely for webmasters to jockey for page rank.  Google actually exists to “provide Internet users with quality relevant content based on their search inquiries”  Simply put, Google will display the most relevant content based on what a user types in.

With that being said consider this..

If two eHow articles with the exact same title should show up in the search engine results page (SERP) based on what a user types into the search box we all know that the oldest article will appear first, with the second article as a subset of the first.

In addition, if two exactly identical articles should appear the oldest (original) article will be the ONLY one listed.  I’m not going into the whole duplicate content debate right now, that’s another post..

Here’s what the experts have to say from SEOMOZ.ORG, a well respected SEO site..

Older articles have more authority

As you can see, the experts agree that the older an article gets, the more authority it is assumed it has on it’s keywords.  This also means that if somebody copies your article and posts it on some other site, your article will always be listed first.

Now, let’s talk about another reason an article needs to age.  You might want to brace yourself for this one…

Not everyone uses Google!!

I know, blasphemy, but alas, it is indeed true.  I myself was a non believer up until a few years ago.

So, whereas Google may index your article in a day or two, other websites may take weeks, possibly even months to get to it.

Here’s a look at the traffic stats on one of my Squidoo lenses, notice NO Google traffic, but one hit from Microsoft Live…

No Google traffic!

Some of you may have noticed that my earnings have been extremely good over the last week.  Why is this happening?  I can honestly say it isn’t the 16 articles I’ve published this month or the booming economy.

One thing I do know is that from December to January I published over 85 articles, some of those articles are now nearing the 8-10 week old mark and are starting to make real money, I know this because I checked my reports and I see articles from January in my top 50 now, some in my top 25 list.

Be patient when it comes to earning, it really does take time, don’t get discouraged.  Just keep writing and remember, the article you write today will ‘grow up’ in 2 – 3 months.

Another thing to remember is that to take full advantage of holiday or seasonal articles you need to publish them at least two months, preferably three months in advance.  That means get your summer articles out NOW!!

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