The announcement is on Zujava Blog http://XXX.zujava.com/blog/2015/04/29/i … out-zujava
Other than the little ones that have popped up, the big ones are HP, Wizzley and Infobarrel. There may be some more left, but I don't know.
I had only 2 articles on Seekyt, but have moved one to PersonaPaper. Seekyt just didn't work for me. Now every time I update an article on PP, it removes the intro photo. I may be moving some from there, too. Are you having problems on Seekyt?
Hopefully Wizzley will be next my experience there as well as that of others was nothing short of miserable.
Funny, given I'm moving most of my Hubs to either Wizzley or my own sites at the moment. It's so much more pleasant an experience overall than here. But I gave up on Zujava long ago - the lack of response from the admin to building issues just gave me no confidence in the site.
Wizzley is a great place and got a really cool interface and the articles look good - no complains there. However, the traffic on Wizzley is nothing near what I receive here on HP. My articles tend to rank well here on HP and on wizzley they don't rank at all.
Sorry Sockii, I just couldn't keep up with it. I'd spend a couple hours a day responding to emails and still not have time to actually move forward with the site.
I gave up on them a long time ago. Wrote some articles there, they were taking a long time to review them so I took them off of there and moved them elsewhere.
i remember that one Nate. First it was a day or two then people were waiting for weeks to have their content reviewed and were left sitting in the playpen.
That would be because I was the only person running the site. I had thousands of leaves to review and could no longer keep up with it, Linda. But I do apologize for all of those that waited in the Petting Zu and didn't get a response. I was up to my eyeballs in leaves to sort through, and most of the new content coming in was 100% spam.
It wasn't a long time ago that I removed my articles from Seekyt after it was sold to a new owner. I am glad that I took off all my content because the new owner is hardly active and seems quite disinterested. Looks like the site will die a natural death. .
Zujava shutting down was also sad news. In his long update Bill has explained in detail why he is closing down the site. He admits that he had had a tough ride after his developer partner left and Amazon shut down the Zujava account.
Like with Seekyt before this, I will remove all my content from Zujava and start putting them into my own blogs. Although Bill recommends Hubpages or a blog to republish content, I prefer to have my content up at a place where I have full control.
I have had a lot of problems using Seekyt. I had 2 articles there, and moved one to PersonaPaper, where I now have 12 articles. My problems with Seekyt were mostly with getting photos to load properly. Also, I cannot copy and paste FROM a Seekyt article. I often write in Word, then copy & paste it into the online platform, but then end up editing online. After doing that, I need to copy the changes back to my Word document. It doesn't allow that. When moving the articles, I have to completely retype them. I guess that's why still haven't moved that last one. There are also some formatting problems there. It was just too much trouble for me. Thanks for letting me vent.
Not being able to copy from the webpage is an excellent feature. I wish HP would implement it. Perhaps then, I wouldn't have so many Hubs plagiarised.
I have a code I use to stop copying from my sites. I had foreign sites coming in groves. Funny how they have disappeared once I implemented to code that stops copying anything from my sites. Most of those sites were from Russia.
I agree, copying from the published article could be problematic. My problem was that I couldn't even copy when in the edit screen. That is not good.
The writing is on the wall - I know more and more people who are transferring content from article sites to their own sites.
Why did they lose their amazon account again? I searched online, most places say the reason wasn't clear.
Here is the blog post about Zujava / Amazon issue.
http://www.zujava.com/blog/2014/08/15/i … ith-amazon
Amazon claimed that rules were violated. Bill had posted that he was not given any specifics by Amazon.
I am sorry to hear that you no longer can use your favorite sites to show your work. Do not worry, I am sure you are gping to find something good. You need to keep searching to see if it is thrue the site called Zuyava is gone.
Zujava lost its Amazon account because of cookie stuffing. This is a deliberate act to download an affiliate cookie when a visitor visits a website. What this means is that a visitor just reading an article on Zujava (and NOT clicking an Amazon ad) would have a cookie installed on his computer which contained Zujava's affiliate code for Amazon. So, if that person ever bought anything from Amazon over the next 30 days (now only 24 hours), Zujava would get a commission. There is another term for this: FRAUD
In 2008, a cookie stuffer was brought to trial by eBay and eBay won a large judgment. In 2010, U.S. Federal court brought criminal charges against the creator of a cookie stuffer software program. In the case of eBay Inc. v. Digital Point Solutions, Inc. et. al., Digital Point earned US$15 Million in just 18 months from this practice.
People are still buying programs like this, especially people outside of the U.S. and, if they use them, they eventually get their affiliate accounts shut down FOREVER.
Wow, I didn't know that. I never would have guessed, but I know they had me waiting months for a review of my articles so I gave up on them and took my articles elsewhere.
Perhaps they were set up by some unknown entity? To make it look that way to Amazon, as to cause the loss of the account? Could they have been hacked?
If negative SEO can happen, why not something like that?
It is clear though, going back at least 3 years that one hand did not know what the other was doing on Zujava. Communication was very limited, and many people were guessing about major issues, with admin largely ignoring the issues.
Writer Fox: Where did you find this information about the cookie stuffing. He always claimed Amazon never gave him a specific reason for closing the account.
I know this is what the guy did because the first time I visited the site (without clicking on any Amazon ad) he installed his Amazon affiliate cookie on my computer!
Besides that, he did admit it in this blog post he made on August 7, 2014:
"... our apparent violation of Rule #27 from their operating agreement."
http://www.zujava.com/blog/2014/08/15/i … ith-amazon
And here is Rule #27 from Amazon:
"27. You will not artificially generate clicks or impressions on your site or create Sessions on the Amazon Site, whether by way of a robot or software program or otherwise."
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp … icipation/
It's a wonder he didn't get sued. He pocketed a lot of money from that and so did the writers on that site. Almost all of the money earned by Zujava was from Amazon, and Bill admitted that, too.
No, this isn't what happened. Yes, we violated Rule 27, but it was an outside user that did so. A writer stole their unique tracking ID and used it on their own website, cookie stuffing on their own website using that tracking ID that was attached to Zujava. Also, I am not the programmer, nor did we create artificial clicks anywhere. Amazon confirmed this with us.
There was no money "pocketed." Our earnings were mostly from Amazon, but that was because the pages being created were filled with Amazon products, and there were actually quite a few people that were adept at creating pages that really converted to sales.
If that is your claim, I'm sure you'll be happy to post here the email exchanges you had with Amazon confirming your statement.
(Amazon wouldn't pull your account for something someone else did. If so, anyone's Amazon account could be sabotaged.)
Why should he? He's got nothing to prove to me or any one else that *really* matters. I actually wrote on Zujava and I take the explanations in good faith. Your insinuations are frankly very rude. And, since I take it you didn't write on there anyway, I don't see why any of this should be a concern to you. Why there is a need to start spreading malicious rumours and to kick someone when they are already down is beyond me. It's neither nice nor professional.
Thank you Marie for saying exactly how I am feeling about this thread. I do not understand why some people feel the need to stand out in a crowd by throwing rocks at someone and especially when they don't have all the facts. I have a lot of respect for Bill and find the behavior on this thread disgusting.
What an odd thing to say! Nobody's "throwing rocks" here. If you have additional facts, feel free to post them.
Any business, brick-and-mortar or online, is subject to reviews on the Internet. That's just a fact of the modern age. Quite frankly, I have no respect for a content site which – according to Bill – received "even at Zujava's best ... no more than 3,000 pageviews per day" on 50,000 pages of content! You can respect that lack of success if you want to, but I find that disgusting.
I have no love lost for Zujava at the moment but for the record at MOST there were no more than a little over 5,000 pages on Zujava before people even started pulling content en masse, nothing near 50,000.. As someone who wrote there quite a bit before becoming disillusioned I looked at that page count number quite frequently.
Even so, 3,000 PV a day on 5,000 articles is not that great for sure. (IF the 3,000 number is accurate; I can't check with the site/blog being down now.)
He doesn't have to. I'll post one of those emails, because people who "really" matter should know the truth:
"We are writing to notify you that we are terminating the Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement with you with immediate effect. Your Associates Program account will be closed and you will not receive further payment of advertising fees. We have taken this step because you are not in compliance with the Operating Agreement that governs your participation in the Associates Program.
"You are not in compliance with Participation Requirement Number 27(https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp … ticipation) because you are automatically starting sessions on an Amazon Site tagged with your Associates ID in order to artificially increase your advertising fee earnings.
"You can find the complete terms of the Operating Agreement and its Schedules via this link: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp … agreement.
"We insist that you immediately stop this activity and remove all Amazon content, including Special Links, from your site(s). Any other accounts you have or may open in the future may be closed and you will not receive any advertising fees. We reserve all other rights and claims we may have.
"Warmest Regards,
"Amazon.com"
And, if that email from Amazon is some "malicious rumour", blame it on Bill, not me:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150315090 … ith-amazon
Marie, you are the one here who is "frankly very rude", "spreading malicious rumours", and "neither nice nor professional", not me. Bill waited five weeks to respond to this thread on HP until he could take down the Zujava site. (He promised writers the site would be online until July 1!)
Bill waited four months before giving any explanation to writers about why he hadn't paid them their commissions for Amazon sales. That is unconscionable and violated Zujava's own Terms of Service with its writers. He can come to this forum and post whatever excuses he wants to, but professional writers know what happened to the site and will also post their experiences, including the lack of response from Zujava to their concerns as you will see on this thread.
I have said Bill got greedy and was told I was wrong. Well, I guess I wasn't wrong was I. Thanks Writer Fox. No wonder he didn't tell writers why he lost the Amazon account.
Writers on that site say the only money they made was from Amazon sales. Cookie stuffing was the reason. The site never had any traffic to speak of.
There were only around 5000 articles on the site so logically not as much income coming in as there are on larger sites. I did okay there. I will miss Zujava. I liked the platform. I also miss Squidoo.
There have been a lot of major publishing platforms closing. Helium, Squidoo, and YahooVoices being among the largest I believe.
I liked the site too and am sorry to see it shutting down. I was doing okey there with sales, not earning a lot of money but I was happy with the extra $$$ each month. Since the Amazon thing, I have only earned about $1 per month.
The site as a whole never did well. Cookie stuffing was NOT the reason. A very small number of people did okay, but the majority earned little. Please stop insinuating that Zujava resorted to shady methods. We did everything 100% by the book, and in the end, got burned by a writer, and now I'm in debt from having run Zujava so long on my dime.
As a Zubassador there I know how very dedicated you were to seeing Zujava succeed. I loved the platform and very much enjoyed working with you. You were more than fair with the writers there. It is very sad that it did not work out as planned. I sure miss it. I wish you the very best in your future endeavors.
I am not so sure it was Bill behind the problem with Amazon. He is/was not the programmer on the site.
He is owner of site!!!
He stopped allowing writers to use their own Amazon account, once his was implemented.
There is no way that he didn't know what was going on.
Sounds like same problems with Seekyt that have had since starting.
According to Zujava owner Bill Nihill, one of the reasons Zujava lost traffic was when ex-Squidoo writers started posting content on the site. After getting the requisite five articles approved and published, they were free to publish whatever they wanted without supervision. A lot of what they published was spam. Here's what Nihill said:
"Despite extensive measures like the Petting Zu and human editors, we had trouble keeping up with the spam and low quality content. Once Squidoo closed, it seemed we had a flood of writers coming here to publish their low quality Amazon-centric fluff pages (many from people who had already graduated from the Petting Zu and had previously been publishing good content). That hurt our site immensely."
WF: He invited Squidoo writers. He has sales pages on there long before squidoo shut down. He allowed many to write sales pages, and would delete other writers pages that had very few products. He had that zubassador program much like the squid angel, big squid program. His Zubassadors were bill worshipers, and were some of the main people that wrote nothing but sales pages.
I love how when sites are doing well, making money hands over fist for the owners all is well.
When the site goes down, it is the fault of the writers on it.
Linda I was a Zubassador and I do find that comment offensive. The Zubassadors were volunteers who put in a lot of hours to try and make Zujava a successful platform for us to write on. I loved the Zujava platform and that is why I and others worked so hard in our roles there. It takes a lot of hands to run a website like Zujava.
The writing standard was minimum 400 words per article and an additional 50 words per added sales module with limitations. After Amazon went down so did the rules seem to as the site just went into dormant mode.
Bottomline: Bill takes his decision and walks away into the sunset leaving writers wondering where to go. Moral of the story - create your own website, a simple 20-minute process costing a little bit of money but can provide you with an asset for life with full control.
I always felt Bill had the best of intentions but the site, like so many, was started bexause of dissatisfaction with HubPages and he was perhaps a little naive about how easy it would be to set up a "better" version (like many other such sites!).
I hadn't heard about the cookie stuffing but I'd be inclined to think Bill trusted someone who gave him bad advice on that one - at the time he seemed genuinely mystified as to the reason for losing the account.
I believe Bill is a genuine stand-up guy and was "mystified" over this whole Amazon thing like you say.
One of the worst things about this practice is all of the writers and website owners who had their legitimately earned commissions stolen from them because the people who clicked on their Amazon links had these unjustified cookies from Zujava installed up to 30 days earlier.
This makes you wonder what other sites are doing this to the writers. This is a good reason to avoid these platforms and create your own sites.
Now I know this, I am moving content that does not fit sites I already have, to another one once I create it.
I never knew about cookie stuffing before this thread.
If this is the case, then it should still be the case. Nothing has changed on Zujava's coding in years, so everything is still intact from where it was when you landed on that page. Which page was it?
I am not sure really how much it matters whether he was a deliberate cookie stuffer or insufficiently competent to control and understand what was happening on a site he owned. After all this is about consequences, not where he as a person falls on some moral scale.
WF: I went to the site looking for an article that I knew was on there. How do I know if I have a cookie on my computer from there? I clean cache
Never mind: I found out how to do it.
Zujava had 5 cookies on my computer. I have never bought from there or click on any amazon products there. I simply went to the site looking for information from articles that I knew had been on there at one time.
Download the free edition of this:
http://www.superantispyware.com/
And use it at least once or twice a day.
Cookies can also be uploaded to your computer from opening Word documents where you have, for instance, copied and saved articles which contain affiliate links.
When you start your computer, open a Word document, then start your Internet browser for a session. Then, run Superantispyware. You'll probably find hundreds of cookies on your computer. Do this ever time you start your computer.
It found 138 bad to the bone tracking cookies on the laptop that I use for work.
I save articles with products on them from whereever I have moved them. I had no idea. Thanks WF.
I should add, the computer I have now is different from the one I had when I was on Zujava. So the cookies were placed while I was searching for some articles on there.
You probably have cookies in dowloaded PDFs and e-books, too. No sense in taking the time to try to find them all; just run the spyware.
I downloaded and ran it. Over 400 cookies found. I downloaded Free version but it turns out to be on a trial basis only. I know when trial is up, they will want me to buy it.
I've used the free version for years and years.
I just downloaded it and we'll see what it finds. Thanks!
CNET review of the software
http://download.cnet.com/SuperAntiSpywa … 23889.html
I just set my browsers to clear cookies when I exit. Works for me.
It's also worth noting this is Windows Software and hence irrelevant for all of us who have Apple
Clearing your browser does not remove cookies stored in Word documents.
Rules applied to some, and not others. There is a long time writer on their now I found yesterday. One paragraph, 99 products and copied quotes. This is one who has always been allowed to do sales pages. Zubassadors were allowed to do sales pages. Same thing on Squidoo and even here on HP.
shower curtains??? Hey, I did a shower curtain page on one of my sites for laughs! I guess people aren't buying them anymore! LOL!
If the guy or his developer was stuffing cookies and earning commissions that certainly is an offence. I don't know why Amazon would let him off so lightly if it was the case. eBay made sure that cookie stuffers went to prison. In fact the owner of a popular internet marketing forum, Digitalpoint, was jailed when he was caught. I believe he earned millions just by stuffing cookies into the computers of unsuspecting visitors to Digitalpoint and his other websites.
In any case I find it hard to believe that Bill did not know why his Amazon account was suspended. Unlike Seekyt's previous owner who sold his site he did not even attempt to pass it on or sell it to someone else. Doing that would have at least kept the site alive. Any site online can be improved, provided some work goes into it.
Maria: I can copy from my edit mode. I also keep a copy of every article that I write. There is a place where you may find some, if not all, of your work, called the Wayback Machine
Thanks, Linda Smith. Is that WaybackMachine.com? or is it a part of HP? May be a dumb question, but I really don't know.
No, siimply add URL for article or even site and it pulls up articles. It may not have all of them, but it does have a lot of them.
if it's not a ".com" and it's not part of HP, then how do I get to it?
google "internet archives". First result should be internetarchives dot org. Go to that site and at the top of the site will be a search engine for the wayback machine and you can search for your articles there.
I thought it had to be, even though you said "no". Thanks.
It seems like every week we hear about another site shutting down. I'm thankful for hubpages. They just keep chugging along.
How dare you believe Amazon when deciding what Amazon actually did!? (LOL)
Yeah, it is plenty obvious what happened whether the boss chose to do it or just was asleep at the switch while his staff did it, it was internal not just some rogue user.
+1 (Too many naive, gullible people in the world!)
Unless there is something going on between my computer and internet connection,you can't even pull up Zujava site.
Bill took it offline and then came here to post his excuses on the HP forum. He promised writers that Zujava would stay online until July 1. I guess that was someone else's fault, too.
I figured that is what he would do,which is his style! So glad I jumped ship long ago, when the handwriting was on the wall, long before Squidoo shut down.
This should be a lesson to all. These sites can and will be shut down on a whim. Promises mean nothing. Writers mean nothing. Always keep a copy of your content saved on your computer, on a CD rom, somewhere.
Just a week ago, he posted a reminder that July 1 was final date, on Facebook.
Go to Waybackmachine dot com. Put in url for Zujava. You can get to old site, and get to articles on there.
On FB page, a post, one hour ago, the claim is site is down, working on fix.
It's a shame to see another site go, I knew of Zujava well but never got around to publishing there.
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