American Lung Association Report Shows 2007 Shaping Up to be a Banner Year for Tobacco Control Policies.
Cigarette smoking has been identified as the number one preventable cause of morbidity and premature mortality worldwide. Smoking is responsible for approximately one in five deaths in the United States. From 1997 to 2001, smoking killed an estimated 438,000 people in the United States each year. This includes an estimated 259,494 male and 178,404 female deaths annually. Among adults, the three leading specific causes of smoking attributable deaths were from lung cancer (123,836), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (90,582) and ischemic heart disease (86,801).
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Annual Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Productivity Losses * U.S., 1997-2001. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) 2005; 54(25); 625-628.
These statistics alone ought to be reason enough to warrant strong tobacco control laws such as cigarette tax increases and increased funding for tobacco prevention programs, but every year new studies show that the harmful effects of smoking not only effect the smoker, but also the workers and general public exposed to secondhand smoke.
This website is home to the online version of State Legislated Actions on Tobacco Issues (SLATI), which tracks state tobacco control laws, such as state restrictions on smoking in public places and workplaces and state tobacco taxes, on an ongoing basis. It is the only resource of its kind in tobacco control today providing up-to-date information on tobacco control laws in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. You can learn more about SLATI here.
Below is a list of just some of the reports and information on tobacco control laws and policy found on this site. Please explore the various areas and learn how to get involved in the important fight for strong tobacco control laws and policies. As many of the inspirational people who are living with lung disease will tell you, it's a fight we cannot afford to lose.
All this week I will be detailing the sites I'm submitting to and how it’s going. For details on the beginning of the experiment, see the 10/26/06 post on InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com.
Following are the sites I’m consistently submitting articles to. I chose them because they had good PR and Alexa rankings. If you don’t know what a PR or Alexa rank is, it is explained briefly below, with links to other sources for in-depth information.
1. EzineArticles.com: This directory has a PR rank of 6 and an Alexa rank of 552. This is perhaps the number one article directory on the net. You can submit across a number of categories and the submission process is very easy.
You must create an author account to submit. The thing I like the most about this site is that you can track your articles and it gives you a wealth of information like how many ezines picked up the article, how many hits it’s gotten, when you submitted, etc.
To me, the best part of this directory is that they post your article within 4-6 hours, once you’ve achieved platinum status, which is not hard to do.
2. ArticleDashboard.com: This directory has a PR rank of 6 and an Alexa rank of 3,461.
Again, you must create an author account to submit. It’s easy to submit once you do this. This directory also gives some article stats (eg, how many times the article has been downloaded, emailed to others, etc.).
3. IdeaMarketers.com: This directory has a PR rank of 4 and an Alexa rank of 8,897. You must create an author account and article stats are provided.
4. EasyArticles.com: This directory has a PR rank of 6 and an Alexa rank of 52,143.
You must create an author account to submit. Beyond providing a list of articles you’ve submitted, this directory doesn’t provide article stats. Submission process is very easy one you’ve set up an account.
5. PowerHomeBiz.com: This site has a PR rank of 6 and an Alexa rank of 25,152.
NOTE: This is not an article submission site, but a small business portal of sorts. I submitted to this site because they don’t publish “fluff" articles. There is a certain level of professionalism that you must have to get published on this site. They don’t just publish anything and it gives you a certain level of prestige if you’re lucky enough to be published here.
I got good e-zine subscription feedback from an article that I had published on their site a couple of years ago. The article was entitled, Why You DON'T Need National Media Attention to Grow Your Biz, and can be found at the following link: http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol147/marketing.htm.
What is a PR Ranking? What is an Alexa Rank?
PR Rank: First, PR stands for page rank. Impact-Direct.com defines page rank as “A method developed and patented by Stanford University and Larry Page (cofounder of Google) to rank search engine results. Page Rank gives a unique ranking to every page on the internet. The ranking number is based on the number of quality inbound links pointing at a page and is represented on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being the optimal rank."
In the article, “What Is Page Rank?" by Kimberly Bodane, she describes why page rank is important, as well as what you can do to improve yours.
You’ll also find a detailed article on problogger.net (“Google Page Rank Explained") with helpful feedback from other readers.
Alexa Rank: An article on e3Server.com, What is Alexa Ranking, describes Alexa rankings as “ a very powerful tool of viewing and comparing web site traffic for one site to the rest of the web."
The lower the ranking, the better. Sites that rank 100,000 or lower are considered extremely popular.
To learn more, type “alexa ranking" in the search engine of your choice and do some reading. You’ll be able to get a full understanding by reading a few articles of detailed information.
Why I Used PR and Alexa Rankings as Markers for My Article Marketing Campaign
To be honest, I’m an SEO (search engine optimization) neophyte. I don’t like learning about technology – I’m a writer; all things technical bore the bejeezus out of me.
BUT, I have read enough about these two tools to know that they are important and that if I was going to use article marketing to create passive income, I needed to rely on getting the word out to as many as possible. This only happens via sites that are extremely popular.
How do you measure the popularity of a site? Via its PR and/or Alexa ranking are two viable ways.
Disclaimer: I had written in another post that my site, InkwellEditorial.com, had a PR of 6. When I checked it months ago, it did. I checked it today (10/30/06) and it’s a 5. We won’t even discuss my Alexa ranking, which used to hover in the 800,000s; now it’s at over 6,000,000.
It seems to me that when I didn’t update the site as regularly, it’s ranking was fine, but as soon as I started to fiddle with it, the rankings went in the crapper. I’m sure some expert can tell me why.
From what I understand, Google sometimes changes its algorithms, and that can cause site rankings to shift significantly, eg, my blog's PR has skyrocketed since the last time I checked; it went from a 0 to a 5. Go figure!
To find out your site's PR, go Go here: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php
To find out your site's Alexa's ranking: Go here: http://www.Alexa.com.
Show Me the Money!
Okay, all of that is fine you may be saying, but what about the money? During the first few days of my experiment, my Google Adsense earnings quintupled. That’s what got me so excited.
Well, my earnings have cooled off, but I am still, on average, doubling what I was making before I started this experiment. Rules of the Adsense program prohibit giving specific figures, but before I was making decent pocket change, which meant, eg, monthly car payment, barhopping with friends, etc.
Both Ibrahim Machiwala & Yuwanda Black are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.