Top 10 Reasons Why Your Triond Content is Declined or Sent Back for Revision

Posted on January 11th, 2009 in Online Writing by Dialga
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You spend hours upon hours working on a piece of content, only to find it has been declined, or sent back for revision, by Triond editors the very next day. There are many different reasons why an article is initially refused entry into the Triond database, but I’m going to reveal the Top 10 Reasons and how to overcome them.

Whether your content is declined or sent back for revision, I think I speak for all of us when I say it hurts. In any case, you’ll need to submit a revision on your article to the editing department. I’m going to review the 10 most-used reasons by the Triond editing department as to why a piece of content is sent for revision or declined. I’m also going to thoroughly explain each of the reasons.

Reason #10

“Content item contains content that we cannot publish. The content you have submitted does not conform to our editorial guidelines. Your content must not contain any derogatory, offensive, unlawful, harmful, threatening, vulgar, profane, abusive, harassing, obscene, pornographic, defamatory, or tortuous material.”

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As written in this reason’s description, its explanation is pretty straightforward.  Don’t use profanity, post pornographic material, write an article solely for the purposes of insulting another author; well, you get the general idea.

Reason #9

“Please revise your content so that it does not appear as a school assignment. Thank you for choosing Triond.”

Triond doesn’t want you to just submit a Microsoft Word file with your Grade 6 math work in it. You need to fix the content so it doesn’t appear as an assignment – the key word here being “appear.” So if you wrote an English essay on “Romeo and Juliet,” remove the title page, name, date, teacher, subject, and anything else in the essay that might classify it as a school assignment. Rename the title so the word “essay” is not included in it. Fix all of these minor problems and your content will be approved.

Reason #8

“Submitted file is corrupt. The file you submitted for publication is corrupt. No need to worry, these technical dings happen! Please try and resubmit it. If the problem persists and you receive this message after you resubmit, try using a different encoding method or change the file to a different format.”

I often found this problem when trying to submit files written in WordPad (.rtf format). For best results when submitting a written document, use the Triond Online Editor, Notepad or Microsoft Office. This also happens if your internet connection disconnects while you’re in the middle of uploading a file.

My method of submitting content to Triond is quite simple. I write everything in Microsoft Office 2007, including my Title, Article Description, Article Body and Search Tags. Then, I simply copy and paste my work into the Triond Online Editor, using the “Paste from Word” tool. In the past, when my content was declined, I found myself frustrated when I couldn’t remember all of the same search tags I entered. Now, when my content is declined, I don’t lose anything at all.

Reason #7

“This item has already been submitted. If you wish to upload new content, please ensure the file you are submitting contains the correct content and try again.”

If an article you submitted was declined and you try to send it in again, this time with the problems corrected, you’ll sometimes get this message. If your content is declined a second time due to this reason, send an email to the editor alerting them to the issue, and include the title of your article. As long as the article has been properly fixed, the department will publish it.

Reason #6

“Content too marketing-oriented. Please submit content that does not promote a particular business or event. This includes, but is not limited to, direct advertising, promotions, or soliciting of donations.”

In other words, your content focuses too much on the advertising or promotion of a business or website. Let’s say your article is focusing on your review of Burger King. You explain the menu items, the service and your overall experience at the restaurant. You come to the conclusion that Burger King is definitely one of the top fast-food restaurants in the industry, so you state that in your article, which views the Burger King franchise in a positive light.

Its content can be taken in one of two ways. An editor may find it just as it is – a personal review and opinion of Burger King. Or, an editor might get the impression that the article is solely based upon giving the franchise free advertising on the internet, and you will be asked to revise your content.

To avoid having the article sent for revision, refrain from using phrases such as “I highly recommend this…” or “…is the best ever…” In short, if you are in fact writing a review, write about your experience and don’t include any words that could be interpreted by the editing department as “free-advertising.”

There is one added hidden reason. If your content includes any affiliate or referral identification links, it also falls into this category.

To avoid having the article sent for revision because of this, fix all the website links by removing the attached ID number. For example, instead of a link being “advertise.com/refID=920392,” change it to just “advertise.com.” Submit your revision and it’ll get approved.

Reason #5

“Duplicate content. Identical content has been previously published online. You may only submit content that has not been previously published in whole or in part, on the Internet.”

Triond has procedures to ensure that your content does not appear elsewhere online.  They check to make sure you haven’t already published the same content elsewhere online, and also that you’re not just copying an article someone else wrote and then re-publishing it under your own name. The company wants you to submit original content.

To fix this issue, you’ll need to completely re-write your article.

Reason #4

“Incomplete article. The article you submitted is either too short or is an incomplete file. Please submit articles that discuss your topic comprehensively, as is outlined in our writing guidelines. This may make your article more relevant and interesting, and therefore help you to gain more recognition.”

If you are submitting poetry, you need to select the “Creative Writing” category when sending it in. Otherwise, the editing department will deem the submission too short. In general, non-poetry articles should be at least 250 words in length. Thank God for the automatic “Word Count” option in the bottom-left corner of Microsoft Word 2007!

This reason also applies to two other scenarios. The first is when you’re submitting a text article with pictures in it. Each picture should have about 3 to 5 sentences associated with it, either explaining the picture itself or talking about it in a generic fashion.

The second scenario is when you’re writing a story with pictures in it. The amount of text in the story has to be what the editors deem “proportional” with regards to the number of pictures in the story, which is quite ambiguous to say the least. I’ll explain with one of my experiences. I submitted a Star Trek story that had 992 words in it and 23 pictures. It was rejected multiple times and I thought the main reason was because the file wasn’t properly sent in, hence the explanation of “incomplete” article. When I contacted the editor, I was told the main concern with my article was that there wasn’t enough text to go with the number of pictures I had included. I was told that the article would be published anyway, but any future articles I wrote should have a more equal balance between text and images. After that experience, I stopped writing Star Trek stories. Only 2 episodes of mine were published. The rest, I have on my computer.

Some of us have an easier time writing longer articles than others. When I was in Grade 8, I had an English teacher who had quite the unique rewards system. If the class remained quiet, we wouldn’t have to write a daily journal, or the journal would be limited to 50 or 75 words. Of course, you can imagine how angry I was when the rest of my class kept blabbering away. The Italian teacher, Mr. Coccimiglio, who was also my math teacher, and taught a gym class as well, kept increasing the amount of words we needed to write in the journal. Our class had more than a few journals assigned at 250 words; some even at 500 words. I think there was even one at 750 words. We alternated between English one day and Math the next, so we always had 2 days to complete the journals.

Often, I would find myself turning to my dad, who helped correct my homework. I had trouble writing journal entries at 250 words, and often requested his help in extending my article to meet the required length set by Coccimiglio. To be honest, I don’t think Coccimiglio even cared whether or not our journal entries were long enough. He never corrected them, and just briefly looked over our work to see who was doing it. At the end of the year, there were still people in my class who hadn’t handed in a single journal, yet they passed anyway.

In any case, the point of my story is this. I know how hard it is to write articles in excess of 250 words. But if you just keep writing, and push yourself to add in more details, you’ll find that 250-word articles are relatively a piece of cake in comparison to 1,000-word essays.

Reason #3

“Readability errors. We would like to publish your submitted article, but it contains too many readability errors. Please double-check your content and resubmit with corrected spelling, punctuation, and grammar. The spell-check feature that is available on most word processors is a great way to double-check content before submitting.”

Triond editors don’t have the time to fully read over your article, correcting for every single mistake in spelling, punctuation and grammar. In my opinion, the majority of the time, the main things they check for in a piece of content include: all of the links not containing referral IDs, pictures being properly sourced, the content being original, and a generic view of the article not being too advertisement-related.

Contrary to one of the explanations, however, I do not suggest that you print out a copy of your article. It’s a waste of ink and paper. My advice is to just read your article on your monitor screen out loud prior to sending it in. If it doesn’t sound right, it most likely isn’t written correctly.

Reason #2

“Please source your images. Please provide sources for your images by placing a link to the original source URL of the image below the picture. Make sure that every image is not copyrighted, or that it has an appropriate Creative Commons attribution license, otherwise it may not be published. If you are using your own photos, please caption them as such. After this is done, resubmit your content item.”

When submitting an article, you cannot just display the HTTP links to other pictures on the internet. You need to manually add them into your article and place a link back to the page where you found them.

Every image you include in your article needs to have a link next to it, directing the reader back to the internet page where you found that image. Also, if the image you included was one that you created or took yourself, you need to mark “Image by Author” beside it.

And if you’re linking back to the URL of the page where you found the image, you need the link to show the picture “in its original context.” In other words, a link such as “website.com/pictures/image.jpg” would only get your article rejected again for the same reason – “Please source your images.” A correct link would be, for example, “website.com/index.php.” In short, you don’t want to link back to the image itself, but rather the page the image is on.

Reason #1

“Article too similar to other sources. Your submitted article is too similar to various sources over the Internet.”

To be honest, it seems that everything we submit can be classified as being “too similar to other sources.” If you post a guide on how to fix a broken computer monitor, there’s bound to have been someone else on some random internet forum board who has already explained how to do it.  If we talk about the 7 wonders of the world, we’re clearly adding in information from an encyclopedia or an internet website. Make sure your content is fresh and unique and that you’re using your own words.


Well, I hope you found my article both interesting and insightful. Now, the next time one of your articles gets declined, you’ll know the actual “English” definition of the reason, as opposed to the “Computer Geek” definition. And you’ll also know what you can and cannot include in your future articles.

Remember. Time is money. Ideally, you want to write the most amount of articles in the shortest amount of time to maximize your earnings.

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