Zujava Content Policy

Why do we not allow certain topics on Zujava? It's not because we're being mean, and it's not because we don't like you. We do! We really, really do. We just can't allow certain topics to be published on Zujava because of the risk associated with them, or the really bad wrap those topics have. We're talking about acai berries, MLM, miracle cures, and the like. 

What do these topics all have in common? They all make false claims. Sure acai berries taste good, and maybe one person or two benefited from the MLM scheme, but in general, these topics have benefited no one. For the betterment of the entire site, we ask that these topics remain off-limits. If you do wind up publishing content featuring these topics, be warned: it will get unpublished. 

• Mature content. Make sure your content is suitable for everyone to read, not just your college friends. That means generally keep it PG or PG-13. Keep swearing to a minimum (just don't do it in excess), don't include graphic images, and don't write about excessive violence.
• Adult content. This can include photos as well as text, videos, and other media. We define adult content as sexually explicit, in text or images (or video). Even borderline images and text will be unpublished.If you link to an adult content site, this is also a violation. Other topic violations: sex toys, sex acts, penis enlargement, fetishes, or linking to sites containing any of this content.
• Gambling. Google Adsense has strict content policies on gambling, and we simply can't allow this topic on Zujava. This includes linking to gambling sites, as well as tutorials on gambling games. If you'd like to write about this topic, you can't do it here. 
• Sales of weapons, firearms, ammunition, prescription drugs, illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia, beer, alcohol, tobacco. This also includes links to sites about these topics. It also includes how-to pages on ammunition, firearms, prescription drugs, illegal drugs, etc. not just sales pages. Any leaf that is a how-to on making drugs or alcohol at home are banned. Information about certain types of wine and alcohol, as well as alcohol related accessories and wine accessories are on the okay list.
• MLM, traffic exchanges, get paid for surveys, get paid for surfing the web, and many Clickbank affiliate products. 
• Get rich quick schemes. You know they are spammy, we know, and so does everyone else. And, they don't belong on Zujava. Instead, real information on real topics is a much better choice!
• Traffic exchange schemes. This includes websites that offer to exchange traffic in some way for clicks, buying traffic, or buying links. 
• Paid traffic, paid social links, or paid links of any type.
• Miraculous medical cures. If you doubt yourself whether this product would actually work, and the claims seem outrageous, then the topic falls into the "forbidden" category. Remember the acai berries we were talking about? We mean topics like those. If you're selling ebooks related to these topics, please use caution: most of these will be unpublished. 
• Downloading. Here at Zujava, we believe in the artist receiving full compensation for their work. That means we forbid the topics of movie downloads, music downloads, and video game downloads, plus other media related download topics. Even if the links are to legal downloads, we do not endorse these topics and feel they don't add much to the site. (If you'd like to write about downloading the latest episode of True Blood, why not just write about True Blood instead? There are a million spins and niches you could write about!)
• Coloring pages. It turns out coloring pages are a real headache. They might contain copyrighted images, stolen images, and images used without real permission from the source. So, if you publish a coloring page, please know it will be unpublished unless you have express permission from Zujava to publish a coloring page. You can contact support for permission, and we will look at your draft. However, we have very high quality standards on coloring pages, so make sure prior to contacting us that these pages are outstanding.
• Wallpapers. No, not the stuff you stick on your walls, but screen saver wallpapers for your computer. This is just about the same idea as coloring pages, and has a very high ratio of junk to good content, or illegally used photos to properly used ones. 
• Topics promoting things that could be harmful to your health. 
• Other topics not covered here: Your leaf could wind up unpublished if Zujava finds other reasons to make this content unavailable to the reader. This means if we reserve the right to question the content for any reason, and to unpublish it.
• Weight loss, teeth whitening, and other spam topics (think Acai berries, how to meet friends online, etc.)
• Leaves published trying to aggressively recruit people for a religion of any type. This includes excessive linking to religious domains, multiple linking to the same domain across many leaves on an account, or using a Zujava account to spread religious propaganda. To make things very clear, leaves about religion are not banned.
• Leaves that promote plagiarism, the copying of ideas, or unoriginality in any sort of way.
• Use of spammy phrases like "buy cheap Prada bags online" in the title or anywhere on a leaf to attempt to chase spammy search phrases.
• Mass production of similar low quality content. If all of your leaves have the same look, feel, phrases, wording, approach, and similar titles, you will have a hard time graduating from the Petting Zu.

All images must be credited to the original source unless they are your own images. And, you must have permission to use these photos in the first place. 

Photos that contain the following may be grounds for locking a leaf:

• Obscene images of any type.
• Sexual or overly provocative images.
• Overly graphic or violent images. 
• No watermarked photos for the introduction photo of a leaf.

To find properly credited images for your leaf, we recommend visiting these leaves:

1. Free Photos and Pictures
2. My Top Ten Choices for Free Images

If we have a suspicion that the photos on your leaves have been used without the owner's permission, we may lock the leaf. All photos should be attributed to their respective owners. 

We aren't exactly the grammar police, but to maintain the integrity of Zujava, we will routinely unpublish a leaf if the grammar has been found to be subpar. 

The most common problem with grammar that you'll encounter is where English is not the author's first language, and it's obvious. If you misspell a word or make a few mistakes, we will not unpublish your leaf. We know when English is your first language. We will unpublish your leaf if the grammar is awkward and unreadable, or hard to read.

Why, you ask? This is to maintain a high level of quality on Zujava. When a reader comes to a page, we want them to feel the site is a professional yet fun atmosphere. A leaf riddled with typos and grammar mistakes does not convey that, and advertisers will not take that seriously. If your leaf has been unpublished, please consider making revisions or moving the content offsite. All in all, this decision comes down to creating a good user experience that will benefit everyone.

It's very likely that if you're leaf is unpublished or locked, it will never be accepted for republishing just based on the content, or maybe you chose a URL with the word "penis" or "cocaine" in it. 

If your leaf has been unpublished, please consider moving it to another website (maybe your own?) instead. This way, you'll have full control over your content, and won't have to deal with these restrictions. Please keep in mind the same Google Adsense Content Policy does apply to your own domains.

We do allow linking to domains whether they are your own, a Wikipedia page, an article, or a product. Link to anything, as long as the link you are creating is actually an asset to the leaf, and doesn't detract from the overall quality.

The internet was built around creating useful links. But, when those links aren't useful, they're redundant, or worse yet, they're straight up spam, then that's something that might lead to your leaf being locked.

We'd like to see each and every writer follow these rules of linking on Zujava:

• No use of TinyURL, bit.ly, or any other domain masking feature. Be transparent with where the link is going.
• If you are linking to your own website, do so in moderation. Excessive linking to any domain is grounds for a leaf to be locked. 
• Self promotional links should be very limited. Leaves published with the sole intent of linking back to your domain or articles can be locked without notice.
• Some affiliate links are okay. However, we usually find that Clickbank product leaves are scammy in every way, shape, or form, so we have banned Clickbank links from Zujava.
• We do not allow links using the Amazon Affiliate program. You can, however, use the Amazon sections Zujava provides to earn royalties from Amazon products.
• We also do not allow Viglinks. Leaves using Viglinks will be locked.
• Be responsible and don't be deceptive with your linking. If you write a leaf about cats, don't have the link cats go to a page about cat collars for sale, or to a domain about dog ebooks. 

If your leaf is high quality, none of the above rules apply. However, we rarely see leaves that are high in quality that use more than one of the above techniques, so we reserve the right to lock your leaf should we find any of these linking practices on your leaf. 

Just like the content of your leaves, we expect that your usernames do not violate any of our terms of service or content policy. 

Things we don't want to see for usernames:

• Usernames chosen just for SEO value, like "BestFruitJuicers" or "HDTV2012."
• Usernames that are offensive or could be interpreted as offensive to readers.
• Usernames that spread hate.

If you do choose a username that violates our content policy, we reserve the right to unpublish your work and your hide your profile page, or even delete your account should the username be offensive.

Overly optimizing your leaf for search engines isn't going to fool anyone, even search engines. Even if it does, that leaf is published on borrowed time, and it's only a matter of time before it's reported and locked.

This type of writing doesn't read well. We're not saying ignore SEO, but overly keyword stuffed leaves ruin your credibility, they tarnish Zujava's reputation, and they aren't helpful to readers one bit. 

You see, we want high quality, real articles on Zujava. If you're into keyword stuffing, which is the fine art of stuffing a page full of one keyword phrase in order to rank higher in search engines, then this isn't the place for you. If we find such a leaf, it will be locked. 

We encourage all Writers to promote their leaves, but certain promotional techniques we do not allow. 

Adwords and paid ads are one of the techniques we don't allow on Zujava. So, please do not place any ads to direct traffic to your leaf, or the leaf could wind up locked.

Our referral program is a great way to earn money by recruiting talented, prolific writers to the site. We provide a number of graphics and banners to promote Zujava offsite. However, we do not allow you to use these graphics on your leaves. The intention of these banners always has been to recruit new writers externally from Zujava, not from within the site. 

As of December 1, 2012, using referral banners on your leaves is prohibited. 

We do not allow content to be transferred to Zujava from any other site. There are a number of reasons we do not allow this. 

1. Zujava is strictly for brand new, published-for-the-very-first-time content that has never, ever seen the light of day before. This is to ensure a higher quality across the board, and to discourage watered down, old, recycled, spun, ill performing, or otherwise poor content from being moved to Zujava. This policy will help everyone.
2. Poor performing content won't perform well no matter where you publish it. If you're thinking you should publish a leaf on Zujava using content that didn't fare so well elsewhere, it won't fare well here either. There is no "magic domain" where your content will outperform its prior statistics. In short, 99% of the time, moving content doesn't work. 
3. It can be hard to determine that you are the author of the content that has been moved from elsewhere. If we research a leaf to check if it's duplicate content and find the content elsewhere, or even a cached version elsewhere, it can be difficult to verify that you are the author of the content you are trying to publish on Zujava. 

If we find content on Zujava that has been published elsewhere, it's likely it will be locked.

Spun content is work that is so similar to work you have published elsewhere that the two articles are basically one and the same. The wording might be different, but the work is not original. Maybe you switched some words around, used different synonyms, or worse yet, used an article spinning software to get the job done. 

When we spot content like this, it is locked, and we might just throw away the key on it. Feel free to publish it elsewhere, but spun content once locked will never see the light of day again on Zujava. 

IMPORTANT: If your work bears too much of a resemblance to content you have published elsewhere or on Zujava itself, it can be locked. To be specific, we mean using the exact same images, same topic ideas, same titles, with little original content added. This is the place for original, never before published content.