I just submitted my first article to ezinearticles and they accepted it. they also said i am now an "expert author". what does this mean or do for me?
Because you have an article on the Ezine directory, you are already upgraded to Expert Status... It will take a lot more of those same articles to become a Platinum Author, which is where you want to be if you use EzineArticles as part of your article marketing tactics. Otherwise you will have to wait 5-7 days for them to be looked at and accepted.
GuruCreation, you are bang on, I am a Platinum Author on Ezine with over 510 articles and over 59,000 article views in the past year. The advantage of platinum is that your articles get priority over other authors.