Sunday, October 2, 2011

Where to Go After eHow Has Gone

A lot of people miss their passive income from eHow, and more people than ever are searching for ways to make money at home. I have spent so much time telling friends and online acquaintances about the many opportunities out there that I decided to put together a site about all the legit, lucrative things there are online that can earn you money.

So, if you want to check it out, the site is all about how to make money online through various means. I included everything from where to go for jobs, how to win projects on various sites and even how to deal with your taxes at the end of the year. So, now that the site is up, I sincerely hope that it helps people find something that will help them financially. Many of the content sites have dried up this year and the economy is iffy, but there are still a lot of ways to earn an income on your own terms. If anyone finds the site helpful, I'd love to know about it!

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

eHow WCP Over - Do You Miss It?

Anyone who has written for eHow in the past as part of the Writer's Compensation Program knows that the program is now over and what the settlement was. I can't say because of the non-disclosure form, but I was initially happy with the way it turned out. Now, however, I am seriously missing those monthly payments. It was nice to know that I had that coming in every month and that it was all passive income. Now? Nothing is coming in from them aside from my Demand Media royalties.

If you had payments that have now ended with a settlement, do you miss the payments, or were you happy with the way things ended? Do you still get payments from Demand Media rev share articles? My DM rev share payments are only about half of what I was getting from my WCP payments, but it's still nice to have. Which is better or you?

If you don't know what DM rev share articles are, just ask and I'll enlighten you about it. With those articles, it is still possible to get a monthly payment for rev share articles that are published on eHow, though the process of publishing them is different.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Getting Your Deleted eHow Titles Back

Depending on how many titles you had on eHow, your deleted titles may be just one or two, or they may number dozens or even more. My 78 deleted eHow titles seemed pretty impossible to find, even if I did have the time to search my account for the titles and then compare that to the new titles. So, I emailed eHow and just asked if they could tell me what the titles were? Guess what? They actually did. I got the full list this evening, saving me hours of work. All I have to do now is make sure that I have the deleted titles in my eHow Word file. If not, they are still cached on Google for now.

If you have a lot of titles that you want a list of, you may have good luck by simply emailing eHow. If you only have a few and don't want to wait for the answer (it took about five days for me to get a reply), you can check them by comparing the article titles in the Earnings Reports section of the new eHow console (https://myarticles.ehow.com/SignIn.aspx). It seriously sounds like a pain, but it's better than losing work that you've already done. The only question now is where to put all of those articles...

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

eHow Articles Deleted

If you're an eHow writer with more than a few articles on the site, chances are that you were a victim of today's mass deletions. After finding out that 78 of my articles were deleted today, I am reasonably certain that I'm unhappy with eHow. Seventy-eight articles? Seriously? The articles were deleted early in the day with no explanation. Hours later, the explanation came.

According to the mass email that you may have gotten, the site decided to go through and delete all duplicate titles, keeping only the best-performing one. So, I could have written an article, been copied by someone who used more keywords and bookmarks and then lost my article in favor of the more popular one. I don't know how wise a decision any of this is, especially when there are many, many different ways to write to the same title. Demand Media itself recognizes that there are many ways to interpret a title and has an elaborate process for writers to get clarification on the titles it generates for its writers. And yet, it has decided to get rid of articles fairly randomly because of shared titles. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that many eHow writers are reporting that their articles were deleted and replaced with a link to a Demand-generated article with the same title. This eliminates the need to continue to pay those writers their revenue share each month and replaces the title with one that is paid the small up-front payment that Demand Media provides. Slimy.

Monday, February 28, 2011

The Google Shakeup and Ehow

In the midst of the major Google drama going down right now, everyone is waiting to see how that is affecting their own articles from residual sites, on their own sites and blogs and what content sites will be doing to change thing. Ezine has made some very quick changes, including more screening of content and raising the minimum length to 400 words. Ever since they threatened to make their links nofollow the other day, however, I think I'm done with them. I'm not contributing full-length work for free and then not know if that work will suddenly result in no benefit. No thanks.

The Google algorithm change has had me pretty spooked for the past few days. When you're self-employed, there are no sick days. You don't work- you don't get paid. I've cultivated a lot of residual income to give me a few days per month just in case I need sick days or just I-don't-feel-like-working days. Threatening to throw all of that work and security away freaked me out. And frankly, it pissed me off.

But after more consideration, I actually think that the market may get better. I lose a lot of jobs to hacks who will work for cheap because they don't have a degree, don't have any real professional writing experience and who write poorly for audiences who can't tell the difference. Now, that type of content is not going to be so much in demand. It's a waste of time and a waste of money if you actually want your content read.

As for eHow, I see no difference in revenues since the Google change on the 24th. I'm not a keyword stuffer anyway, so maybe that's why I've had decent results. My eHow revenues, both through my own eHow account and through Demand Media rev shares, are steady and are actually higher than ever when you look at per-day earnings. If February had 30 days, this would be a record month for both accounts. So, I am not worrying that much about the Google change. If you write good content and you don't keyword stuff, I doubt there is much to worry about.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Finish Your eHow Articles Today

Today, the 13th, is the deadline for finishing up and submitting any draft articles that you still have in the system. You have until midnight, Pacific time. I do have one draft article, and I've tried several times to submit it. Each time I get an error message saying that eHow is experiencing problems. I'll agree that it's experiencing problems, but as far as I know the deadline has not been moved. If the errors aren't fixed, we may simply lose articles that were meant for the site.

Luckily, there are plenty of other places to put them. If you take a look through my last post, there are several places listed. I am considering starting a FireHow account to transfer some of the articles to. My draft article will almost certainly have to be transferred because of the errors. It's a shame. eHow was a nice earner, but it looks like that era is over. Which site will rise up to take the place of eHow? I'm eager to find out.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Other Places to Put Your eHow Articles

If you choose to take your eHow articles down and place them somewhere that doesn't have guidelines that allow the site to stop paying you for no reason (that is literally a part of the new eHow guidelines), there are many places that you can place the articles. Here are some of the best choices:

HubPages
With HubPages, you can publish your eHow articles on hubs, the HubPages word for an article page. Each hub can earn you AdSense earnings, Amazon affiliate earnings and eBay earnings. This site is one of my biggest AdSense earners, so I find it very worthwhile. I also make regular Amazon and eBay affiliate sales from it.

Triond
Triond is a content company that will publish your articles on a variety of subject-specific sites. With this one, you are paid a revenue share directly from Triond as well as getting a direct share of the AdSense revenue.

FireHow
FireHow is a site that I have not yet tried, but it is getting some favorable reviews from Web writers that I know. it works similarly to eHow, but page views are factored instead of pure rev shares.

Constant Content
Constant Content is a fantastic site that have been using for years to generate a monthly stream of income. The site does accept articles that have been published elsehwere, but they must be sold for usage rights instead of the full copyrights. The

All of these sites can continue to earn you a share of your article revenue every month. These sites all accept articles that have already been published online, but deleting them from eHow first is a better SEO strategy. If you keep your eHow articles up on more than one site, it can damage your page rank standing. However in my opinion it's better to put your eHow articles up on one of these sites and then deleting them from eHow is the best strategy. It may take longer to delete eHow articles now, but if they are on a site that doesn't have unfavorable guidelines, the earnings are far safer.