Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Will Your eHow Articles Be Deleted?

If you've spent any time working with eHow articles or reading about writing for the site, you might have heard about the mass deletions that occur from time to time. Every once in a while, and it's not announced beforehand, eHow will check articles for quality and for adherence to the rules. Then, thousands of articles are deleted for various reasons. It used to be that the site didn't tell eHow writers why the articles were deleted- they didn't even tell you which articles were deleted. I have two that were deleted during that time, and to this day I don't know which ones they were.

Because of the mass protest by eHow writers for this practice, that has now changed. If an article is deleted, you will be told the title or titles that are being removed and a fairly generic reason is now given for each deletion. From my experience, I believe that most eHow writers have had some articles deleted. In some cases, I don't know what the reason was. I believe that at least one of them was deleted because it detailed how to write for a competing site. A few others that have been deleted since then may not have precisely fit into the "actionable steps" idea behind eHow articles, though I think that's subjective.

To stand the best chance of getting though the purges unscathed, it's important to follow the writer's guidelines as closely as possible. In some cases, that still won't protect an article from being purged, but it gives you a better chance of avoiding deletion.

In addition, ALWAYS keep a backup of every article in a Word or OpenOffice file. I have one long eHow Word file that I copy and paste all of my eHow articles into. When you write directly for eHow, you keep the rights to your work. That means that you are free to publish your articles elsewhere if you choose. If an article is still on eHow, it's not a good idea from an SEO standpoint to publish it elsewhere at the smae time. But, if eHow removes the article, you can publish it elsewhere so that you still profit from the article. Here are the best places to republish your deleted eHow articles:

Bukisa: This site offers between $3 and $4 per 1,000 page views, and they accept eHow articles even if they are still on eHow. Some people publish their articles on both sites at the same time.

HubPages: This site allows you to create as many "hubs" as you like, and each can be a different article. The site brings you revenue through a share of the Google AdSense revenue as well as with Amazon affiliate links and other ad revenue.

Xomba: This site can be used either as a social bookmarking site or as a content site. To submit an article, choose the Xombyte option and copy and paste your purged article into the space. I provide more details about writing for Xomba here. The site offers a share of the AdSense revenue.

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