U.K. eHow to Take Down U.S. Articles

If you're an eHow writer, you may know that the mirror site, the eHow U.K., has been posting our U.S. articles over there and would not answer the question about whether U.S. writers under the Writer's Compensation Plan would be paid for the U.K. views and clicks. Today, that questions was answered.

It was announced on eHow this afternoon that U.S. eHow writers under the WCP do not get any revenue from their articles that are posted on the U.K. site. Unfortunately, the U.K. site is currently ranking better than the U.S. site in search engine results because it is growing rapidly with mirrored content. It's growing faster, so it's ranking better, taking revenue away from all U.S. WCP writers.

However, with the announcement that we were not receiving any off that revenue came the announcement that eHow will be taking our articles down from the U.K. site. This is extremely welcome news for the many, many eHow writers who had abandoned eHow. Many had actually taken their articles off the site and put them on sites like Bukisa and Infobarrel.

The articles are being taken down incrementally because of the huge number of articles that have been republished there. All of them are supposed to be gone within the next few weeks.

eHow U.K. and Earnings

As you may know, eHow started a U.K. site, which is a great thing for U.K. writers. But, as it turns out, it may not be so good for us. I am getting Google alerts nearly daily saying that eHow is cloning my articles for the U.K. site. And, as many eHow writers are discovering, the U.K. site is getting a higher page rank than the U.S. site.

How is this bad for us? Well, we aren't actually being paid for our articles that are being put onto the U.K. site. That's right- our articles are being taken and cloned for a site with better page rank and we aren't seeing a dime for it. This is prompting a lot of eHow writers to take their business elsewhere, and I don't really blame them. My revenues have been down slightly since this has been going on, but I will stay put for now. I am making almost as much as before from them.

However, if revenues from eHow fall any further, I may transfer some of my articles to Infobarrel. This is a site that is supposed to give you 75 percent of the Adsense revenue plus Chitika revenue. The site is getting good reviews from freelance writers, though I don't have much experience with it yet. I'm trying out a few articles with them this week to see how they stack up with eHow. If it's better, I'll report back. If it isn't, well, I'll still report back.