Today I saw that my draft articles are marked in the article list with an expiration date. It appears that the site is now giving draft articles about one month to be completed before they are deleted. That's kind of sad news, since I have an enormous number of draft articles, some of which are a year old. Of course, it can also be a strong motivator to write those articles before they are snatched away. I doubt that I will get all of my current draft articles completed in time, but any new drafts that I create will likely be finished a lot faster than they were before.
Why have draft articles at all? There are several reasons. The biggest draft article creation time for me was when I spent several hours doing keyword research for this site and another site. Rather than do each article at a time, I created a couple of dozen draft articles that were based on popular keywords searches. That made it easy to write an article anytime I had the time for eHow. I could simply scan through the drafts and choose one.
Another reason to keep draft articles is to write them a few minutes at a time. If you are very busy or just hate writing eHow articles, you can write one step at a time whenever the mood strikes you, and eventually you will have a completed article. You may not be able to stretch that tactic over several months now, but even with the new expiration dates you still have time to stretch your article writing time over an entire month.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
New eHow Submission Process
I've had a few ideas for eHow articles over the past week and put together a few quick articles recently. Today, however, the process for getting them published had changed. While eHow articles have always been published right away, that has apaprently changed as of today. The one that I put through today was met by a message saying that the article would be held for 10 minutes while somoene reviewed it to make sure it adheres to the eHow guidelines and until it passed through it would show as "pending."
So, is this a good thing or just an annoyance? Anything that keeps the quality level high, it's probably a good thing. On the other hand, how could it, really? How is it that the articles can be "reviewed" within 10 minutes? My article was published at right around the 10 minute mark, making me think that this is probably an automated system and not an editor actually reviewing them as the site suggests. It's likely a program that takes the length and keyword density into account to give it a preliminary screening.
So, is this a good thing or just an annoyance? Anything that keeps the quality level high, it's probably a good thing. On the other hand, how could it, really? How is it that the articles can be "reviewed" within 10 minutes? My article was published at right around the 10 minute mark, making me think that this is probably an automated system and not an editor actually reviewing them as the site suggests. It's likely a program that takes the length and keyword density into account to give it a preliminary screening.
Friday, October 9, 2009
$100 an Article for Web Articles?
$100 or more for an article is pretty expected in the print world. Magazines and newspapers often pay that much for an article. Of course, it may take you several hours to complete the article. It may take several days, in fact. But, it's more money than you can expect from writing Web articles. Or is it?
In the Web writing world, you can get a flat, up-front fee for an article, you can write it for a site that pays residuals or you can write for a site that does a hybrid of both. Ehow sits firmly in the residual category, though there are occassional bonuses or other payments that turns some articles into hybrids. In general, you can expect a slow trickle of money for each article that you write for eHow. And because the money keeps coming in year after year, there is no limit on how much you can make from one article. making $100 from an article is certainly possible with residual sites- even with eHow.
Two weeks ago my highest-paying eHow article hit the $100 mark, and it's already up to almost $110. That is one article, representing about 20 minutes of my time. Not all articles will perform that well. In fact, the next-highest article that I have is a little under $70, and most sit in the $20-$30 range. That may not be $100, but it's still higher than one can expect for an up-front payment most of the time.
With a decent bank of eHow articles, you can expect a few standouts, a few duds and many that fall somewhere in the middle. In the past three months, only one of mine has failed to make anything at all. The one that hasn't performed is a disappointment, but one written around the same time took a little under 10 minuted to write has made more than $30. that's what eHow is- a numbers game. Some will take off, some will tank, but your average over time is well worth the time it takes to write the articles as long as they don't take you too long.
While you need to do your keyword research, writing an eHow article shouldn't take you more than 20 to 30 minutes. Any more time than that means you may not come out ahead in the earnings vs. time game. There are too many content companies out there who pay well to spend an hour on an article that may not perform. If you can keep your time to about 20 minutes, you produce three articles an hour. OUtut of those three, one will likely do quite well if you have keyword researched them all. And, there's no reason why the other two won't earn a respectable amount for you as well.
In the Web writing world, you can get a flat, up-front fee for an article, you can write it for a site that pays residuals or you can write for a site that does a hybrid of both. Ehow sits firmly in the residual category, though there are occassional bonuses or other payments that turns some articles into hybrids. In general, you can expect a slow trickle of money for each article that you write for eHow. And because the money keeps coming in year after year, there is no limit on how much you can make from one article. making $100 from an article is certainly possible with residual sites- even with eHow.
Two weeks ago my highest-paying eHow article hit the $100 mark, and it's already up to almost $110. That is one article, representing about 20 minutes of my time. Not all articles will perform that well. In fact, the next-highest article that I have is a little under $70, and most sit in the $20-$30 range. That may not be $100, but it's still higher than one can expect for an up-front payment most of the time.
With a decent bank of eHow articles, you can expect a few standouts, a few duds and many that fall somewhere in the middle. In the past three months, only one of mine has failed to make anything at all. The one that hasn't performed is a disappointment, but one written around the same time took a little under 10 minuted to write has made more than $30. that's what eHow is- a numbers game. Some will take off, some will tank, but your average over time is well worth the time it takes to write the articles as long as they don't take you too long.
While you need to do your keyword research, writing an eHow article shouldn't take you more than 20 to 30 minutes. Any more time than that means you may not come out ahead in the earnings vs. time game. There are too many content companies out there who pay well to spend an hour on an article that may not perform. If you can keep your time to about 20 minutes, you produce three articles an hour. OUtut of those three, one will likely do quite well if you have keyword researched them all. And, there's no reason why the other two won't earn a respectable amount for you as well.
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