End of an Era: Goodbye to the eHow WCP

"Rich people focus on opportunities,

Poor people focus on obstacles." 

-T. Harv Eker, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

 For many writers, the official end of eHow's Writers Compensation program (WCP) comes as a big disappointment, if not a total shock. Since the program closed to new articles a year ago, in April 2010, many predicted the eventual cessation of payments. 

Why End the WCP?

Demand Media, which went public in January, has been working to streamline their eHow.com property, minimize duplicate content, and since last spring has put all new articles through a competent editorial process. There are still many articles on the site, including content that pre-dates Demand's acquisition of eHow and some inferior WCP articles, that detract from rather than boost eHow's reputation. By stopping WCP payments and allowing users to remove their content, eHow is both cleaning up its site and perhaps making a business decision as to the profitability of various content.

Buyout Offers
As of May 5, 2011, the WCP is over and done with and no further earnings will accrue. However, Demand Media has made personalized offers to buy writer's content in order to keep it on eHow.com.

Writers still own their intellectual property -- the articles written and published on eHow -- but can no longer receive residual payments via the eHow platform. Thus, many will choose to accept Demand Media's buyout offer for their articles and leave them on the site, transferring ownership to Demand.

Some will decline the offer and instead delete their articles from eHow and move them to other content sites, personal blogs and self-run niche sites. Others have decided to leave their articles on eHow, hoping to profit at least for a little while longer from the secondary streams of income generated by their content: links to their related niche sites and the affiliate links allowed by the original WCP.

My mom accepted her offer of about $220 for three articles, sister #1 took $330+ for her dozen articles, and sister #2 declined $34 for 10 articles. I think they all made good decisions. In the end, much of their articles' value was that they were published on eHow.com. 

Regardless of whether they keep their articles on the site or not, writers who counted on the money they earned from eHow each month will need to find ways to replace that income as quickly as possible. Several writer/work at home mom (WAHM) friends have asked me what I'm going to do.

 My Plans
First, I am going to look at this not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity. The quote I shared at the beginning of this post is from a book my husband's sales team was required to read and discuss over the past few months. There are many excellent "wealth files" in it, and I thought this one was particularly fitting for those who write online to build residual income.

A positive outlook is important in order to move forward and to create success in other endeavors. I think of all that I learned from  my eHow.com articles, including valuable insight about profitable niches, and know that I can take this experience, knowledge gained through the surprising success of my "eHow experiment," and use it to build an even higher monthly residual income.

Practically speaking, I'll be concentrating my efforts on the following areas:

• My pets-theme niche site
• My home/family-theme niche site
• My three recipe-theme niche sites 
• Affiliate marketing

To build my residual income on these properties, I'll be

• Writing quality, original, helpful articles
• Locating and affiliate-linking to excellent products and resources
• Backlinking and using social media to increase traffic and SERP ranking of my content

(2/2/2016: For those looking back and wondering... yes, I took eHow's buyout offer. It was fair. It was significant. It was a win-win. And looking back, five years later, I know for certain what a great decision that was.)

That's my plan in a nutshell. What's yours?

Rev-Share Sites Still Viable for Residual Income

While eHow.com's Writers' Compensation Program was the best revenue-share opportunity I've experienced for residual income, it's no longer an option as far as adding new articles directly through the site. Still, there are other places to go for a similar model: you write content and get paid according to the ad revenue your articles generate.

Demand Studios, Bukisa, HubPages, Squidoo, and Infobarrel are all sources of residual income for me -- several more eggs in the proverbial basket, if you will. In addition to their income, articles I've written on these sites provide backlinks, site or blog traffic and/or brand recognition in several niches.

Out of this handful of revenue-sharing content sites, some do better than others for page ranks and traffic and thus earnings.

Here's how they stacked up in March 2011:

Demand Media Studios revenue-share: $114.58 with 21 eHow articles

Bukisa: $29.39 with 17 articles

HubPages: $29.59 with 6 articles

InfoBarrel: $3.81 with 6 articles

Total ...... $177.37 with 50 articles, for an average of $3.55/per article.

With many hundred articles on the right sites, you can still make a viable residual income through revenue-sharing programs. A thousand articles with that average would give you $3,547 per month. You can actually do much better than that; some of these articles were written when I was just starting out and didn't know much about what niches perform well. By specializing in one or two areas which you know well and whose audience you understand, you will see a higher level of success than the random collection of articles here represents.

While I am currently working almost exclusively on my niche websites, I do still recommend some rev-share writing for those new to online writing and marketing. Writing content articles is a great way to experiment with several or dozens of niche topics. You can figure out what you enjoy researching and writing about, what you want to specialize in and what topics are most profitable. For me, eHow was very well-paid market research and has certainly contributed to the successes I'm seeing in creating my own niche sites and blogs.

That being said, don't wait too long to branch out to your own properties. Once you've identified a good niche topic, done keyword research and learned the basics of site creation and promotion, start a site of your own and monetize it with ads and affiliate links. Revenue-sharing sites are great, but having your own online properties is even better. For web hosting, site design and other recommended resources, see my Tools and Training page.

What revenue-sharing content sites have you earned well with? Do you still write for them?

List My Five: Not eHow, but ...

"Writers Compensation Program." "Residual Income." "(Your Name Here)'s Articles." Sound familiar?

No, it's not eHow. It's not even close. But the name of their revenue-sharing program, also abbreviated by its initials, WCP, and the promise of residual income based on user-submitted content's popularity, topic, quality and number of pieces written, sure sounds like it comes from somebody at least familiar with the eHow model.

It's called ... List My Five. 

And while the ListMyFive.com site is brand-spanking new (the first time I searched Google for "List My Five" it wasn't even on the first or second page) it's well done, with a simple, attractive, user-friendly interface. The content submission form works properly and has already evolved since my first perusal: you can now add links in a resources section after the article's content (hmmm, where have I seen that before?).

Sadly, the RRC folks will have a field day on ListMyFive: their FAQ includes the following as a factor that will increase earnings: "User response to your lists, such as positive ratings and comments." Oh, dear. Do they realize what they have unleashed? [For those unfamiliar with the day-to-day life on eHow forums during their WCP heyday, there was  Read, Rate, Comment Club on eHow whose devotees would spam inboxes and forum posts with pleas for other site members to "Read my articles so I can earn more! I'll return the favor!"]

List My Five Communication ... not great.
On September 6, I requested via email to interview the site owners or representative via email or phone. I received a prompt reply:

Maria,

Thanks for taking interest in List My Five.  We would be happy to provide information about our website and opportunities with our WCP for your blog.  We would ask that you send us an email or form with a list of questions we could answer for your blog, along with your blog's URL. We will return your requested information asap.

Sincerely, 

The List My Five Team.

I sent the required information and waited. I followed up politely, and then heard back on September 9:

Maria,

We have forwarded your request and it should be completed by the founders at their earliest convenience.

Thanks for your patience,

The List My Five Team.

 

But despite two follow-up emails from me since then, I haven't received another reply and none of my questions were ever answered. I wish they had been, because I could share the information and probably help them increase interest in the site.

Just today, a new "Support" tab appeared in the user panel. So it's clear the site is being maintained and updated; I wouldn't be surprised if they add forums soon too. Perhaps as the site grows there will be better response from the folks behind it, but I had better communication from eHow, InfoBarrel and Bukisa in those sites' early days.

ListMyFive for Residual Income
There's no way to know, yet, what to expect from earnings at this new site. It's just way too young and there haven't been any results to analyze yet. Well, one of my articles has earned a penny ... but I wouldn't stake your hopes and dreams on a penny.

Since the site is so new, it doesn't have the page rank or search engine strength to boost your submitted articles to the front page of Google the way eHow did. To achieve this, your strategy would have to be very heavy on building backlinks to your published top-5 lists.

In which case, adding content to your own niche sites and topic-specific blogs would be in may ways superior as you OWN them. As someone whose monthly online earnings are still top-heavy with eHow, I am focusing on building my residual income through affiliate marketing and personally recommend that at least half your web-based income come via sties that you personally own and control.

That being said, my hunch is that ListMyFive will grow quickly and have a wider user base than other rev-share start-ups, such as InfoBarrel. The site is so easy to use and the articles are quick and fun to write: that's hugely attractive to web writers. The talk of residual income will be endearing as well. So in a nutshell ... write a few articles, link to them, and see where the site goes.

I'll be keeping an eye on ListMyFive ... and publishing my own lists there from time to time. What about you?

Revenue-Sharing Articles at Demand Studios

With the recent changes to eHow, many eHow writers question the profitability of the revenue-sharing model at Demand Studios (DS). Since I've been a member of eHow and a Demand Studios writer for more than two and a half years, I've had time to experience both platforms and communities.

Last spring, April-May 2009, I wrote and published 15 revenue-sharing how-to articles through my Demand Studios account. This was intended partially as an experiment to see which was more profitable, and in response to a DS incentive in which the articles received both an up-front payment as well as long-term revenue-sharing.

To date, not including the up-front bonuses, the articles have earned a combined total of $172.84, over a time period of almost 12 months. This works out to $11.52 per article so far (of course, they are still earning money). As you can see, this represents a fairly long ROI (return on investment) for eschewing the up-front payment of $15 and opting for the revenue-sharing model. Still, these articles have a higher earnings potential than the articles written for a flat, one-time fee.

My eHow articles written as WriterGig for the WCP have earned much more per article, even when accounting for the longer time period that most have been online. However, there are several factors that contribute to this discrepancy:

• I wrote my eHow-WCP titles, but had to choose DS-generated titles for their rev-sharing articles at the time.
• My WriterGig profile page on eHow has a higher pagerank (PR) than my DS profile on eHow; also, the DS profile does not include a page with links to all of my DS articles.
• I've worked to backlink my eHow articles to improve their pagerank and traffic. 

I'm confident that, with enough effort and following the same method I used to maximize eHow earnings, I could build up another profitable article library through DS for long-term residual income (I'm thrilled that they've dropped the 5-year cap on revenue sharing).  We've been assured through the eHow forums that the DS revenue-sharing formula is as good as or better than the one currently in place on eHow.

I recommend that current eHow writers merge to Demand Studios, or apply if you were not automatically approved, to give yourself the ability to publish through that platform if you so choose. This will not affect any WCP articles you have already written, but will allow you the opportunity to build a library of articles on DS that earns well in its own right.

Have you tried the DS rev-sharing model? What's been your experience so far?

The New eHow

As of a week ago, eHow has dramatically changed its article submission and publication process. Gone are the days when anyone could register as an eHow writer and submit content for instant publication. New members must now apply through Demand Studios to publish articles on eHow.com and current member-writers have either been accepted as Demand Studios writers or notified that they didn't pass muster. Those whose article acceptance rating (the ratio of articles written and published to articles deleted in the eHow article sweeps) was not high enough to warrant automatic acceptance can apply to Demand Studios separately.

All articles currently on eHow that were written in the Writers Compensation program (WCP) will stay live and continue to earn money, no matter the author's new status.

What's good about these changes?
The overall quality of eHow articles should go up as junk accounts are closed to new submissions and poorly written articles and spam become negligible. With an application process and article review/ edit sequence, articles published on eHow should be overall of a higher caliber than some of what has been published in the past.

Payment for revenue-share articles could go up or down, depending on whether or not the algorithm remains the same and whether the changes result in higher page rank and traffic for eHow or not.

What's bad?
 New writers who don't get accepted to Demand Studios won't have the opportunity to learn the ropes of online writing on eHow, nor benefit from the feedback of the community to improve their writing.

Demand Studios will own all articles submitted to eHow. Previously, eHow writers retained copyright and ownership of their articles and could edit, delete and republish as they saw fit. Now, new articles become the sole property of Demand Studios/ Demand Media and all rights to the content will be retained by the company, not by the writer.

 What's my advice?
Start by clarifying your online writing goals to yourself. Write them down. Consider your involvement with eHow in light of your online writing career and what direction you want it to take. The eHow/ Demand Studios setup will appeal to many freelance online writers who enjoy the flexibility of writing as much or as little as they like in any given week, the availability of up-front pay and a library of titles from which to choose and consistent, reliable payments.

The signing-away of article ownership and rights will be a deal-breaker to many independent, entrepreneur-minded writers who wish to own the means of production, not sell their articles piecemeal to a large company that can do with them as it likes. 

As for me, I have been a registered Demand Studios writer for nearly three years and while I wrote hundreds of articles through DS while I needed the up-front pay, as soon as I had my residual income streams at the level I needed, I switched to writing almost exclusively for myself with content on eHow.com to which I retained rights, as well as multiple niche websites, a few blogs, an info product and content on other revenue-sharing sites.

Will I personally write articles through the Demand Studios platform? Yes, but with some hesitation and with lesser volume than on eHow. In 2009, I published 15 revenue-sharing articles via my Demand Studios writer account, and added another one this morning (it's still pending). In my next post on this blog, I'll share how those DS rev-sharing articles have performed.

My advice remains the same as it has over the years: diversify your online income streams. Whether or not you decide to submit articles to the new eHow, build up your article presence elsewhere on the web, especially on sites and blogs that you yourself own.

With these recent eHow changes in mind, what's your online writing plan going forward?

When eHow is Down ...

Publishing, or trying to publish, eHow articles lately has been a frustrating failure as glitches prevent new articles from coming online or even, at times, saving as a draft.

As aggravating as it is to write eHow articles and be unable to publish them for days and even weeks,  I've learned over the past few years that the down time can actually be a huge motivator to do other things to improve eHow earnings and build related residual income sources.

10 Things to Do When eHow Publishing is Down

1. Boost your five top-earning articles with two new backlinks each.
2. Revive your three slowest-earning articles with a new backlink apiece. 
3. Research two unexplored niches and create three unique titles in each niche for future eHow articles.
4. Build a blog on a broad topic -- ie crafts, cooking, personal finance -- to link to from your eHow articles' Resources section. Write several posts and monetize with ads and affiliate links.
5. Sign up on other revenue-sharing sites, and use your top-earning eHow articles as inspiration for your first articles on the other sites. 
6. Try writing lenses on Squidoo. 
7. Take pictures of a project you complete -- from making donuts to waxing your car -- to use in a future eHow article and "I did It!" projects on eHow.
8. Make a goal to increas your eHow earnings over the next three months. How many new articles will you write (once the tool is fixed)? How many backlinks will you create?
9. Browse free photos sites and download copyright-free stock images, along with photographer name to give credit, and have them ready for easy access when composing future articles.
10. Write eHow articles. Even if you can't publish them right away. 

What do you do when the eHow publishing tool doesn't work?

Thoughts on eHow UK Compensation

I'll be honest. I haven't closely followed the eHow UK debacle over the past few months. I'm just now getting caught up on other eHow members' thoughts and research on the topic, conveyed through blogs and forum posts and discussions.

For those who haven't followed or participated in the discussions, here's the 30-second version as I understand it. In about August of 2009, eHow created a "sister site," ehow.co.uk, which basically mirrored the US-version except for a unique front page -- the featured articles differ from those on the regular site.

However, Demand Media used US-member-submitted eHow articles on the eHow UK site. According to the TOS, they do have the rights to do so.  But writers were unhappy that they basically copied everyone's content and published it on another site without discussion or permission from the writers first. Personally, I don't think this was done with malicious forethought; I don't think they really gave it much thought at all. But either way, some members felt it was not right.

In the face of uproar from its members, eHow administration decided to redirect visitors on the UK site to the original US-based articles, but eventually just pulled the plug and removed all US-member content from the UK side (some articles remain and flaws are being worked out).

Because of the persistence of eHow member-writers who asked whether articles re-posted to the UK site would receive reimbursement through the WCP, and who felt their overall revenue from eHow suffered due to their articles on the UK site appearing higher in searches than their US articles, eHow announced that it would give "generous compensation" to all WCP participants whose articles has been temporarily published on the UK site without permission.

This compensation arrived with the February payment of January earnings. For those who wondered, and in the interest of full disclosure, I received $140.

Personally, I feel that this compensation is more than fair -- simply because I never noticed any decline in my eHow earnings and any traffic that was taken from my US articles was likely minuscule, in my opinion. For one thing, the UK site has a fraction the traffic that the US one does. This is a comparison of traffic for the two sites from January 2010; traffic in the late months of 2009 was even more disparate:

I also did Google searches in December of my top-earning eHow articles and didn't see any UK-based results, just the ones on the US site. So I'm not really sure how much compensation, if any, the UK site took from my articles.

I do know that there is chatter among Google Adsense users that advertising revenue across the web is down, likely because of economic factors worldwide.

Is eHow committed to its WCP, or Writers Compensation Program? I believe they are, or it would not still be inexistence. When it first launched, in 2007, it was their big focus, and things have changed since then. Perhaps there is not as much enthusiasm within Demand Media as they had previously for the WCP writers. In 2008, eHow held a member event, weHow, in Santa Monica CA, to which I was invited and attended.The whole focus was on the WCP and participation on the eHow.com website. They even gave recognition to the top eHow earner in attendance, so earnings were being promoted and encouraged.

In 2009, the event was focused instead on the new "I did It" feature that pays no compensation to those who submit I did It stories. So the focus has shifted a bit, perhaps to encourage people to join eHow for the user experience and not just the earnings potential.

Demand Studios writers, who provide content for eHow.com, seem to receive more attention, benefits and support than the "users" in the WCP. This is simply a statement of fact; it doesn't bother me. When you consider that DS writers are paid a flat $15 fee for most article, while I've had dozens of articles earn $100 or more, including several thousand-dollar eHow articles, they can keep their better forum and monthly grant contests and I'll keep my revenue sharing.

But even if eHow in general doesn't particularly love us WCP writers anymore (who can blame them?), the sheer quantity of user-submitted content, and the fact that we retain rights to our work, indicates to me that they would have a very hard time just nixing the program altogether. And I contend that they don't want to end it. For all we know, the eHow UK beta site may have included a long-term plan for extending the WCP and eventually increasing compensation based on UK revenue on WCP articles. I truly don't think anyone at Demand wanted to "steal" from the eHow writers.

And I believe that eHow remains one of the very best sites for building residual income today.

Those are my thoughts. What are yours?

eHow Dolly Visits Virginia

If you haven't heard of eHow Dolly, you're missing out. She hails from Hawaii, the creation of eHow writer veryirie, and is making a cross-country journey across the United States, with stops up and down the East Coast, a zig-zg through the midwest, and a final stop at the eHow headquarters in Santa Monica, CA before returning home to HI.

Shirley started this eHow forum discussion about Dolly's trip, and there's even a Squidoo Lens on Dolly. Now all she needs is a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account and she'd truly be set!

While visiting me in Virginia, Dolly got a taste of a "week in the life of a work at home mom." It may not have been her most exciting leg of the journey, but we all had fun!

eHow Dolly enjoyed sightseeing in the Shenandoah Valley, including an adventure to see the swollen river over its banks and covering the road in several locations, necessitating its closure for part of her visit. She also got to check out the Discovery Museum in Winchester, VA, but things were too crazy for me to get pictures (my girlfriend and I brought our combined total of 7 kids under 7 to the museum!)

But here are some pictures I did snap while Dolly visited us:

Dolly sits on the deck watching the melting ice dripping in the woods in the aftermath of an ice storm:


She wanted to pet the kids' rabbit:


Dolly helped me feed the chickens:



She brainstormed eHow article ideas with me:

... and endured a hug from Patrick, 2,
... before heading on her way to eHow member suzyhomeeconomy in NC. She picked up a postcard and souvenir spoon from VA and is carrying a chocolate bar to her next hostess, as well as the lottery game sent by David Sarokin.

Safe travels, Dolly!

Is Writing eHow Articles Still Worth It?

There's been some grumbling lately among eHow users who wonder if it's still worth it to write on eHow; their concerns running the gauntlet from low views and earnings to questioning eHow's commitment to the Writers Compensation Program to anger about member articles being posted on the eHow UK site.

eHow community forum posts, members' blog posts, and comment sections on related blogs have all been witness to the complaints and dissatisfaction expressed by a number of eHow member-contributors.

I've been asked my opinion on these topics a number of times, and the most ironic is when the person complaining about low earnings either has very few eHow articles or no concept of keywords and basic search engine optimization (SEO). If you aren't writing, or if you aren't writing about topics people are searching for information on, don't expect to make money. It doesn't make sense to me to not give a site a chance and still complain about low earnings, or to not invest the time to find out how internet writing works in regards keywords and web searches, and think you'll make real money online.

Some eHow complainers have an agenda: one in particular has come to the forums to bash eHow while promoting another revenue-sharing content site, one which I have reviewed on this site and find vastly inferior to eHow in regards current earnings potential (although worthwhile in its own place). Sure, if another site is better, by all means, use it and share the information with others. But in this case, the highest earners trail eHow top earners by a mile.

Whether truly confused about their lack of earnings or intending to stir up discontent, the grumblers have asked me what I think.

So here's my answer:

Absolutely, writing eHow articles is still very much worth the time invested. My recent articles are all earning excellently and while you're wasting time complaining, I'm researching profitable niche topics for my next eHow article.

eHow has been very profitable for me, just excellent for building residual income, and it can be for you, too. Make the time to write articles, do the research to learn how to write for the web if your earnings aren't what you want them to be, and don't waste time griping.

What's preventing you from earning $1,000+ a month on eHow?

Residual Income & New Baby

How do residual income and a new baby fit in the same post?

First, the baby news: my son, "Nicholas," was born December 6 and is a happy, healthy, sweet-tempered little man. He is adored by his older siblings and doted on by mom and dad: we're all in love.Secondly, about the residual income: my November earnings, all from now-passive sources such as eHow, my eHow ebook, niche sites and affiliate marketing, were just shy of $3,000, even though I wrote little new content and spent much of my time resting and "nesting" before the baby's arrival. December will hopefully be in the same ballpark, even though I'm taking the month off.

As I sit in front of the fire snuggling my newborn, I am grateful for the residual income business model that's allowing me to take a month off from from writing (I had to sneak in this post, though) and just enjoy my family and the holidays.

It's been exactly two years since the December I realized the potential of residual income, through eHow and Site Build It!, and made goals that, when reached, would allow me to quit writing for hire and simply write and market as much or as little as I liked, for myself.

At the end of this year, as we prepare to embark on a new year, 2010, I challenge you to make goals for the coming 12 months that reflect where you are now and where you want to be at the end of the coming year. Contemplate spiritual and personal goals first, as they are most important, but don't neglect your plans for work and income. Building residual and passive income sources is a worthy endeavor, and I encourage you to include them in your plan.

Happy holidays and a blessed New Year to you and yours!

eHow Articles New Approval Process

Articles submitted on eHow.com by member-writers now go through a process in which they are evaluated and subsequently approved and published, or rejected, by the system. It's unclear whether the process is currently moderated by actual content editors, however.

I have published four new eHow articles since the new system was activated on my account, and it works very smoothly at this point. After clicking the "publish" button, you'll see a "thank you" screen indicating that your article has been accepted into the system and will be evaluate shortly, usually within ten minutes. In the meantime, the article status under "My Articles" will appear as Pending.

All of my articles were live on the site within 10-20 minutes of clicking publish. This is excellent, because as content writers know, some niches are hot for a limited time and getting your content online quickly is important. If the approval lag time was days or even hours, it would potentially discourage writers used to instant publication.

New to eHow? Learn how to get eHow earnings from your content!

My opinion of the new process is that, if it eliminates post-publishing article deletion, it is a huge improvement and will make a positive difference on eHow both by preventing inferior content and spammy articles as well as ensuring that articles published on the site stay published and are not deleted months or even years after they were submitted.

So who or what decides whether an article passes muster? At this point, it's not clear and there's been no official or unofficial word from eHow. If live humans are behind it, the article moderators are not necessarily eHow employees sitting in their offices in CA; most likely, they are freelancers who have been chosen for the job much like those who determined which articles would be deleted in the eHow Article Sweeps.

Perhaps there is a computer algorithm that checks the content for plagiarism, advertising/spam, and flags potential violators for a real review.

To increase your odds of success, be sure your submitted work meets eHow submission guidelines and is quality, relevant, well-written information in true how-to format. Provide original material that will help the reader. Don't just produce fluff content with keywords chosen to earn money -- eHow is not going to accept it.

UPDATE: This is from Julie, one of the eHow community managers:

Hi,

The New Article Review does not exempt an article for review during future Article Sweeps. Currently when your article is submitted for publication and "pending" the following is evaluated:

1. Is the article a duplicate title? Does the title already exist in the system?

2. Plagiarism check

In the future we hope to do a more robust review of the article but currently we only do a basic processing of the article when it is first submitted. Therefore, the article will then be checked for compliance with Publishing Guidelines and other site rules by our editors during the Article Sweeps.

Hope this clears up any questions or confusion.

Thanks!

Julie

Have you noticed the new approval system for your eHow articles? What's you opinion?

(Photo from eHow.com's thank you page.)

eHow Anniversary: 2 Years, 2.3 Million Views

Today marks the second anniversary of the date I first created an eHow profile, WriterGig, and clicked publish on my first eHow article. What an adventure it's been! What started out as a casual experiment introduced me to the very real concept of residual income and led to a complete shift in my business model and life as a work at home mom.

My post Work from Home Writing eHow Articles was the first time I blogged about writing for eHow, about a month and a half after I started on the site. I had already seen the earnings potential and encouraged my fellow writers and work at home moms to give eHow a try. Needless to say, I'm glad I gave it a go.

Eight of the articles I wrote in late 2007 have earned over $100 each; several of those have more than $500 apiece accumulated thus far ... and continue to earn. Compare that to most of the writing freelancers do on a daily basis for one-time pay that's not always very good -- this is why I do virtually no conventional freelancing at this point: I've transitioned to writing primarily for "myself" and retaining rights, and the resulting revenue, to my work.

I have tried several revenue-sharing content sites and while each has its own merits, eHow remains my top site for residual earnings on a per-article basis. Its age, page rank, site layout and article/ ad format create a combination that is favorable to writers and allows me to spend more time writing and less time on promotion. The fact that I have received 2,369,954 page views to date is a testimony to eHow's ranking as a site (and of course, keyword research and basic search engine optimization on my part).

Last year, I attended weHow, the 2008 eHow User Event held in Santa Monica, CA and had a wonderful time, as well as received the Top Earner community award -- it was a thrill! This year, I won a place on the trip through the Passionate Project People contest for my "I Did This Project" on making window cornice boards. I was really excited about the trip this year, which was held in San Francisco this past week, but was unfortunately unable to attend due to the timing.

As part of my eHow adventure, in 2008 I wrote my eHow eBook, How to Earn Passive Income on eHow.com, in response to the many inquires I received from other writers and work at home moms who wanted to know how to succeed on eHow. It remains a strong seller to this day, further increasing my eHow-related income while giving others valuable information.

How has your experience been with eHow so far? If you're not on the site, why not? Would love to hear your thoughts!

The eHow Article Sweeps

The eHow article sweeps, thus named by eHow staff, refer to eHow's periodic "cleansing" of its article library -- at least, the section of its library written by eHow member-writers. Articles composed by Demand Studios freelance writers or previously bought from Writers Research Group are not included in these "sweeps."

As part of its article moderation program, article reviewers view members' articles at random, choosing "Accept" or "Reject" for each one. If the reviewer rejects an article, he selects a reason for rejection from a list of possibilities, which include "Advertising/Spam," "Clone," "Common Sense," "Blog/Opinion" and similar other reasons.

Articles that have been rejected by two separate article reviewers are slated for culling, or removal, from the site. If an article is approved by one and denied by another, it goes to another reviewer for a tiebreaker.

Once an article is removed, its original URL, or web address, is redirected by eHow to a related article or topic page.

Objectively, article moderation seems like an excellent idea. A website filled with spam, cloned articles, useless fluff or mediocre content will do nobody any good, and will ultimately fail. I am a big supporter of improving eHow's content, in all sections of its library (ie including articles from Demand Studios and Writers Research group and its older material).

The main problem I have is the way in which these sweeps have occurred, where decent articles are removed based on two people's subjective, often hasty, opinions and writers are not given a chance to improve or edit their work before it is deleted.

One of my friends, both on eHow and in real life, had an article removed in the last sweep that had already earned her over $1,400 in under a year. Her article URL (#1 in Google search results for her keywords) was redirected to a similar article by a Demand Studios writer. The demoralizing effect of losing this article has turned her off completely from writing for eHow.

In my mind, eHow remains an excellent place to publish content and earn money for your efforts. As the community grows, all kinds of content is added daily, and there has to be some way to ensure that quality standards are upheld. If eHow will listen to its writers and improve the system, everyone will be better off.

For writers who have experienced article loss on eHow, especially those who feel they lost quality articles and don't understand why, you have my my sympathy. Definitely take the time to review eHow's new Writers Guidelines and try to discern why your articles were removed.

I also suggest that writers take their rejected articles elsewhere, but first clean them up, correct mistakes, and make sure the content is truly worthwhile.

There are several very good revenue-sharing content-based sites that I use and recommend, namely:

• InfoBarrel
• Bukisa
• HubPages

While eHow is still my top moneymaker, I believe that, in time, these sites may rival eHow for earnings on a per-article basis as their Google pagerank improves and submitted articles appear higher in search engine results.

I have a handful of articles on each site and will add more each month. I am working on my own niche sites as well, and InfoBarrel, HubPages and Bukisa are great for building backlinks to your blogs and other content in a way that eHow is not. On all three sites, you can include links within the text of an article.

With online writing and marketing, diversity is key to success. Write for several sites, not just one. Think of the eHow article sweeps -- if your content was affected -- as a reminder that it's good business sense to earn money from as many sources as possible.

WAHM from eHow in the News

My friend Candace, who I met at the weHow 2008 event in Santa Monica, CA, is a fellow stay at home mom who uses eHow and her blog to earn extra money from home.

Recently, she was featured on the news in her hometown of Dallas. Here she is:

Isn't Candace poised? I am impressed with her calm confidence, not to mention very put-together look. Go Candace!

You can find her on eHow as CCrock and on Blogger at Smokin' Momma (as in smoking hot).

And here's a picture of us at weHow 2008:
Don't mind the guy in the middle, that's just Richard Rosenblatt, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO of Demand Media, which owns eHow!

Thanks to Bloggers, Affiliates for eBook Sales

The most important element to sales, I think, is getting the word out. It's pretty basic but hey, if people don't know about your product or services, they can't make a purchase. With my ebook on increasing eHow earnings, I've been blessed by some great folks who helped get the word out, some as affiliates, some as bloggers, some as both.

There are some great resources to be found by following these writers' links. I am currently addicted to several of the blogs you'll find below.

So ... thank you to Suzanne, aka eBayCoach, Pat with Smart Passive Income Blog (an awesome site!), Felcia, at No Job for Mom, Airel, aka acole on eHow, and Pam, aka BlondieWrites.

I have to thank Lindsay with Writing for Your Wealth for having me on her site (and a nod to Julie Mayfield for telling me about Lindsay's blog!), Michele Tune at Writing the Cyber Highway and Jessie, aka covewriter, for mentioning me in her eHow-related posts, and David Sarokin for including the book as a resource in his popular eHow articles.

Thanks to those who found the book helpful and spread the word just because.

And of course, a huge thank you to the good people at Demand Media for the wonderful weHow experience, and for creating a site that allows any user to participate, network and earn money online.

Recession Survival through Income Diversification

While discussing the economy and how to survive job layoffs, a reporter asked me what advice I would give to someone anticipating financial storm clouds. I replied,

Diversify income as quickly as possible. If money is coming from only one source, you're too exposed. Have several sources of income, a side job, a product you sell, something else that brings in money other than your 9-to-5.

As a freelance writer/ online marketer, this is true for me as well. Writing just for one client, for those who ghostwrite or write for a byline, can be risky. I saw this firsthand in the past year when friends of mine on the WAHMs Who Write Forum were let go from Demand Studios, Writers Research Group and other large companies. Suddenly they had no work or very little, and their families were counting on their income.

My income comes mainly from the following, in no particular order:

• eHow ebook
• eHow articles
• Affiliate sales, primarily Amazon, HostGator, CommissionJunction, SiteBuiltIt!
• Adsense, especially on my home & garden blog & pets site
• Private clients (two are editing gigs, one is writing)
  
• HubPages
• Bukisa & InfoBarrel

Having income from a multitude of sources is my basic business model as a freelance writer and WAHM. I would be bored with just one avenue, but it's also a hedge against income loss as I could bring any one of these income sources up to a higher level if my primary sources dropped or dried up.

How do you diversify your income sources?

Podcast Interview with eBayCoach

Suzanne, aka eBayCoach, interviewed me about eHow for her podcast series. I was delighted to be on her show and to spend time chatting about eHow and eBay, two great ways for Work at Home Moms to earn money from home.

In the podcast, Suzanne and I share our own eHow experiences as well as offer advice and tips for those new to the site or who want to take their experience there to the next level.

The podcast was a great way to cross two audiences, freelance writers on eHow and eBay sellers, and the end result was that eBay sellers interested in using eHow as another source of income and a way to promote their eBay stores are turning to me and my ebook for advice, and eHow writers and WAHMs who read my blog are turning to Suzanne for tips.

By the way, Suzanne is an expert at making money on eBay. I highly recommend that you check out her blog, where she is offering her Stay at Home Mom's Guide to eBay Selling to readers for free. Take advantage of her wisdom and grab a copy of this book, which you can use to clear out your closets for cash as well as build up an eBay business that's successful.

Revenue Sharing Sites: eHow, Bukisa, and InfoBarrel

Revenue-sharing content sites are a great way for writers, stay at home moms, hobbyists, college students, retirees, eBay sellers or anyone interested, to make money online. Writing talent -- or at least the ability to string together coherent sentences and present a topic in a logical step-by-step manner -- comes in handy, as does a little web savvy and knowledge of keyword optimization. But it's not a difficult process, and is one of the most legitimate ways to make money online and build residual income streams.



I write niche content sites and maintain a few blogs through Wordpress and Blogger, but revenue from eHow is still a large portion of my monthly income. Writing for eHow has been a great experience for me ... publishing a new article there is as easy as it gets, the site's page rank ensures my articles do well with the search engines, and the amount of monthly traffic can't be beat, an the revenue sharing model seems fair to its contributors. All of these aspects together make content writing on eHow quite profitable, allowing me -- and so many eHow writers -- to create a residual income stream that keeps generating income month after month and yes, year after year.


While eHow is the best paying revenue-sharing content site I've tried thus far, there are a couple others that are quite promising in regards future earnings as the sites grow. They also have some excellent features that aren't available at eHow yet, including the ability to link to other sites and articles within the body of your piece, and a freestyle template that lets you get away from the how-to format.


With an eye toward residual income and promoting my other work, I've been contributing to Bukisa, and wrote about my Bukisa earnings last month. I am nearing the $50 payout, and will let readers know when that occurs and how timely the payment from Bukisa is made. Bukisa pays based on page views, so the best strategy for Bukisa is to concentrate on high-traffic keyword titles that receive many searches, and not worry about the cost of related ads. User questions and inquiries to the the site receive prompt reply.


InfoBarrel is a promising new content-based community. I have two articles online and ideas for many more (of course). After emailing a few times with Kevin, one of the site's founders, I am satisfied enough to write for the site and hope for long-term success. Once you have written 10 articles and been a member for at least 14 days, your articles will be published right away instead of being held for approval. They pay 75% of the Adsense revenue your articles generate.

Other revenue-sharing content sites I've tried include:

• HubPages: Wrote my first Hubs about the same time I wrote my first eHow artcles. One is on a similar topic, but has earned far less than, one of my high-earning eHows. Have had some decent earnings here, but eHow is more profitable for me.
  
• Associated Content: Have only written a couple AC articles. There pay is so little, I'd rather post my work almost anywhere else.
  
• Xomba: Good way to promote my other content, short blurbs there have earned a few dollars each over time, not bad for length of pieces, but really only use as way to get links.
• BrightHub: Was better in the beginning but now the article suggestion, permission and writing cycle is too complicated and annoying. You have to apply and be accepted to be a writer for the site.
  

What revenue-sharing content sites do you write for online? Have you tried any of the above-mentioned, or places like Squidoo, Suite 101, Helium? I'd love to hear your comments!

Top eHow article hits $1,000 in Revenue

Thank goodness I stepped out on a limb just over a year ago and decided to experiment by writing directly for eHow. At the time, I was suggesting how-to titles for a content company contracted by Demand Media to provide articles for the eHow.com site. For each topic they approved and I wrote, I was paid a flat fee: $11.

Of course, for a stay at home mom who could crank out 2-3 an hour at times, the hours rate wasn't bad -- and it was better than what I was earning grading high school English papers at night. So I certainly wasn't complaining. But ... what if I could retain the rights to my work and possibly earn more submitting directly to eHow? I decided to give it a shot after eHow's Rich stopped by the WAHM writer's forum trying to recruit eHow members.

My first article has earned hundreds of dollars. One of the articles I wrote a month in to my experiment has now crossed the $1,000 mark. Wow. (Click image to enlarge. Some details removed.)

Is that not awesome? Here's hoping a few of the others cross that mark in 2009. And if you still needed convincing, residual income is the best business model for writers, in my opinion. In 2009, I'll be doing all of my writing for residual income streams. It took me a full year to transition from writing for pay, per article, to writing only "for myself" in residual income models.

I'm not just turning my back on $11 articles, or the $30 articles I was writing for another site. I charged $150 each for blog post articles in 2008 for a software company, and could have continued to write for them ... but my heart wasn't there. I only have so many hours to write, and I want to spend them building up long-term income sources that will continue to earn money for my family months and even years down the road.

Of course, since my income is a secondary income for our family, and I had to replace a part-time income and not a full-time one, it took less time, perhaps, than it would have otherwise. However, if you have more hours to devote to building up residuals, perhaps you can get there even more quickly.

In the coming year, it's my goal to build up a full-time residual income ... working very part-time, of course, and using the foundation I already have in place.

What are your writing income goals for 2009?

Maximize eHow Earnings with Affiliate Links

Do you earn income from affiliate products you recommend in your eHow articles? If not ... it's time to start. I encourage you, if you have a library of eHow articles, to take some time to add affiliate links or links to your other sites and blogs, under the Resources section of your articles. Don't waste time on social promotion, Digging and Stumbling articles that really aren't going to appeal to those social communities. Instead -- maximize your earnings potential by adding another residual income revenue stream to your content.

For this post, I'm going to assume you've joined the affiliate programs and can navigate them enough to generate the code for the products. Here's how to add affiliate links to your eHow articles for several of the affiliate programs I use.

Amazon.com

To build affiliate links to Amazon products, choose the "text only" option, to simplify the HTML code you'll see. While the program generates HTML code, you are just after the link -- you can NOT copy and paste the entire HTML code into your eHow article or Resources section.

Here's what it looks like when you're getting the affiliate code for Amazon products (click to enlarge):
Select the URL that begins http:// and is located between the quote marks. Do not inlcue the quotes, but make sure you have highlighted every character in between. Copy this web address to your clipboard by keying CTRL + C or by right-clicking your highlight link and then selecting "Copy" or "Copy to clipboard" in the menu that appears.

You now have the affiliate code for the product you wanted to recommend -- and if someone buys it form your link, you'll get credit -- and money. Scroll down to "Putting it All Together," below, to see how to add this link to your eHow articles.

CJ.com

Commission Junction is a great affiliate network, and I'm averaging around $100 a month from affiliate sales through CJ, even with a very low number of links online. I'll be adding more CJ links to my articles and sites in the coming months.

After choosing the product or site you wish to promote, choose "Get HTML" for the link you want. You'll see the following dialog box:

Select the affiliate link between the quotes. You'll use this in your eHow article ... scroll down to "Putting it All Together" to see how.

eJunkie

My ebook is hosted with eJunkie, and there are scores of information products on the site that offer affiliate programs. (If you're not an eHow ebook affiliate, you should be! You can earn $12.50 per sale by promoting my ebook in eHow-related articles, money-themed how-to's and even your blog. )And then you'll have the code:


Select only the link between the quotes, which in this case I have underlined in blue.

Putting it All Together: Adding the affiliate links to eHow articles

After generating your HTML code, selecting the appropriate link, and copying it to your clipboard, you're ready to add the link to your eHow article. Open the article for editing, and scroll down to the last few sections of the Write Article tool.

Screen shot of the eHow Write Article tool, to illustrate (click to enlarge):

Paste the affiliate link in the "link" section and then write or copy and paste a descriptive phrase about the product or site. Keep it short and simple. Hit publish. Now view your article, and click the link to make sure you added it correctly.

From the outside, your affiliate link simply looks like a helpful resource (which it is):



There you have it. Easy-peasy, right?

Don't expect huge overnight earnings ... the Resources section is so far down that most readers never see it. But some, intrigued by the information in your articles and wanting to know more, keep scrolling and see your resources. Some click, some don't. Some buy the products you recommend. Most don't.

But just like the adsense clicks, day in and day out, it adds up over time. A few minutes to build a link can translate into many dollars over time. My best-performing link has earned me hundreds of dollars over the past few months. This is passive income at its best -- enjoy it.