Writing for Ehow: The Good, Bad and Ugly!

I have had the opportunity to write for several different content sites including HubPages, Squidoo, Xomba, and eHow.  I have been writing for eHow for several months now and just wanted to share my experience with the site.  As you can guess from the title, there are some good things that I have experienced at eHow, some bad things, and some just plain ugly aspects.  Keep in mind that this represents only the opinion of one amateur author.

The Good

Of the sites that I have written for so far in my short six month career, eHow is one of the better if not best site for residual income and amount of pay that I have received for a given amount of traffic.  I suspect this is because it has such a solid brand name and shows up high in the search engine traffic.  I had made almost as much at eHow as at HubPages with about half the number of articles.  Granted I started writing in earnest at HubPages so by the time I started at eHow, I had a good sense of focusing on keywords.  Still, it seems that for the amount of traffic, the earnings are pretty good.

The other good thing about eHow is when looking at the traffic graph at Alexa.com, there is a clear uptrend.  This again speaks to the authority that the site commands and the interest that is generated.  Its overall rankings are increasing according to Alexa.com also.

Finally, the community there is very friendly.  The forums are a nice place to hang out if you don’t feel like writing.  There are many kind individuals there that are willing to help you out as you learn your way around the site.

The Bad

One of the worst things about the site is the software bugs.  It is incredible how often the site has one computer problem or another.  There have been times when it was impossible to publish an article at all, or to publish photos or videos.  There was a time when new users were not being credited with any earnings.  I find it appalling that such a large internet web site can’t get the site working properly.  It seems to be a constant problem.  The site is even owned by a corporation.  It isn’t like the site is some guy working out of his dorm room.

Another thing that is bad for me at least is the rigid format in which the articles have to be written.  It makes sense given the name of the site.  It is just more difficult for me to write in that style versus the prose format like this article.  This doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  You may prefer the eHow format.

The Ugly

There have been several article sweeps in the few months that I have been writing on the site.  I have lost a total of 5 articles in 3 sweeps.  That is certainly not a lot considering some authors lost over 50 articles at one time.  Many of the contributors are frustrated and suspect that eHow is taking the better performing articles and using the search engine links to drive traffic to other articles on the site. 

Now I’m not into conspiracy theories.  It seems to me as if eHow is trying to shift from residual payments to an upfront model so that eHow can earn the income from the content for several years into the future.  It is a good model from a business perspective but is lousy for morale.  I would hate to spend an hour or two writing an article only to have it deleted after a few months.  In fact, that is why I am no longer writing for eHow.  I will just let the articles I have earn what they can and then republish them elsewhere when they get deleted.  I suspect all of them will at some point in the future.

Like I said, these represent just my experiences.  Others have surely had different experiences which may be better or worse.  I would urge anyone making money writing content online to try out many different sites and find out which one might be a good fit.  And always be sure to keep a copy of your work so that you can publish elsewhere if your work is deleted or the site goes offline.