I have been a longtime eHow writer now for almost 20 months. During that time, I went from earning $1.46 in my first month to over $250 in residual income in my highest month. I have both loved and been extremely frustrated with eHow since joining their WCP program almost 2 years ago.
Recently, eHow announced that they would be changing writing platforms to Demand Studios. While some eHow writers have openly disowned the new platform and eHow all together, I am looking forward to the change. Here are a few reasons why I won’t miss eHow and will welcome what the new writing platform may offer.
5 Reasons Not to Miss eHow
- No More Article Sweeps – One of the most frustrating parts of publishing content on eHow were the hated article sweeps. The new Demand Studious platform should remove any doubt on the quality of an article based on the editorial review process that is in place. Bottom line – You will know if your article isn’t very good well before it is published and is live. I just had another article removed last week from eHow where they stated that it should have been removed a long time ago but never was. I look forward to the day when we are “sweep free”!
- Reduction in Technical Issues – Working in the IT industry for many years, I really don’t have a lot of patience for sites that have chronic technical problems. The eHow publishing platform always seemed to have something wrong with it. Whether is was not being able to add pictures and photos to an article to not being able to even publish a new article – there was also some sort of quirky thing going on with the tool. Hopefully the Demand Studious publishing platform has fewer bugs in it!
- Quality Published Content – Moving to the Demand Studious platform should allow for much better published content than what is being spun out of the eHow tool. Let’s face it, there is a bunch of crappy content on eHow that serves no purpose. I myself have been guilty of mass producing articles to try and increase my passive income earnings as fast as possible. All future content will be carefully reviewed which should prevent a lot of SPAM and low quality content from being published. This ultimately increases the credibility of the site and should eventually help the writers as well.
- Not Just “How To” Articles – One of the downsides of writing content on eHow was the rigid How To format that was required. I would often find myself in the middle of drafting a really good article, only to realize that there was no way to fit it into the step format that was required. While I do enjoy writing helpful How To articles, I personally welcome the opportunity to branch out into other formats which the Demand Studious platform should provide.
- Communication – The communication between eHow and it’s writers has been poor for quite some time. Just take last week when I received my pre-approval email from eHow stating that I would automatically be converted into the Demand Studios platform. Here is a line in the email – “Having written 2 articles with a 94% acceptance rate, you should be proud of yourself for being pre-approved.”. I found it funny that I had written only two articles and was automatically accepted. A clarification email was later sent out correcting the number of articles, but it is just another example of how poor the communication truly has gotten on eHow!
Final Thoughts
The new platform will most likely cause issues and frustrations for many long time eHow writers. There will be a learning curve for most of us and some will probably give up or not even attempt to write for Demand Studios. I am going to welcome this switch as a positive change and am looking forward to leveraging the new tools that will be available to me to increase my recurring income.
Will you be making the switch over to Demand Studios? What won’t you miss about eHow?
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I have not published an article on eHow since 10/1/09 because of all of the issues and I continue to see my income shrink each month.
I have not decided whether or not I will publish anything on Demand Studios yet, however, the flexibility to write about more than just ‘how to’ articles does interest me somewhat!
@Dusty – How much have your earnings dropped since you stopped publishing?
I was hitting $100 for months and months and months, but over the last few pay periods, my earnings have dropped to about $75 – $80. Considering I only have 114 articles (and 50 of those are terrible and were written primarily for fun) I am not complaining too much!
@Dusty – I understand your frustrations my friend. Do you have any plans to reuse your eHow articles?
A couple points:
1. You are still restricted to How-To in the “rev share” program at Demand Studios
2. No more tweaking articles later to improve the SEO or update info. Once published, they are fixed forever and you can’t touch them.
3. Staff at ehow have said the sweeps will continue, although they expect less (well duh, there will be less articles to sweep)
4. The DS format includes all the issues you had to comply with at eHow PLUS more issues like voice, references to back up your statements, no links except to “authority sites” and so on. The DS model is less flexible in short.
5. The DS model has plenty of glitches too – just ask any DS writer.
6. In some ways, this will improve quality by weeding out bad writers. In other ways, it will decrease quality because the DS system is so rule driven it encourages such standardized writing.
Anyhow – I’m trying it out as soon as they give me access to rev share articles. I’ve not decided yet how far I’ll go with the new system. This should be interesting.
@Jade – Seems like you have really done your homework! Have you spoken to many current DS writers? Just curious how you found out about all the issues with the existing platform.
I’ve written several articles for eHow, but I haven’t published any lately because I became so annoyed with the publishing tool. I thought about applying at Demand Studios, and then I got the email saying I was automatically accepted. This saved me from having to apply. I’m looking forward to writing some articles to see how it works.
There’s only one thing I don’t like about this. Demand Studios will own the rights to any articles that are written for them. That means we won’t be able to remove articles, and they can reprint them elsewhere or do anything they want with them. At eHow we could remove articles if they stopped paying or did something we the writers didn’t approve of.
But overall, I think it’s for the better, and I think I might like being able to get immediate cash for articles.
@Russell – I am with you on not owning the content on Demand Studios. I will write a few articles to test out the waters there before I start publishing like crazy.
If I have time, I might give DS a try. I hate those article sweeps we’ve been subjected to. Wish they’d reject the articles before posting, otherwise you get used to them being up especially if they make you any money.
Oh well. Hope the change is for the better, finally.
@Moon – I have only lost 14 articles out of 294, so I consider myself fortunate. However, I think it is very unprofessional the way they went about the process. Let’s see how the new platform does.
John,
I’ve been a DS for two years+ and while I wrote primarily for eHow’s WCP, I do have 130+ pieces of content through DS, including 15 rev-share articles that have been on eHow for a year. Although there are some drawbacks to the DS model (you can’t link your articles via the Related Articles section or edit articles once published), I think with proper effort (backlinks, etc) there is a very good residual income potential with DS. I posted about my DS rev-share experience on my blog.
~Maria
@Maria – Thanks for your analysis. What are your plans, now that your eBook becomes outdated? Any thoughts on one for DS?
That should read, “I have been a DS writer…”
I never really got into writing for eHow although I did have, at one time, over a hundred articles there. I was usually pretty pleased with the revenue produced on those articles but constantly perplexed when they deleted the top performing articles. I was invited to participate in DS but, frankly, I have no interest. There are too many opportunities out there to deal with some faceless group hiding the ball. For me, I will use 2.0 sites primarily for backlinks and, if by happenstance, they make me some money, great. If not, my content is exactly that: MINE!
@Mace – Great points! I think the trend is now to leverage these sites for building backlinks and traffic while earning a little income on the side.