eHow Article Sweeps – The Good, Bad, and Ugly

For those of you who write for eHow, I am sure you know by now that the latest article sweep is in process. I see this as a good and bad thing to be honest. Nobody wants to have their hard work deleted and thrown away, but the sweep process can help improve the quality of the site.

I wasn’t immune from the latest cleaning of the eHow article library. Yesterday, I received an email from eHow stating they are “… making great strides to clean up the eHow article library…”. I knew exactly what that meant – its sweep time again! I have mixed emotions about this process whenever eHow goes through these sweeps. This round was no different, so I thought I would break it down into the “Good, Bad, and Ugly” below.

The Good

Since posting my number one problem with eHow, it appears they have made some changes for the better. Here are a few changes that eHow is communicating -

• Deliver article clean up communications every week.
• Members of eHow will be notified shortly after an article has been published if it will be removed.
• Articles will be pre-screened once they are submitted to ensure they meet the standards.

All of these items seem to be a very positive step in the right direction to fix things. The other thing I always notice (and can never really complain about) is the nice earnings jump that seems to follow immediately after the sweep is complete. I noticed it once again during this round.

The Bad

I don’t enjoy losing my hard work and articles that I have submitted. I lost 3 eHow articles to the latest sweep, one of which was a big earner for me (almost $40 in 3 months). The other two were not as big of a deal.

Fortunately, I have made copies of my articles and can quickly turn them around on a different site somewhere else.

The Ugly

I can live with the Good and Bad that I noted above as it is part of a cleansing process that I always seem to benefit from (even though I lose articles along the way). What I can’t tolerate is the continued poor communication between eHow and it’s members. As noted earlier, it appears they have listened to their members and have made some changes to improve the communication process. Unfortunately, they introduced new communication issues that I find to be unacceptable.

This is a portion of the email communication that I received about the article cleanup –

“For your reference, this email has been sent to you because one or more of your articles have been removed from your account for violating eHow submission guidelines. Please click on the link below to find a list of all affected titles with reasons for removal next to each of them.”

When I first clicked the link in the morning, I had one article show up. Several hours later, I noticed that my number of published articles dropped again, so I clicked the link and three articles showed up. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to send out the communication once the article cleaning process was completed? This is just another example of how poor the eHow site is at communicating with their members.

To make matters worse, notice the phrase in the quote above – “… reasons for removal next to each of them.”. Guess what? There were no reasons (AGAIN!) next to my articles telling me why it was removed. This is one of the most frustrating things that I find with eHow. Don’t tell me that there is a reason noted next to my article on why it was deleted when it isn’t even there!

Obviously they are still working out the communication kinks.

Oh yeah – and may I add that there is no security or privacy around the links that eHow sent out. If you got the link, you can simply change the username to someone else you know and see what articles they lost. Not cool!

Want to see my articles that got deleted? Check them out (it is obviously public information) – PFIncome Deleted Articles.

How did you make out on the latest eHow article sweep? Are you frustrated with the poor communication they use with their members? Is it enough for you to leave?