After a frustrating couple of months as an eHow writer, I decided to take the month of February off. This was the very first month since I started that I did not submit a single new article. I had several motivating factors for not writing any new content.
First of all, I am focusing the majority of my time building up my niche websites. I have set some aggressive but manageable SMART Goals for this year. Increasing the passive income generated from these sites plays a major role in meeting these goals. These sites take a lot of time to setup and get running, so I took a break from eHow.
Secondly, based on all the issues surrounding the eHow UK site, I wanted to run a test. I wanted to prove that while eHow has gone through some rough patches recently, it is still an incredible way to build a solid recurring income stream. While you don’t fully control the site and content, there are plenty of nice trade-offs to still make it worth it. Check out my results below if you don’t believe eHow is still a viable option to earn passive income.
Let’s take a look at my monthly results -
February Updates
As I mentioned earlier, I did not publish a single article in February. This was the first time in 18 months that I didn’t add any new content. Just because I didn’t add new content doesn’t mean I stop earning income. That is the beauty of building solid passive income streams. They can continue to payout even while not actively spending any time or effort on them!
My earnings dropped by over (11%) in February compared to the prior month. While this may seem significant, the month was shortened by 3 extra days. If I were to prorate this difference, it would be less than a (2%) drop compared to last month.
Here is the breakdown of my eHow earnings from the past 18
months -
- February (2010)
- Earnings – $184.88
- Articles Published – 0
- January (2010)
- Earnings – $208.36
- Articles Published – 13
- 2009 Earnings
- Earnings – $1,568.76
- Articles Published – 216
- 2008 Earnings
- Earnings – $25.98
- Articles Published – 20
GRAND TOTAL (18 Months)
- Earnings – $1,987.98
- Articles Published – 249
Are you looking for a free way to start increasing your income? If so, eHow is one option that allows you to accomplish this goal. There are people just like you earning over a $1,000 each month on a recurring basis just by writing “How To” articles. If you are new to eHow, one place to start is by checking out a great resource called – How to Earn Passive Income on eHow.com: Maximize Your Online Earnings. I purchased this resource several months ago and have made my money back within the first month using the guidelines laid out.
Milestone – 100,000+ Article Views
I hit a milestone in my eHow career last month surpassing 100,000 article views from all of my articles. While earnings do not always translate directly into earnings, it is still a good sign to see your articles getting a lot of hits. I think this is a good visual indicator of the authority that eHow still carries.
100 Article eHow Challenge – February Results
I challenged myself last year to jump start my eHow passive income stream in an attempt to accelerate my earnings. Last August, I launched the 100 Article eHow Challenge, where I had a goal to publish 100 new articles (finished with 72). I have been tracking the status of these articles each month to see how the challenge turned out.
Here are my earnings from the 100 Article eHow Challenge -
- August – $119.48
- September – $113.95
- October – $75.47
- November – $73.45
- December – $59.86
- January – $37.00
- February – $42.70
Total Earnings – $521.91
My earnings from these articles gained a bit of ground in February but still did not pop as much as I had originally expected. These articles hit the 7 month mark and I normally see a significant increase in my earnings once an article has been live for 6 months.
Now that these articles have hit the 6 month mark, I won’t be tracking their status in the future.
Final Thoughts
The past couple of months have been a very wild ride as an eHow writer. I get the feeling that things have calmed down somewhat and many of the issues that came up are now behind us. I am actually starting to see some increase in daily earnings again, which seems to be a good sign.
I plan to write 50 articles this month as I want to see if I can reach $500 per month in earnings by the end of June this year. Based on what I saw in February, I am comfortable again adding new content to the site. I am also using these articles to help drive traffic to my niche websites by leveraging the Add Additional Resources section of each post. My keyword topics are coming directly from my niche site, so I don’t need to spend a lot of time on research which will help me save time.
Where do you think eHow is headed from here? How did your earnings compare to last month?
Related posts:
- eHow Passive Income Results – March (2010)
- Passive Income eHow Updates – January (2010)
- Passive Income Results – April (2010)
- Passive Income eHow Updates – February (2009)
- Passive Income eHow Updates – July (2009)
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John,
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your total # of articles on eHow? I’ve had 10-15 new articles up at eHow in the last week and have seen a couple of articles gain me a couple of dollars.
However, i still don’t know if I get that money from a random audience clicking on the ads or if it’s from the forum where I post my articles (eHow forum).
Are you keeping track of how much you’ve paid your writer and how quickly you’ll recoup the costs? That’d be interesting.
Thanks for the updates!
@Moon – I have 249 total live articles on eHow. I did have 262 that had been published, but 13 of them got whacked last fall. Just a note, I don’t do any promotion of my eHow articles through forums other than tweeting them one time.
Just for clarification, I have not outsourced any eHow articles to date (and won’t). I only outsource articles for other sites and a few of my niche site articles.
$185 isn’t bad earnings on 249 articles. That’s quite good. Are you noticing that you’re earning evenly from all articles or some articles just do better in general?
I just started outsourcing my eHow articles, but that doesn’t mean I blindly throw them up there. I edit them to my liking, if needed, or add that personal touch.
Knocking on wood here.
@Moon – Are my earnings spread out? NO. 87% of my February earnings come from 20% of my articles. That is a perfect example of the 80/20 rule at it’s best.
I definitely see two niche topics bringing in 95% of my earnings.
Like you, I experienced a decrease in earnings in Feb. I think the fact that the Olympics were on, and the month was short, contributed to this decrease. It looks like eHow will remain a good place to earn passive income- I am excited to see what March looks like!
@Rachel – Yeah, I agree. March seems like the most optimistic month for me at eHow in a very long time. Are you still contributing to Suite101? I just signed up for an account there but am trying to get my first article published.
Very interesting post. I’m new to your site and can see that I will definitely be back. I’m working on creating passive income as well. Not sure if I want to add yet another task on my list by creating articles – but maybe one day.
@Adrienne – Thanks for stopping by. Can you tell me what areas do you focus on to build passive income? I am a bit tired of writing so much, but can’t seem to slow down enough to start focusing on other things.
My eHow earnings in Feb tanked to 1/2 of what they were in January which was less than December earnings. Yet I added new articles and took great efforts to increase the value and SEO of the worst articles. Maybe I am being whacked for some reason.
My focus now is on my increasing blog traffic and launching a niche site I started yesterday. We just have too little control with eHow to only work with that site.
@Jade – I can understand the frustration. I am surprised that your earnings dropped by 50% compared to January. Is this with or without the eHow UK extra payment? How many articles to you have published there?
Jade,
I know exactly what you’re saying. How come we don’t know the details of how we’re getting paid? I will continue to grow my library with eHow but will also focus on other ventures. Don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket.
I love that you’re using eHow articles both for pushing traffic to your niche site AND earning income from the articles themselves. Question- are these eHow articles ones that you’ve sourced to your ghost writer or are you writing them yourself?
@Ethan – All my eHow articles were written by myself. I think it would be very difficult and time consuming explaining to a ghost writer what I want from an eHow article.
I got extremely lucky back when I first started on eHow. I inadvertently hit a “Golden Article” on my second publication. It made almost 50 dollars within the first 24 hours of it being posted. I haven’t duplicated that success yet but it is definitely possible to get some big earners. Just wanted to let you and the readers know that very huge earnings are possible. I have not perfected my writing ability yet but I do think it is possible to consistently crank out articles that make at least 10 dollars per week, however unlikely. Props on the blog and I hope your earnings continue to rise.
@eHow Lover – Cool. Always nice to hear of stories like this. I have two articles that consistently earn $7 – $8 per week over the past six months. One of these articles has actually accounted for almost 10% of my lifetime earnings on eHow. I think this is a good example of why people should not give up or get discouraged.
Thanks for the kind words on the site. Still have a lot of things to fix and tweak on it!
BTW – So far in March, my earnings look great!
Wow – that is a good piece of passive income. I’ve never written articles for eHow – I always use Ezine Articles, I might have to check them out. I heard recently though that there was some kind of upset about payment. How do you get paid with eHow?
P.S. I found your blog via Ruth’s and think I might have to add you to my RSS feed – I’m writing my own internet marketing journal and am always looking for other people in the same boat to follow their progress and learn from.
@Clare – Thanks. Yes, eHow has gone through some bad times the past couple of months but appear to have things under control. They pay every month (if you reach $10 in earnings) through your paypal account. I have never had an issue receiving my payments, just decrease in earnings for a wide variety of reasons.
P.S. – I hope you do sign up!
Hey – I found your blog via “webcareergirl” and like what I see! I’ve been a writer on eHow for the past few years and my experiences have been very positive. I’ve been publishing articles there on average of maybe 5 a month and over the course of a few years, it has really added up. I have over 200 articles on the site now and a nice passive income.At first, I barely made payout. Then, I wrote a few articles that had “gold” keywords that exploded in earnings. Those earnings have tapered off, but those articles are still my top money makers. Unfortunately I can’t figure out a trick for discovering these “Gold” keywords. After the initial keyword research, the rest is complete chance. I will say that most of my articles are in the alternative health category.
@Katherine – Interesting feedback. One thing I tend to do is take the url of my top earning articles and throw it in the Google AdWords Keyword tool and write several follow up articles with the results. I have found that you can go a little further up the food chain on eHow because they naturally rank higher than InfoBarrel and several of my niche websites.
BTW – Ruth’s site is great!