So, it’s only day 4 of my Big Little Experiment Writing at eHow, and I have to say its been quite an experience already. I know I said I was going to update you every month, but I wanted to give you my perspective right from the start, just in case you’re thinking about writing on eHow someday too. Hopefully you can learn from my experience and better utilize your time and effort.
The Articles
So far, I’ve written 31 articles, which gives me a total of 3,390 points. I really have no idea what the points mean, except for that it’s an easy way to see who has written a lot, and who hasn’t. I’ve seen a guy with over 45,000 points, so I think I have a lot more articles to write before I can even get to half of that. I am ahead of my 5 article a day average, so I’m feeling pretty good so far.
All in all, I’m really satisfied with how easy it is to write an article. Maybe it’s just me, but I can crank out a well-written article in about 20 minutes, sometimes less if the subject isn’t too broad or difficult. Each step involved in the article writing process is conveniently laid out in easy to do steps, and I really appreciate the effort eHow has made to spread the theme of “how to make things easier for people” throughout their entire website, both for the readers and the contributors of the articles.
I’ve written on a variety of subjects, ranging from various internet tools, my relationship with my fiancee, and even hotel room coffee…hah! With the 31 articles I’ve written, I can see that they have been viewed a total of 1,514 times already. Probably more, because the numbers get updated only once a day. Seeing the numbers is really fun, and it becomes a motivation factor to increase the number of articles, views, and even points.
A tip: if you’re writing an article, DO NOT try to place any html coding inside any of the text fields. If you attempt to bold a word using <b>word</b>, for example, for some reason when you try to save or publish, eHow loads it’s homepage and you’ve lost everything. This was my experience, but I wouldn’t recommend testing it yourself.
Lastly, I wish there was a way to tell exactly how people came to see my articles. It would be a good indicator as to whether or not Google was picking them up or not, or if they were coming from an external link.
Here is a fancy screenshot from my control panel. You can see my alias is: TheWriteGuy, so look me up if you’re ever there:
Ratings and Comments
Each article that is written can be rated (1 to 5 stars) and/or commented on. I think it’s a little weird that people who are not eHow members can view and rate the article, but not comment on them. I wish they would open up the commenting to the public, but I guess it’s their way of being able to control who is saying what, and possibly try to get more members.
There’s nothing special about the rating or commenting options on eHow. It’s your basic blog style format, but it is nice to see that you’re getting some feedback for your articles from other people on eHow. If you’re looking at another persons profile, you can see a list of the articles that they’ve written with the rating next to each of them, so the moral of the story is that you should write good articles because everyone can see your ratings.
The eHow Community
The group of people on eHow are some of the friendliest people on the internet. I have yet to read any negative comments or forum posts about any other community members or articles in particular.
A few people have even message me (in addition to commenting), to personally thank me for an article of mine they have read. That’s a really cool feeling, and it makes me want to write even more.
Some people are really focused on campaigning for their artciles, which does makes sense to me, but it puts me off a little. I once got a message from someone saying that he was dissapointed because he commented and rated on all of my articles, but didn’t see any reciprocation from my end. Yes, it’s good etiquette to return favors on eHow, but I wasn’t even home! He could have at least waited a day before messaging me. This was just one person out of the tens of thousands of wonderful people there, so I will not pass any judgement to the communtiy as a whole for this miniscule incident.
As I was saying, I learned that there is a kind of etiquette that should be followed while on eHow. It’s basically the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” idea, and I really think it’s a good thing. It’s not really that hard to comment and rate on an article that may only take 1 or 2 minutes to read.
It’s also advantageous to make friends on eHow. It’s the same type of social networking idea as seen on Facebook or on Myspace, and only good things can come from having a large friend list. You’re connected to more people and therefore have a better chance of having your articles read. So far, I’ve made 280 friends. If I were smarter, I would have messaged each one and introduced myself, but I was primarily focused on my articles, so I’ll come around to that later.
Making Money on eHow
This is the section you’re all probably wondering about the most. I can tell you right away that it’s going to take a lot of time and effort in order to start to see a significant amount of money generated from my articles. Although I’ve had 1,514 views, views don’t mean anything if people are not clicking on the Google Ads within the article, which is where most of your income will come from.
To get more clicks, it’s better to write about niche topics, which is something I just started to do. Also, it’s better to come up with a keyword friendly title, rather than something creative and spunky that anyone using Google will never search for.
So how much money have I made after 4 days? A total of $1.11. Not bad considering I just started, I think. I was reading about how for some people it took months to break the $1.00 mark, so I feel pretty good being able surpass that amount already.
Here is a break down of the articles that have made money for me so far:
I was looking for any patterns, but I think it’s still too early to determine anything useful. That being said, about 75% of my “Internet” category articles have made money for me so far, so I might try to expand on that next.
My goal for November is to actually pass the $10.00 mark, which is the minumim amount of earnings required in order to receive a payment from eHow.
My Final Thoughts
Although it may seem like it’s way too much effort for the reward right now, I know that my earnings can only go up with time. Patience and perseverance are two qualities that I know successful eHow contributors have, and I think I also possess those traits.
Overall, I’m really happy with eHow, and I will continue to work on my eHow experiment, along with my other projects at the same time. Where else can I write about 20 different topics without having to start 20 separate blogs?
Here is a list of the latest articles I’ve written that could be of some use to you. Enjoy, and feel free to leave a rating that you think I deserve.
- How to Easily Get Banned from Google Forever
- How to Shorten the Length of Your UCL and Make it Twitter Friendly with TinyURL
- How to Keep your 9 to 5 Job, Make Money on the Side and Get Promoted at the Same Time
- How to Record Exactly how People Use your Website or Blog with Clicktale
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{ 12 comments (Click Here to Leave a Comment Below) }
Great work, Pat. You are really on a roll. I am just a little over four months into my journey at eHow and I can tell you that time is really important. It seems to take a couple of months for my articles to begin to “settle in” with Google. And I agree with you that it would be helpful to know where our traffic comes from but I feel fairly confident that the vast majority of it comes from search engines. That’s the beauty of eHow, in my opinion.
I’ll be following your experiences closely so I love the frequent updates!
Keep it up! You’ll be surprised at how quickly the earnings will roll in…and you’ve got some great titles!
Pat,
I really appreciate that we can follow your progress with eHow. I checked it out more last week after your first post about it and it definitely seems intriguing. Question for you: I realize you can’t use HTML or link to your website *within* your actual how-to article, but can you list your blog as one of those ‘further resources’ if for example, you are writing a condensed version for eHow of a larger article you wrote on your own blog? I was thinking that perhaps it might be a good way to get going on eHow…write summaries of your own how-to blog posts to not only drive traffic to your blog, but also save time (you only have to condense your article, not write a completely new one). Can this be done? Hopefully I am making sense. In any case, congrats with your progress so far.
Sarah H.´s last blog post..Houseplant Hacks – Four questions to ask yourself before buying a houseplant
Hi Sarah,
Not Pat here but, yes, what you’re proposing can definitely be done. It’s a great reason to write for eHow.
Good luck!
Julie
Write for eHow´s last blog post..eHow Writer Earnings Growth
Not to brag, but I got $3.15 in the first 5 days of signing up for ehow, and I hit the magical $10 mark in three weeks! This is the most passive way to make money I have I tried. It really helps to write timely articles.
Hey,
I have been really curious about eHow, and even signed up as a member. However, I quickly lost steam because I found out only U.S citizens can make money off the site, and I am Canadian. So, I tried this brand new site http://www.factoidz.com. It’s very similar to eHow but has only been around for about a month. That’s what worries me about it; the newness. At least eHow is established. However, I wrote the requisite 3 articles when I first began on the site, and then let them simmer. I checked my adsense earnings after a week, and they were already at just over 4 dollars at the end of the week. Now I’ve written about 20 articles, and I’m at 15 dollars, in about 3 weeks.
Anyways, it’s really interesting to hear about your eHow experience. I’m disappointed I couldn’t check it out myself! Good luck, I’m going to subscribe to your blog in a reader.
Erin Maher´s last blog post..Effective and Efficient Posting: Make Your Readers Do the Work
Hi. I read a few of your other posts and wanted to know if you would be interested in exchanging blogroll links?
VRy interesting to read it
I wrote an article and it’s been rated and commented on but it’s 3 days later and it still says i have 0 article views. Any idea why this is?
Thanks,
Jeff
@Jeffreyweee, Sometimes eHow lags as far as article views and even with earnings too. Don’t worry about it, they usually do a good job of catching up.
@Pat, Thanks a lot for the quick reply. I’ll be sure to keep at it! Your tips have been very helpful.
Great post. Warm welcome and a smile can make a huge difference in someone’s stressful day.