Niche Blog vs. eHOW: A New Game Plan

With all of the people commenting and watching my every move on eHow, you’d think I was possibly running for president or something! Anywho, I just wanted to say thanks for all of your responses to my “I Need Your Help” post. I don’t think I’ve ever had that many comments come through on a single post in such a short period of time.

I’m glad to see that I’ve started a kind of debate over the benefits of writing on eHow vs. writing for yourself on your own blog. I’m glad this is happening because I’m hoping I will be able to answer people’s questions as to which one is better for them.

On one hand, you can write for yourself and have total control of your content and your methods of generating earnings, as mentioned in this blog post by Online Dividends. On the other hand, you can use eHow’s high ranking Google Search capabilities to easily write articles and simply “set it and forget it.” You can also use a combination of both methods that compliment each other, as mentioned in this blog post by Write for eHow.

It’s my believe that there is no one absolute right way to go. People are making great money writing on eHow, and other’s are making great money on their own niche blogs – that’s a fact. It’s my job here to dissect each one and help you determine which would be best for YOU.

I’ve tweaked my plan a little (ok, maybe a lot) hoping that this way you get to see the debate from all angles.

The Plan

I will continue writing 5 articles a day for the rest of November. In total, I should have 150 articles by December 1st. I will then “set it and forget it,” and let the articles “do their thing” on eHow and see what happens. I think 150 is a decent number of articles to have to create tracking data from.

During the months of December and January, I will begin a niche blog. I’ve had a topic in my head for a while, but I will use the Smart Passive Income Blog to go through and document the entire process right from the beginning, from choosing an idea, researching a niche and eventually building the blog. I may even explore podcasting on my niche site, but the details are yet to be determined. Again, you will see my thought process all the way through.

I will also explore cross-promotion between writing on eHow and writing on a blog. I will do this in two phases:

• Phase 1: As I’m building my niche site and sharing my thought process and experiences here with you, I will create “how-to” articles on eHow, when possible, to reiterate what I’ll be saying here. I will actually be able to track the number of visitors, if any, who are coming to my blog posts from eHow. I will also post links to my eHow articles from this blog, and track those clicks as well. Of course, I’ll report my findings to you.
• Phase 2: When my niche site is up and running, I’ll do the same thing as in Phase 1, except with the niche blog instead.

As you can see, my eHow article count will continue to grow, I will have a niche blog, and I will be able to cross-promote between the two. I will definitely report any interesting findings, as well as continue my monthly reports on what I’ve learned and what I could improve on.

Again, this is all for you as much as it is for me, so I’m hoping we’ll all learn from it and from each other too.

So What Do You Think?

Before you answer that, understand that I’ve already made up my mind and this will be my plan of action. I’ve already been swayed once before from a previous experiment and it’s my believe that this experiment is a better for everyone because it explores more options and could result in more useful findings.

Looking back, I was a little extreme by planning to write 1,825 articles, would you agree? I’ll keep the same energy, but just spread it around a little. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks everyone for your opinion and your support.

Posted on : November 17th, 2008

Related posts:

1. New eHow Page on The Smart Passive Income Blog
2. Niche Site Duel 002 – Finding a Profitable Niche: My Process Revealed
3. My Third Month of eHow Unwrapped
4. Niche Site Duel 003 – How to Setup a Niche Site: Before You Add Content
5. A Step By Step Plan To Rank Higher in the Search Engines

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