eHow Announcement: Writers will be moved to Demand Studios to Publish New Content

eHow is one of the top “How to” sites on the internet, having an Alexa ranking of 151 worldwide and 42 in the USA as of February 2010.  eHow is made up of staff writers and experts as well as a larger group of writers that just sign up to post content and make a few $$$ from Google ad clicks.  eHow gave these “writers at large” broad guidelines for publishing without any initial checks and balances in place.  For the passed year, I have been one of those writers.  I tried to follow the broad guidelines only finding myself confused about how to make some $$$.  I was pestered to read, recommend, and rate (RRR’s) other writer’s articles in exchange for (RRR’s) on my articles thinking that it would boost personal income from those articles.  It wasn’t until about month 2 that I found out that was not the way of it. 

eHow began to notice that article quality was severely lacking.  Writers were clearly writing for the ads that produced the most income.  Some writers were writing 10 articles a day.  Without clear guidelines, checks and balances for quality content, and clear communication with management the site became loaded with fluff and crap.  There are several GOOD and EXCELLENT writers on eHow that deserve the income they are receiving but there are also those that don’t know simple grammar rules or how to read and comprehend the guidelines provided by eHow.  Well eHow began doing article sweeps to “expel” that crap but couldn’t keep up with the new ones being written.  Writers were not happy, I even lost a few of my first articles.  About a few months ago the sweeps stop and an article review process was put into place before being published. 

And then today, I received a letter that started like this:

“Hi ---,

Today, we are announcing that Demand Studios is now the exclusive platform for writing new articles for eHow.com.”

I think this is AWESOME.  Demand Studies is another company owned by the parent company of eHow.  The big difference is stated in the letter “Demand Studios has a rigorous writer admission process to ensure quality.”  eHow writers are being preapproved before being able to log into Demand Studios to publish new work on eHow.  So the writers on eHow who are producing crap will not be allowed to publish anymore, article sweeps have already begun to purge unacceptable articles before new ones are written, and once the smoke clears and things settle down eHow will be AWESOME again.

I feel bad for those who are struggling with this change.  But if you are a good writer and produce quality articles, then just ride the storm out.  I think in the end we will be making more money because the quality of the website will drive more views and better ads to it.

And that’s Just About It.