A Tale of Three eHow Ebooks: Which One Is Right for You?

NOTE TO READERS: A fourth ebook review has been added at the bottom of this post.

In the sidebar of this blog you will find links to three ebooks about writing and making money with eHow. You will also find talk of these books on the eHow community forums, where all three authors are active.

So you may be wondering which of these ebooks is right for you?

First let me say that the reason I have all three books and link to them from my blog is because I have had the opportunity to meet all three authors and found them to be sincere people who are committed to making the most of eHow. I can also vouch for the fact that all three have earned significant income from their eHow articles.

I do realize, however, that it’s not possible for everyone to invest in all three ebooks. With that in mind I thought it might be helpful to write a compare and contrast ebook review so that readers might know which of these books would be the best fit for them.

How to eHow: The Ultimate Guide to Writing on eHow by Janet Ford

Length: 82 pages

Price:$27 $15

Summary: The titles promises an “ultimate” guide to writing on eHow and you can see from the number of pages that this book definitely delivers. With comprehensive sections on creating a profile, navigating eHow, and using the forums, etc. this is the ideal guide for beginners.

More experienced writers will be interested in the sections on brainstorming ideas and earning affiliate commissions with eHow articles.

What makes it stand out: Easily the most valuable part of this ebook is the section on article promotion. Twenty different methods of promotion are covered.

Moneyback Guarantee? Yes, within 60 days, no questions asked.

How to Earn Passive Income at eHow.com: Residual Income for Web Content Writers by WriterGig

Length: 34 pages

Price: $25

Summary: This ebook approaches eHow from a passive income potential perspective. While basics are touched on, this focus of this book is maximizing income. The author shares how eHow differs from traditional freelance writing and shares her passion for creating residual income

What makes it stand out: The section on eHow Income Potential paints a picture of what is possible with eHow. Information on specific writers’ earnings are included.

Moneyback Guarantee? Yes, after trying method for 30 days.

Need Extra Cash? Write Articles That Pay by Anthony Delgado

Length: 25 pages

Price: $19.99

Summary: This book is probably the least eHow-specific. Rather, it’s a primer on SEO (search engine optimization) which you can use to choose profitable eHow topics. If you’re an experienced eHow writer, you won’t have to wade through sections on choosing an avatar, etc. You’ll get right to the meat of choosing profitable keywords and using them in your articles.

What makes it stand out: Anthony includes a section on Finding the Balance Between Traffic and Revenue that takes the basic SEO information most experts offer and takes it a step further. The sections on titles and writing an article also worth a read.

Moneyback Guarantee? Yes, with conditions.

Writing Online: Making Money and Residual Income with Online Content by Annalise Kaylor

Length: 27 pages

Price: $25 (currently $15 with the discount code NEWYEAR)

Summary: Annalise is a web editor, SEO specialist, and freelance writer so she approaches this book with a wide array of experience. The book is geared toward those who want to make money writing for established sites (like eHow) that pay (or revenue share) for content. She also focuses on increasing earnings by maximizing content and affiliate marketing, etc .

What makes it stand out: The section on 'Websites That Pay You to Write for Them' is definitely unique to this book. There are also some techniques in the SEO and keyword sections that I hadn't seen before.

Moneyback guarantee? Yes, if your earnings don't increase in 30 days.

Another eHow Writer to Watch

In October I attended an eHow writer's conference at the Demand Studios home office in Santa Monica, California. There were 17 writers in attendance and one of them was Anthony Delgado.

Anthony is a husband and father of two small children who has made the move to earning all his income online. One of the ways he's doing that is by adding eHow articles at an amazing rate.

Recently he crossed over the 300 article mark and is now headed full-steam to 400. Besides being a prolific writer, he's also a pretty cool guy.

Anthony has also written an eBook called Need Extra Cash? Write Articles That Pay. Anthony's book is a wealth of information on writing for search engines and would be of benefit to both eHow writers and writers for other websites and blogs as well.

If you'd like to get an idea of what is possible with eHow as far as earnings, you'll want to watch Anthony's progress. It's going to be exciting!

Work Smarter, Not Harder, on eHow

The best way to generate eHow earnings is to write, write, write. There's nothing more sure-fire than adding articles to increase the money you make monthly with eHow.

But it also pays to work smart, and not just hard, when writing for eHow.

Here are some things to consider before you start tapping away at your keyboards:

Write what works

By that I mean take a look at your article library and see what your top earners are. Sign into eHow and pull up your list of articles. Now click on the earnings heading twice to order your articles from highest earners to lowest.

Look at your highest earners. Do they have anything in common? Are many of them in the same category? Consider writing in that category again. Are any about the same topic? Definitely plan to write more on that topic.

Sometimes writers can re-create their success this way, and sometimes not, but it's certainly worth a try. And if you've written on the topic before, chances are it will be easier to write on it again.

Promote your best earners

There was a discussion on the eHow forums a while back about whether it was better to promote or produce. In other words, if you want to make more money and have a limited amount of time, should you produce more articles or promote the ones you have?

My approach to that is to use Pareto's Principle, or the 80/20 rule. When applied to eHow, Pareto's Principle would hold that 80% of my earnings will come from 20% of my articles.

Keeping this in mind, any promoting I do is of my top articles, which have already proven productive. I don't spend a lot of time trying to prop up the low earners.

Link to your own articles

When writing an eHow article there is a section where you can place related articles from eHow. I almost always search for and put my own articles there.

Ideally I'll have articles that are closely related to the one I'm writing. That's not hard to do since I'm usually writing in one of just a few major categories. But even if I have to stretch a little I'll still try and put my own articles in this section. It increase the odds that when a reader clicks away from my article that they're clicking on something that will make me money.

Add Affiliate Links

One of the greatest advantages of eHow is that you can put affiliate links in the Resources section of articles. Even if you did nothing more than join Amazon Affiliates, there will almost always be a book or product that you can link to that is related to your article.

If you're not active in affiliate marketing, you can use this section to link to your other sites or blogs. Again, in order to create value for the reader, the links should be related to the article you're writing. But as long as that's the case there's no reason why you can't include these links and increase the odds that you benefit when the reader decides to click away from your article.

Re-Write for Other Sites

As I've mentioned before, at eHow you own the rights to the content you create. This means you can make your writing do double duty on other sites where you own the content.

I recommend doing some simple re-writing so you won't be placing duplicate content on different sites, but that's fairly easy to do and, again, it's writing smarter not harder.

What things do you do to make sure you're working smart and making the most of your eHow writing time?

eHow Article Template vs. Word

I’ll admit it. I love writing my eHow articles directly into the eHow template. I know I should write them in Word and transfer them over, but it’s so much easier to just open up the template and start writing away.

Even so, I’ve committing to change that practice. I’m even going back to the 140+ articles I’ve written to date and copying and saving them as Word documents. Ten a day, every day, until it’s done.

Why go to all that work?

Well, the obvious reason to create eHow articles in Word is so that if the system goes all buggy while you’re typing you won’t lose all your work. That doesn’t happen often, but it happens often enough and it’s incredibly frustrating when it does.

But there is another reason – a more exciting one – to create your articles in Word or another word processing software. It all has to do with the fact that at eHow, you own your content. You’re not selling your content to eHow, you’re sharing it with them for a piece of the revenue pie.

Why does that matter?

Well, since you own the content you can place your eHow articles other places on the web and reap additional earnings from them. Whether it’s another revenue sharing site like Bukisa or Squidoo, or a site or blog that you’ve created yourself, owning the content means you can make those articles do double (or triple) duty.

Now before you go all crazy with the copy and paste, you should know that it’s best not to place your articles elsewhere word for word. The word is that Google doesn’t like duplicate content and you’re not as likely to rank as well if you’re placing the exact same content somewhere else. But with your articles in Word, it’s easy enough to re-write paragraphs and make some word substitutions so as not to have duplicate content.

That requires a little bit of work but it’s certainly easier than coming up with a new article idea and creating an article from scratch.

And even if you’re not interested in creating content somewhere else, having all your articles in Word helps you hedge your bets a bit regarding creating content for a site you don’t control (eHow). So if eHow were ever to go *poof* (as unlikely as that might be) you could take your content and place it somewhere else on the web.

And for those of us who worry about putting our writing up on someone else’s site, that should help us sleep a little better at night.

November eHow Earnings Update

I was excited to finally break the $100 ceiling on eHow this month. My eHow income increased almost 33% to $101.26.

I added 15 ehow articles for a total of 142.

My total earned at eHow to date is $320.62.

It's been a rocky week at eHow with all the site changes coming right before the Thanksgiving holiday. It seems to be settling down, however, and the bugs are getting ironed out.

eBook Review: How to Write for eHow by Janet Ford

Janet Ford is a legend on eHow. At the recent eHow summit I attended she received the award for most friends on eHow. In my opinion, that is due to one thing: her willingness to share with others what she has learned. That quality is truly evident in her new ebook, How to Write for eHow: The Ultimate Guide to Writing on eHow.

But Janet is not just a friendly writer. She's a website designer with SEO experience and she knows her stuff. She was among the first to see the revenue-generating potential of eHow and she's created enough income with eHow that her husband has quit asking her to get a "real job."

First the nitty gritty. How to Write for eHow is 82 pages long and it covers everything from creating a profile to promoting articles. Each section includes not only the basics, but Janet's tips for success in that area.

Janet has included writing tips, information on keywords, and a great section on the importance of eHow friends, which is of course her specialty.

Janet attributes much of her success at eHow to the social promotion of her articles. She uses sites like Digg and Stumbleupon with great skill and she shares her approach in the book. In fact, her section on Promoting Your Article includes information on the twenty different social networking sites that she has found the most effective.

My favorite section of How to Write for eHow is Earning with eHow, where Janet touches on the kinds of earnings she's seeing and the amount of time she puts in. She also explains how to move beyond the money earned from eHow directly and to begin earning with affiliate programs and your own site.

In short, I can highly recommend Janet Ford's book. It is well worth the $27 price. Anyone who reads it and follows the advice in it will earn back that amount and much more.

Big Site Changes Underway at eHow

Yesterday eHow began rolling out some new and exciting changes to the site. Perhaps one of this biggest changes is the addition of eHow Groups, which will allow more social networking within the site.

The site is a little (understandably) buggy right now while the changes are being implemented but that situation seems to be improving rapidly.

A great way to keep up with all that is going on at eHow is with the new eHow Blog. The blog even includes a video which will give you a peek at the eHow offices.

eHow vs. Your Own Site

Pat at Smart Passive Income has a pretty good conversation going on his blog. You may remember that Pat set an eHow goal to write 5 articles/day for a year in order to generate a large passive income stream.

It seems that a commenter on Pat's blog told him he thought he could make more money by posting those articles on his own site, rather than a revenue sharing site like eHow. That got Pat thinking and now he's asking for input.

So why would someone want to put content on a revenue sharing site rather than creating their own and keeping 100% of the advertising revenue?

In my mind, and the mind of many of those who commented, there are two great reasons.

First, a site like eHow allows you to write about anything and everything, without focusing on a niche.

If you look at the compilation of articles by the average eHow author, you'll see a wide variety of topics. That's one of the things that most eHow authors enjoy. Do you know how to change the oil in your car? Write an eHow about it. Got a good banana bread recipe? Write an eHow about it. Know how to get out of jury duty? You get the idea.

Those articles would not make for a very compelling blog. At least not as far as Google and other advertisers are concerned. But they can represent a nice little residual revenue stream at eHow.

Another great reason to write for eHow is that the site ranks so well in major search engines.

It can take a lot of study, a lot of effort, and frankly, luck, to get a blog or site of your own to rank well. Not to mention time. I think most would agree that developing your own site is much more time consuming than cranking out how-to articles in the eHow template.

With eHow you need only focus on creating the content and let eHow do the rest. While it's true that a little bit of study regarding keywords and search engine optimization will help with your eHow success, it's not mandatory the way it is in getting a site to rank well.

There are other reasons that eHow is a great resource for some:

• No web hosting to secure
• No domains to purchase
• No out of pocket expenses
  
• No need to know HTML
• You have Demand Studios and Richard Rosenblatt behind you.

Sounds great, huh?

So why would anyone want to set up their own blog or site instead of writing for a revenue sharing site like eHow?

First, there's the issue of control.

The revenue stream you generate from eHow is completely dependant on eHow sticking around, staying profitable, and continuing to share revenue with writers. With your own site, those things are within your control.

Secondly there is profitability.

eHow is a revenue sharing site. With your own site the revenue you earn is 100% yours.

But if you, like Pat, are trying to decide which way to go, my message to you is that you don't have to do one or the other. In fact, a site like eHow can work very well in conjunction with your own site(s). They can create links for each other and send traffic back and forth.

eHow articles that fit with the topic of your blog or site can be highlighted there and those that don't can stand alone on eHow.

I'll be eager to hear what Pat decides and, either way, watching his experiment unfold.

eHow Writer Featured on Local News

eHow writer Desula was featured on her local news station about ways to earn money from home. Way to go Desula!

For the time being you can view it here:

eHow Author Work from Home Video

The video in on the right hand side of the page.

Here's an eHow Writer to Watch

Pay Flynn at Smart Passive Income has set out to write five eHow articles a day for a year. His goal is to see how much passive income he can make by doing that.

He has committed to update his earnings once a month, although for now he is updating more frequently.

This will be a fun experiment to watch!

Bukisa: Another Place to Earn Money Online

Because of my great experience with eHow, I was eager to try another site that pays users go generate content: Bukisa.

Bukisa pays based on the number of unique views an article, video, or image generates. It also pays users for referring others who generate content as well.

Because Bukisa is so new, I am eager to jump in and see what kind of income I can generate. If you're interested, I hope you'll join me at Bukisa.

What If You Don't Want to Make Money with eHow?

Does is seem like a silly question? Well, it was asked on the eHow Community Chatter forum tonight.

The writer just wants to write some articles without all the "red tape" of Paypal and taxes.

Leaving aside for a moment just how much "red tape" is involved, the answer is yes, you can write for eHow without getting paid. You can sign up for eHow without signing up for the Writer Compensation Program.

You have to be an eHow member to be part of the Writer Compensation Program. You don't, however, have to be part of the WCP just because you are an eHow member.

Why would someone want to do write for eHow without being paid?

Well, some people just enjoying sharing what they know. Others might want to drive traffic to their website or blog. Still others might enjoy the community aspect of eHow. In all of these cases, money might not be the main priority.

So how much "red tape" is involved in being paid by eHow? According to the FAQ on the website, if you earn more than $10 in a year, a 1099 will be sent to the IRS at year's end. A copy will be sent to you.

It's not really a lot of red tape, but depending on your tax situation, you, like the person on the Community Chatter forum, may be wondering if it's possible to write and not be paid. And the answer is definitely 'yes'.

Can You Really Make Money with eHow?

I've seen this question posted all over the internet and had many ask me the same thing. The answer, in a word, is yes.

What am I basing that answer on?

First, my own experiences. I've seen my eHow income grow as follows:

• June $1.49
• July $20.02
• Aug $58.02
• Sept $62.09 (including a $2 referral bonus)
• Oct $76.18

Secondly, last month I was privileged to be invited to an eHow user gathering in Santa Monica with sixteen of my fellow eHow writers. eHow shared with us that some writers were just beginning to break the $1000/month level (remember the eHow Writer Compensation Program is fairly new). At least two of the writers in the $1000+ club were in attendance at that conference. I was able to speak with them directly and pick their brains for what they were doing. (Incidentally, those two writers have written the eHow eBooks I recommend on this blog.)

It's true that the algorithm that eHow uses to figure writer compensation is a mystery. It's proprietary information, and therefore the exact forumla is not available to us. I can tell you, however, that the following actions will help you maximize your eHow earnings:

1. Have at least a basic understanding of search engine optimization and keywords. You don't need to be an expert, but you do need a general idea of how it works.
2. Some promotion of your articles is helpful.
3. Write, write, and write some more. This is how you will learn what works and what doesn't.
4. Give it time. The search engines usually need a little time to pick up on your articles.

eHow is not a get quick rich site, but it is also not a scam. It's a legitimate site where you can make money by writing and the more you educate yourself and the more time you give it, the more money you'll make.

Who is Behind eHow?

eHow is a Demand Media site. Richard Rosenblatt is Demand Media's co-founder, Chairman and CEO.

Never heard of Richard Rosenblatt? Have you heard of MySpace? Read on to learn more about who is behind eHow.

eHow Earnings Update

Recently I attended an eHow User Group gathering in California. The gathering was organized by eHow and part of the purpose was to get feedback from those who write on eHow.

There were seventeen writers in attendance and time and again I heard this story: "I wrote a few articles for eHow and then forgot about them. Later I checked back and found they had made money and I got excited."

That is my story as well. I wrote two articles for eHow, How to Make Homemade Pancake Mix and How to Figure Your Car's Gas Mileage, and promptly forgot about them. I checked back a month or so later and saw that together they had earned $1.49. I have never been so excited about $1.49 in my life!

Obviously I wasn't excited about the amount of money, but about the potential I saw in eHow. It took me just a few minutes to write those articles because it was knowledge I already possessed. I just needed to put it in the form of a few steps.

And if those two bits of knowledge could earn me $1.49 in a month...what would they earn me over their lifetime at eHow? And what if I could add other bits of knowledge to them?

That was five months ago and, to date, those two articles have earned $10.11. Since then I've added 125 other articles to eHow. Some have earned great, some just so/so, and some not at all. Many are new enough that the jury is still out.

Here's a screenshot of my earnings to date (click for a bigger view):

Meanwhile I'm learning about what makes a good eHow article and how I can promote articles to boost their earning power. And...it's all fun!

Residual Income and eHow

I've never liked the term 'passive income'.

To me, passive income implies something for nothing and very few (if any) income streams, in my opinion, are truly passive. All require a certain amount of work and effort to set up and usually to maintain as well.

However, I love the term 'residual income'.

Residual income is the idea that you perform the work once and it continues to pay you long after the fact. Think of the sitcom actor who earns income each time his or her show is shown in syndication. Or the insurance agent who continues to earn commissions each time a policy is renewed.

Residual income is the beauty of eHow.

The internet is full of places that will pay you a few bucks for some writing. But at eHow you can continue to earn income on an article long after it is written and published. As long as your article continues to draw traffic and ad revenue, you'll be paid.

I know of one writer on eHow who has developed a healthy income stream and was relieved that she had that to rely on after a recent surgery. That's the power of residual income.

Welcome to Write for eHow

I've been actively online for almost fifteen years now. Mostly I surf sites and perform research. I've also participated in my share of community forums.

In 2006 I discovered blogging and became immediately obsessed with this new way of expressing myself and connecting with others.

And less than five months ago I discovered eHow.

eHow is a site that is a perfect match for the way I like to write. I like researching and information-gathering. I like putting down what I know on paper (or on the screen) in a logical, sequential way. I like making lists and cataloging things.

I also like making money. And eHow allows me to do that too by sharing in the ad revenue that my articles bring in.

I know whenever I am embarking on a new endeavor, I seek out others who have done the same thing. With that in mind, I am starting this blog as a journal of my experiences writing for eHow, as well as a catalog of eHow tips and tricks I learn along the way.

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