Year-End eHow Earnings Review

A user named Xrayness at eHow started a thread in the forums where they shared their earnings for 2008 ($500) compared to 2009 ($3000). How inspiring!

My 2009 earnings came in at $1981 compared to $321 in 2008, which admittedly was a partial year.

Here's to even higher earnings in 2010! Happy New Year!

November eHow Earnings: Still $200+

My November earnings at eHow were just a tiny bit lower than October but still over the $200 threshold that I first reached last month so I am happy. My actual earnings for November were $203.33, bringing my eHow earnings to date to $2302.60.

I wrote five eHow articles in November and all but one were in the last two days of the month. That means that all but 34 cents of my November earnings were completely passive income, which is the most exciting part to me.

Hope your November was good. I would love to hear about it!

October Earnings at eHow: A New Milestone

After several months of flirting with it, my eHow earnings finally broke $200 for the month of October. The actual total was $205.49, an increase of 3% over September, which was also a record breaking month.

I ended the month with 194 articles, seven of which were written in October. I earned $6.54 on those seven articles, which means $198.95 of my earnings were completely passive income. I also earned a little bit in Amazon commissions along the way, due to my affiliate links. All in all, eHow continues to be a great residual income tool.

How was your October at eHow and other places around the net?

Related info: How to Earn Passive Income at eHow.com by Writergig
Interview with Writergig

What eHow Earnings Can Do

There is currently a thread going on in the eHow forums about how people are spending their eHow earnings. As you may know, I'm using mine to help send my daughter to college. Other replies on the eHow forums included:

• Christmas savings accounts
• Baby expenses
• Supplementing or saving for retirement
• Vacation money

Anthony Delgado uses eHow money to pay his mortgage.

I love seeing how even little bits of extra money are making a difference is people's lives. How are you using your eHow earnings?

eHow Earnings for September

$2.41. That's what I lacked in making $200 in eHow earnings in September. But I'm not complaining. My earnings were $197.59, my highest earning month so far and an almost 15% increase over last month. This despite the fact that I lost articles in last month's eHow sweep.

So that's another $197.59 that will go into my daughter's college savings account. That account, which consists of eHow earnings along with some other online earnings earmarked for this purpose, now stands at over $2600.

By the way, if you haven't given your eHow earnings a job, I highly recommend earmarking them for some specific purpose. It really helps with motivation to know how those funds are going to be used. $200 isn't much money when it's swallowed up with all our other expenses for the month, but $200 added to a college fund takes on more meaning and tends to add up quickly.

I'd love to know, how was your September?

Write for eHow Recommends

In my quest to make money on eHow I have investigated lots of different ebooks, blogging systems, software. Below are my recommendations for those I have tried and liked and can heartily recommend.

eHow Ebook

How to Earn Passive Income at eHow.com: Residual Income for Web Content Writers by WriterGig
This was the very first eHow ebook I invested in and it was an excellent choice. Besides giving all the nuts and bolts regarding email, the author describes her experience of moving from a writer for flat payments to a residual income writer and paints an exciting picture of what is possible.

Other Revenue Sharing Content Sites

HubPages and Info Barrel both offer a wonderful user experience with wonderful features and great communication. Both are also in favor with Google so articles get indexed quickly (at least that is the case at the time I'm writing this). These sites can be used as a means of earning income or as a way of driving traffic to your eHow articles or other blogs/websites. Links from these sites are especially valuable since the are 'do-follow'*.

*You do need a certain author/hub score at HubPages for your links to be do-follow but it's not hard to attain.

System for Creating Your Own Money-Making Blogs

The Niche Blogger is a system that Amy Bass used to pay off thousands of dollars in debt. She's created twelve months of content to explain to others how to make money online with the same system.

Keyword Software

I'm loving using Micro Niche Finder to do my keyword research. Every piece of information I could possibly need is so readily available in one place. Here's my complete Micro Niche Finder review.

Bukisa Payout

This was a fun email to find in my inbox:

You are scheduled to receive a payment from Bukisa.Unfortunately you have no PayPal account set in your account. Please login and go to your account settings to add the information. Please let us know once this has been done so we may send you your earnings.

I haven't done much with Bukisa. In addition to eHow, I feel like HubPages and Info Barrel are better opportunities at the moment, but all of these sources of residual income do tend to add up!

Micro Niche Finder Review

If you've done any research on how to make money with eHow, you've no doubt come across the term 'search engine optimization'in or SEO. You'll see it in the forums and all the the eHow ebook authors talk about it in one form or another in their books .

The bottom line on SEO is that there are three primary things with which you need to concern yourself:

1. How many people are searching for your term?
2. How much are advertisers paying for that term (which is directly related to how much you make)?
3. How much competition will you have for that term?

Numbers one and two are fairly straightforward and can be easily determined with free Google keyword tools. Number three is not nearly as straightforward and usually involves a lot of extra online legwork to determine.

Lately I've been using a tool called Micro Niche Finder to help me with keyword research. It gives me all three pieces of information in one place and allows me to organize my keyword research easily so that I can come back to it when I'm ready to write.

So how does Micro Niche Finder (MNF) work? Very simply, you enter a term you're interested in researching and the MNF software provides you with a long list of relevant key words with a lot of information about each keyword including the three important pieces I listed at the beginning of this post: number of searches, cost of ads, and strength competition.

Probably the best way for you to see how it all works, however, is to view it in action. James, the creator, has created five free videos that will spell it all out for you. It's pretty amazing to watch. I encourage you to take a look.

Note: The videos are not eHow specific. Micro Niche Finder is about finding profitable keywords and niches that you can use anywhere online, not just at eHow. The videos will show you how to use MNF with Squidoo and Ezine Articles and it's a pretty easy leap to use those same techniques with eHow.

So it's okay that the videos are not eHow-specific. In fact, it's better than okay. If you have an interest at all in moving beyond eHow and/or learning more about SEO so you can use it on eHow, the videos are very educational. I guarantee they're worth watching.

Okay, beyond the basic SEO information, Micro Niche Finder has some really neat features that are so helpful to me when it comes to my writing, at both eHow and other places online. Here are some of my favorites:

• The ability to sort the results. Once I have my list of keywords, MNF allows me to sort by any of the column headings. Typically I'm interested in two: 1. sorting by search results so I can see the most searched for terms and 2. sorting by ad cost so I can see the terms that are likely to make me the most money per click.

• Strength of competition. This information is provided with one of three symbols: a red x (competition is high), a yellow exclamation point (moderate competition), or a green checkmark (competition is low). If you learned your stoplight lesson in kindergarten, you can interpret this part of the tool: stop (don't write), yellow (proceed with caution), or green (write away!).
  

• Commercial Intent. One of the columns on MNF had me confused for awhile. It was titled 'commerical intent' and allowed you to 'get OCI'. What this piece of information gives you is the number of people searching for that term who intend to make a purchase. Why is that important? People who intend to make a purchase are the most likely to click on an ad advertising something. They are also more likely to click on your affiliate link in the eHow resources section and actually buy something. The one thing my quest to learn how to make money online has taught me is that you want to target searches who are ready to make a purchase. This column helps with this.

• The ability to create and manage projects. Once you've done your research on MNF, you will probably want the ability to come back to it at a later date. The software allows you to create projects and label them anything you want. You could simply label a project 'eHow' and store all your keyword ideas for eHow articles. You could also create projects for different niches you intend to write about, either at eHow or other places. Then when you're ready to write and needing ideas, you can just re-visit that project list.

• Hot Trends and Brainstorm Features. Speaking of needing writing ideas, there are two buttons at the top of the MNF page called 'Hot Trends' and 'Brainstorm'. This is where you go when you want ideas on what to write about. Hot Trends shows a list of 100 popular search terms and Brainstorm shows a list of terms that are currently being searched.

• The ability to 'drill down'. What do I mean by drill down? Here's an example: I just clicked the 'brainstorm button' and one of the terms that came up was 'chef hat'. Let's say I'm interested in writing about chef hats and I want more terms I can use. If I click on 'chef hat' I'm given a list of 200 additional keywords that are related. Everything from 'white chef hat' to 'where can I buy a chef hat'. Even terms like 'grilling aprons' are on the list. (By the way, 'grilling aprons' gets 480 searches a month, has an ad cost of $1.10, has low strength of competition, and 83% of the people searching for 'grilling aprons' are looking to buy. Interesting.)
  

So those are a few of my favorite features at Micro Niche Finder. Honestly, I don't think I have even begun to understand all the ways to use this tool.

Here's something I really appreciate about James Jones, the creator of MNF. He not only provides the tool but he tells you how to use it. He is full of information about SEO and internet marketing in general. That is really valuable whether you just want to learn more about how eHow works or you want to diversify and move beyond eHow. I'm using the Micro Niche Finder information at eHow, Hubpages, Info Barrel, my own niche blogs.

But what if you're just an average eHow writer who wants the odds in your favor when writing articles? Let's say you want to write about making homemade soap. Wouldn't it be nice to know which keywords were being searched for related to that topic and which ones have low online competition so that someone might actually find your article? (Here's a hint: there aren't many.)

I've used MNF to analyze some of the eHow articles I've already written. Really, it's no mystery why some have made a lot of money and some not at all. While MNF won't guarantee you high paying articles (no SEO method can), I've found that it greatly stacks the odds in my favor.

As an eHow writer, using Micro Niche Finder can be as simple as:

1. Enter a term you know something about.
2. Find the keywords with 2000+ searches and green checkmarks.
3. Start writing an article or articles around those keywords.

So what does Micro Niche Finder cost? Currently it's at $97 and that includes all updates and future versions of the software. It's not cheap but I can tell you that, in my opinion, it's an incredible value for what you get. I was happy to spend some of my eHow earnings on it. It also comes with an 8 week, no questions asked refund guarantee so there's no risk for trying it.

What about support? I can tell you this: James offers support through a blog, a FAQ page and a support center where you can submit tickets. The blog and FAQ page are great but I can't tell you how well the support center works because I've never had to use it. I assume it's great too. :-)

Honestly, I waited a while to write this review because I wanted some time to try the software out. I could not be more pleased. Besides all the cool information and bells and whistles, it's just plain fun to work with. I wouldn't want to have to do SEO research or write online without it.

(Note: If you click on the links in this review and purchase MNF, I do make an affiliate commission. I'm committed, however, to only recommending products on this blog that I have used myself and fully believe in. In fact, you may have noticed that I recently took down a product review with affiliate links that I had up on thsi blog for a short while. I took it down because I decided that I wasn't 100% comfortable with the product so it was better not to have it appear here.)

So if you've made it with me this far (whew this was a long review!) I encourage you to go check out the Micro Niche finder videos. The first video shows you how MNF looks in action and the next five show you how you can use the results to make money at places like Ezine articles, Squidoo, and Yahoo Answers. And of course those techniques will work well to make money at eHow as well.

Have fun!

eHow Earnings: August Update

Well, despite the eHow sweeps, and the doldrums of August, I managed to have my second best month ever at eHow with earnings of $172.15. That brings my total eHow income to date to $1696.19.

Despite the glitches and the sweeps, eHow still remains the best source of residual income that I've been able to discover thus far. How was your August?

The eHow Sweep and Moving Beyond eHow

It's always a good idea to diversify the sources of your online income. That's especially true when writing for a site that you don't control.

This week eHow has completed a second 'sweep' of articles, deleting articles for a number of reasons, including not in how-to format, spam, or common sense. The spam reason is of particular interest to me as it seems what eHow considers spam is not how it is generally understood online. Essentially, any article that mentions a particular product, store, or website is a candidate for being removed as spam. That's a good thing to know going forward.

I lost a number of articles in this sweep. Many were written very early on in my eHow 'career'. I understood the reasons for their removal, although I didn't always agree. That's neither here nor there...it's eHow's sandbox so they make the rules.

This experience does reinforce, however, the need to diversify the sites on which I write. There are many sites that pay writers to share content with them like eHow does. So the question becomes, which sites besides eHow are the best to write on? I'll be focusing my efforts on two sites in particular: HubPages and Info Barrel.

I've done a little dabbling at both Hubpages and Info Barrel and I've also done my research. I like these two sites for the following reason:

• Both seem to be in favor with Google (at least for the moment) so that articles and hubs are indexed quickly. Sometimes in a matter of hours.
• With each site you can write in a variety of formats, not just in 'how-to' form. Although how-to articles can also be placed there.
• In the case of HubPages, building hubs is just plain fun. They are like mini websites that are fast and easy to build.
• Affiliate marketing is easier with both of these sites.
• Both sites offer 'do follow' links, meaning you can link to other articles, blogs, and sites that you want to promote and the links will help with search engine rankings. In fact, some people write at these sites only for the value of these links.

My experience with HubPages has been nothing but positive. The community there is great and the site seems really well run. I have less experience with Info Barrel but my experience there has been positive as well.

So how do you make money at HubPages and Info Barrel?

For both sites you will need your own Google Adsense account and you will be paid directly from Google. HubPages shares Adsense revenue in a 60% author/40% Hubpages split. Info Barrel shares in a 75% (author)/25% Info Barrel split. Both sites offer explanations on how to sign up for an Adsense account on their sites.

At HubPages, you can also earn money from Kontera, Amazon, and eBay. Amazon and eBay are great, easy ways to get your feet wet with affiliate marketing if you're not familiar with that method of monetizing your writing.

Finally, at both sites you can earn money by referring other writers. All of the HubPages and Info Barrel links in this post have my referral code in them so if you're so inclined, I would love to have you join me on those sites by clicking through one of my links.

Each of these sites has their own Terms of Service so make sure you understand their rules before you start writing. The good news is that the TOS are a little more spelled out at HubPages and Info Barrel than they are at eHow. At least in my opinion. I like to play by the rules so I really want to know what those rules are.

Finally, each site has its own culture and community. Spend some time there and get a feel for how things work.

I think it's important to invest yourself in a site for which you're writing. You tend to get out of it what you put in it. So while I feel it's important to be diversified, I think it's counterproductive to be hopping all over the internet placing things here and there. So even before the eHow sweep I was trying to determine which sites would be best for me to branch out to and I made the decision to add HubPages and Info Barrel to the mix.

And for the record, I'm not leaving eHow. I still think the site has great income potential and it provides a nice stream of residual income for me. And eliminating poor quality articles from the site is a good thing overall. I just hope they continue to refine and communicate their terms of service so that writers don't become demoralized.

And just two more quick tips:

1. Remember to save your work no matter where you write. That way you can make the best of things if a site you've chosen to write on makes changes as they inevitably will.
2. If you're inclined, plan to create some sites that you 'own'. The learning curve is a little steeper but the rewards are that much greater.

Last Chance (for now) to get Janet Ford's eHow Ebook

Janet's ebook will be pulled on Tuesday in preparation for a new version, probably sometime this fall. You can find more details here.

eHow Quick Tip: Add the Right Photos and Related Articles at the Time You Publish Your Article

Recently I wrote about adding your own related articles to your eHow articles in order to increase your views. Here's another tip in that regard.

It seems to be a bug of eHow that you can't change your related articles after the article is published. At least I haven't had any luck being able to do that. The same also seems to be true of changing photos on your article.

Since this is the case, take the extra time to choose the right photo(s) and related articles at the time you publish an eHow article. The right photos and related articles will go a long way toward making your article work for you.

Are eHow Earnings Late?

Are eHow earnings late this month? A quick check of my Paypal account tells me that eHow earnings usually arrive on the 5th or 6th of the month. Today is the 9th with no earnings yet. I'm not worried, however, for two reasons:

1. eHow has an excellent track record of paying contributors.
2. Last September my eHow earnings arrived on the 10th so it does seem to happen from time to time.

My guess is we'll see them sometime tomorrow.

eHow Earnings: July Update

July earnings = $165.74.  Back up after a little dip last month. This is primarily due to some new articles I added in July, several of which started earning right away. Otherwise earnings are a little flat. Still, eHow continues to be an awesome source of residual income! Total eHow earnings to date - $1524.04.

How was your July?

Related info: How to Earn Passive Income at eHow.com

eHow Ebook Author Interview: WriterGig

When I first began writing for eHow a little over a year ago, the first ebook I bought was Earn Passive Income on eHow.com by WriterGig. I'm glad I had it starting out because it showed me what was possible in with eHow. Because of that, I have always appreciated WriterGig's willingness to share her methods and experiences with other writers.

If you read the following interview with WriterGig I think you'll see what I mean. Her eHow earnings are amazing and her goal is to grow them even more. Congrats to Maria on all he success and my thanks to her for participating in the interview.

What led you to begin writing for eHow?

I was writing eHow articles as a freelance writer for a flat fee at about the same time the eHow Writers Compensation program began and I decided to experiment as to which was more lucrative -- the flat fee or the WCP. Very quickly, it became clear to me that I would do much better in the long run writing for the eHow WCP as a site user. One of my early articles began earning quickly and has garnered over $600 to date. This was my first real experience with residual income, and I was hooked.

How many articles have your written?

I have written close to 700 eHow articles; about 400 of these are in the WCP under WriterGig, the rest are not earning residuals.

Do you have a background as a writer?

Yes. My BA is in English Language and Literature and I worked as a writer and assistant editor for a newspaper and then trade publication before I became a work at home mom and freelance writer.

What can you tell us about your eHow earnings?

They could pay my mortgage, utilities, and groceries every month if needed. One of my best months showed a per-article-average of $7.25/ article. Neat fact: 30 of my articles have earned over $100 each; the top two are over $1,000 each now. I made $1,600 the month of my one-year eHow anniversary -- I think this really shows the power of eHow -- only 12 months in, you can make significant residual income. At the 2008 weHow user event, I received the "Highest Earner" eHow acheivement award from Rich, community manager.

What are your goals concerning eHow?

I plan to contribute articles to eHow as long as the WCP continues as it stands currently. While my niche sites and affiliate marketing efforts provide diversification and further earnings, I consider eHow a large part of my overall plan to make $50,000 a year in residual income through online articles.

What motivated you to write an ebook?

As one of the first active and prolific writers in the eHow WCP, I found myself constantly answering questions and providing tips to newer users. I finally kept a Word document with my tips to make it easier to respond to PM's, and the book grew from there.

Tell us a little about your ebook and what it covers.

I share my method for discovering lucrative niches, using keywords, and maximizing residual income through eHow articles. Everything I've learned and that has contributed to my eHow success is shared in the book, which is concise yet thorough. I've had incredible feedback form the book, including a user who went on to write a fast-earning $1,000 article and one whose article earned $200 in one day. Yeah, they used my tips to beat my personal records!

What else would you want us to know about eHow and your experiences there?

In addition to the income potential (I don't mean to over-emphasize that, but it is the main draw for many folks, including myself), eHow is a wonderful community of users form many diverse backgrounds who really have a lot to share, making the community a great place to hang out online. eHow is my favrite social networking site, if it can be considered that. Great place to learn, write and earn.

Related info: How to Earn Passive Income on eHow

How to Choose Related Articles for Your eHow Articles

When writing an article for eHow, one of the options you have is to choose up to five related eHow articles that will display along side your article. If you elect not to choose articles, or opt to choose less than five, eHow fills in the rest for you.

So why is it important that you choose your own related articles?

Consider this: when a reader is on your article page, eventually they will leave by clicking away. There are any number of ways they might do that, including clicking on your profile, clicking on a related article or video, clicking on an ad, etc. When a reader clicks away, you want to do everything you can to assure that they're clicking on something that benefits you. One way to do that is by including related articles that belong to you.

How to choose your related articles.

When selecting the five related articles, here are a couple of things to keep in mind.

1. Choose truly related articles. The reasons for this are two-fold: First, readers are more likely to click on an article that bears some relevance to what they are reading. And second, providing highly relevant articles creates a better user experience for eHow visitors and that benefits everyone.

2. Choose your highest earning articles. Pareto's principle, or the 80/20 rule, applies to eHow too. 80% of your earnings will come from 20% of your articles (or something close). Resist the urge to try and prop up low earners; choose the best-performing articles you can.

Here is how I quickly choose relevant, high-paying related articles when I'm writing.

1. Open up another tab in my internet browser and go to my eHow profile.
2. I select the Articles tab and then sort by highest to lowest earnings by clicking on 'Earnings' twice.
3. I start at the top of the list and quickly scan downward to select the five highest-earning articles that bear some relevance to the topic I'm writing about.

This process hardly takes any time at all. Like a lot of people, I write in niches so I often have a lot of relevant articles to choose from. If I'm writing on a new topic I will occasionally have just a couple of relevant articles and I'll let eHow choose the rest. Very rarely I find that I don't have any relevant articles to choose from so I'll skip the step. If later I write more on that topic I try to remember to go back and link my relevant articles together.

Quick tip: When searching for my related articles in the eHow template, I sometimes have trouble finding them. After some trial and error I have found that the best plan seems to be to start by typing in the complete title and then subtracting words (or using various combinations) until I find it. Every once in a while I have an article that I absolutely cannot find this way but it's rare.

Last Chance to Get Two eHow Ebooks for the Price of One

Next month Janet Ford, author of How to Write for eHow is pulling her popular ebook to make way for an updated version to be released this fall. While it is still available, the book has been reduced in price to $15.

The best part? Purchasers of this book are eligible to receive the updated version when it comes out for free. Janet advises that buyers will need to provide the email address they used to purchase the book, along with the clickbank receipt number as proof of purchase.

This is a great opportunity to get two ebooks for the price of one from one of eHow's most successful writers.

Related Information:

Interview with Janet Ford
Compare and Contrast Review of Four eHow Ebooks, including How to Write for eHow.

eHow Featured in Time Magazine

Time Magazine has discovered eHow. A recent issue includes a short piece about using eHow to make money. The article features eHow writer Maria O'Brien.

The article points out that eHow has paid its writers more than $1 million in the last two years. Those are some impressive eHow earnings!

eHow Ebook Author Interview: Cyn Vela

Cyn Vela is the latest in the eHow Ebook author interview series. Cyn reached the $1400/month threshold with just five months of writing and 286 articles under her belt! She has written a Writing for eHow ebook explaining her techniques.

What follows is her interview. Thanks to Cyn for participating in this series!

1. What led you to begin writing for eHow?

I am a blogger/webmaster. One of my blogs is dedicated to helping people (primarily moms) find ways of earning money from home. I heard about eHow as a potential money-maker, and put it on my list of companies to research and report on. Several months later, I registered for eHow to check it out. I only intended to stick around long enough to be able to tell my readers about the site and its earning potential. I was hooked after a couple of weeks. :)

2. How many articles have your written?

I’ve written two hundred eighty seven articles for eHow so far.

3. Do you have a background as a writer?

Yes and no. I’ve been writing stories and such since I was a child. I majored in English, but was not really formally trained as a writer, so to speak. I never took journalism or creative writing classes. I always wanted to be a writer “when I grew up,” though, and the internet has made it possible for me to do it successfully.

4. What can you tell us about your eHow earnings?

My eHow earnings both thrill and surprise me. I started writing for eHow on November 12, 2008. That month, I made just over $16. Last month I made more than enough to cover every one of my major bills. It’s insane and exciting.

5. What are your goals concerning eHow?

I aspire to continue to write quality articles and write to the best of my ability.

6. What motivated you to write an ebook?

I told a friend about the site, and encouraged her to register and start writing. She’s a newly-divorced mother, and I knew she could use extra money. I wrote her a crazy-long email, writing in detail each of the little “tricks” I use in order to tweak my articles into money-makers. She took all of the tips I gave her and ran with them. Her first month, she made over $100 using and applying the things I’d told her. I was happy for her, and amazed that my tips helped her earns so much so quickly. That email that I’d sent to her naturally evolved into the “Writing for eHow” ebook.

7. Tell us a little about your ebook and what it covers.

It’s an easy-to-understand book that covers simple-but-powerful tricks. It’s less than 30 pages, and covers things like understanding SEO, finding strong keywords, promoting your articles quickly & effortlessly, and so forth. It’s written in a really conversational but instructional tone. I have written ebooks before, and I like to write in a voice that my reader can relate to and understand without feeling as though I’m talking over their head or “dumbing it down” for them. I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about the tone of the “Writing for eHow” ebook, so I’m happy.

8. What else would you want us to know about eHow and your experiences there?

eHow is by far, hands down, the best site I’ve found that can help a person work at home. The earning potential is amazing, the work is simple and rewarding, and there is such a sense of family among the writers. I’ve researched and written about traditional jobs, telecommuting, data entry, and other jobs.... but eHow stands out as the best way to earn money online as far as I’m concerned. My daughter turns 17 on June 29. That means one year until she’s able to start writing for eHow. After witnessing my success on eHow and my enthusiasm about the site, she’s really looking forward to writing for eHow; it will help her earn spending money for college without the stress of holding a traditional job. :)

Other eHow Author Interviews:

Janet Ford
Annalise Kaylor
Anthony Delgado

eHow Earnings: June Earnings Update

My eHow earnings for the month were $148.03, which is down a bit from the two months prior. I added four articles in June, all of them in the last week of the month. To date none of them have started earning. So again, all of my eHow income this month was completely passive.

Another milestone: as I blogged about before, I did have my first eHow article reach $100 in earnings in June. In fact, that article now sits at $106.03 and it earns daily.

How was your June at eHow? Are you happy with your earnings?

Why have multiple accounts at eHow?

My friend, Kate, posted some excellent information on the eHow forums about why someone would want to have multiple eHow accounts. She graciously agreed to let me share it with all of you. The question posed was why would someone want to have multiple eHow accounts? Kate's answer:

I do it for several reasons.

1. If you have a particular expertise, you might find it reflects better on your credibility to keep 'How to Build a Computer' out of a library containing 'How to Make Super Duper Pancakes Like Grandma'.

2. Some of us have been targets for forum retribution... our articles have been given poor ratings or flagged for violations, we believe, as a result of forum conflicts. I don't use my other IDs to post in the forum and the articles for those IDs have never been attacked.

3. When applying for other writing jobs, I may want to use my eHow ID in a resume. Not all the articles I have written are suitable for all my clients.

4. A niche ID can be used to promote a niche blog.

The reasons vary from person to person, I am sure.

Excellent info! I only have one eHow account and I used my real name because of reason #3 in Kate's list above. Now, however, I am less interested in applying for other writing jobs and am more interested in working for myself. As I start to branch out with my online writing, I plan to create different online personas for different subjects I write about. I was first exposed to the idea in Potpiegirl's One Week Marketing.

My reasons are twofold:

1. It protects any keyword research I might do.

2. It is a kind of online branding. Once you begin to develop a lot of online content, it makes you a little less of an authority if someone clicks on your profile and sees articles written about everything from hot tubs to paying down debt to making the perfect chocolate cake.

At the moment, I'm a little more concerned with the branding aspect than the keyword aspect but I think they are both good arguments for creating multiple accounts where allowed.

Thanks again to Kate (Limowreck at eHow) for letting me share her list!

Passive Family Income and the Power of eHow Income

Passive Family Income illustrates how to use eHow to make over $400/hour. This is powerful!

eHow Earnings: My First $100+ Article

Today I had an article go over $100. The grand total, in fact, is $100.91. This article is a little over six months old. I'm really excited about this milestone and hope to have more articles follow suit soon!

eHow Ebooks on Sale

There was a question on the eHow forums about whether or not any of the eHow ebooks were on sale. Several authors responded to say that theirs were. Here's a summary:

How to Write for eHow: The Ultimate Guide to Writing on eHow by Janet Ford: Janet is working on a sequel to her popular ebook but there's no reason to wait for it. The current ebook is on sale for $15 and if you purchase it you will be able to get the new book for free!

Writing Online: Making Money and Residual Income with Online Content by Annalise Kaylor: Annalise is also working on an update for her book and you can grab it now for $12 (use the discount code SUMMER) and receive the update for free this fall.

Need Extra Cash? Write Articles That Pay! by Anthony Delgado: Anthony's book is currently being offered for $19.99, a $5 savings.

Can't decide? Read my eHow ebook reviews.

eHow FAQ

If you hang out on the eHow forums for any length of time, you'll begin to see the same questions asked over and over because, as new writers join eHow, they tend to have the same newbie questions. I've also found that a lot of people land on this blog by searching for the answers to some of these same questions.

Because of that, I've decided to do a short FAQ post to address some of those questions that we all had when we were new eHow writers. I need to say, however, that I am in no way an official representative of eHow. These are simply my observations after 175+ articles and over a year writing on the site.

Q. How often does eHow post earnings?

A. Usually it's once a day, mid to late morning (I'm in the central time zone). This is true even on weekends and holidays. However, occasionally the earnings will come in late, or not at all. Very occasionally they won't post for several days at a time. (This is usually when the site is undergoing upgrades.)

In the time I've been writing at eHow it has been my experience that the earnings will eventually post and, if one or more days have gone by, they will eventually catch up. Since eHow doesn't share the earnings formula with its writers, there's no way to know for sure that they've caught up, but the numbers seem to indicate that they do.

Q. I have x number of articles with x number of views, why haven't I made any money?

A. eHow doesn't pay by the view. There is an earnings forumla, the specifics of which are unknown to the writers, but revenue from the ads on your articles seems to be a major component.

Let me take this opportunity to warn you, however, not to click on your own ads and not to ask your friends or family to do so either. This could get your banned from eHow, since it is against Google Adsense policy.

Q. How many articles does it take to earn $500/month, (or $1000/month, or fill in the blank).

A. The answer to this is going to be different for everyone. The consensus on the forums seems to be that after you have a good base of articles (100 or more) and those articles have been on the site for a while (several months or so) you can expect to average about $1/month/article. That has certainly been true for me.

There are plenty of writers, however, who make much more per article and plenty who make quite a bit less. It depends a great deal on the kinds of topics you write about, whether your articles are unique to the site, etc.

One thing is a given, however: the more you write and the longer those articles are on the site, the more you will earn.

Q. Why can't I get my article to post, or my pictures to upload. Why did I lose my article when I tried to save? Why does my profile look funny? Why are the forums taking so long to load? Etc. Etc.

A. eHow is a glitchy site. It's been glitchy the entire time I've been there and I don't expect it to get better anytime soon.

If you want to know what's going on with a particular glitch or bug, the best place to post a question or look for other posts on your question is in the eHow Feedback and Suggestions Forum under the Community tab. I can't guarantee that you'll find satisfaction there, but Rich and Julie, the community managers, do occassionally post technical updates there.

Oh, and it's always best to write your articles in a word processing program and cut and paste into the eHow template. Besides insuring that you won't lose your work, there are other benefits as well.

Q. Is eHow a scam?

A. eHow is most definitely not a scam. It is owned by a reputable company, Demand Studios, and is one of the best paying sites on the web. As long as I've been a part of eHow they have paid reliably, each and every month.

eHow Ebook Author Interview: Janet Ford

Janet with Richard Rosenblatt, CEO of Demand Media, which owns eHow.

The eHow ebook author interview series continues with Janet Ford. Janet is the author of How to Write for eHow: The Ultimate Guide to Writing on eHow.

Anyone interested in making money with eHow would do well to listen to Janet, who expects to make $20,000 this year with over 400 articles! (Be sure not to miss her special offer at the end of the interview.)

1. What led you to begin writing for eHow?

I was looking for ways to promote myself as an expert in my field (dogs) after I published 'Guide to Ethical Dog Breeding'. I decided writing articles on my given topic was the way I wanted to go to acomplish just that. Ehow ranks quite high with Google so became the logical choice as a platform. I didn't anticipate making any sort of income from ehow when I started out. I figured a few cents here and there would be a nice pat on the back for my efforts but not my main priority.

2. How many articles have your written?

As of this writing, I have 466 published articles on ehow.

3. Do you have a background as a writer?

I did take some creative writing courses in college and wrote 'Guide to
Ethical Dog Breeding' and have worked the last 10 years on my memoir 'Love
You to Pieces', which is due to be handed over to my editor very soon.
Incidentally, I even met my editor on ehow!

4. What can you tell us about your eHow earnings?

My husband was laid off just before Christmas of 2008. He is currently
drawing up plans for working from home. Normally, you'd have to panic over the unemployment running out but ehow has afforded us this luxury.

5. What are your goals concerning eHow?

Financially, my long term goal is to make $30K a year off ehow earnings. I'm on track for making $20K or better this year so I do believe this goal is quite attainable.

6. What motivated you to write an ebook?

I found myself answering many questions about writing successful ehow articles by new members on a regular basis. Many of these questions were so similiar that I felt an ehow guide was in order. I wanted to inspire others to have the same success that I was enjoying. There is nothing special about me or my article topic choices. Anyone who has a good command of their
spelling and grammar can do this.

7. Tell us a little about your ebook and what it covers.

How to Write for eHow was fashioned after ehow's step-by-step style. I have assumed nothing when writing this guide, even filling out your profile for maximum benefit is included. Writing your article is captured in depth, not only filling out the publishing wizard but the explainations on why I suggest specific ways or styles. I've strived to ensure all the basic monetizing, SEO, keyword usage and writing were covered but also took the time to share tips and tricks I've learned during my 19 months of writing for ehow. You can literally sit down with my manual style ebook and go from opening up a new account to writing and promoting your first article and then just repeat it over and over for different articles. Those who have already begun writing for ehow have found a lot of the tips and tricks I share helpful as well.

8. What else would you want us to know about eHow and your experiences
there?

I'd like to see ehow members take the time to enjoy the social aspects of the website. eHow developers go out of their way to make ehow a social experience. This also aides in your getting noticed as a writer on the site and, therefor, increases your readership. Aside from that fact, the majority of ehow members are more than happy to help one another in our common quest
of becoming more successful ehow writers. Questions are always answered quickly on the forums by a variety of people. Those experienced with other work from home type websites can attest to the fact that an active forum can make or break the experience.

As far as my ebook is concerned, I have it sale priced due to having a sequel coming out very soon which will be more than double the size and a bit different format. Those who purchase this sale priced ebook will be eligible to get the new ebook FREE of charge when it comes out. It will be a limited time offering so they will need to keep their receipt and my url handy. I'll also be posting an announcement in the forums of ehow. Another reason to stay social! ;-)

eHow Earnings Update for May

The month has closed out and my eHow earnings for May were $166.12. A little dip from last month but still stronger than they had been in the few months prior. I added only two articles in May, which means my May earnings were again almost completely passive income.

Total eHow earnings to date: over $1200 (I keep a running total in the sidebar to the right).

How was your May? I'd love to hear about your experiences on eHow.

Stay tuned for the next installment in the eHow Ebook authors interviews, which is coming later this week.

eHow Ebook Author Interview: Annlise Kaylor

The second interview in the eHow Ebook Author series, is with Annalise Kaylor. Annalise has written about not only her eHow experiences, but her experience writing on many sites around the web, in Writing Online: Making Money and Residual Income with Online Content. Thanks so much to Annalise for participating in the interview!

1. What led you to begin writing for eHow?

To be honest, I sort of dismissed writing for eHow at first, because I had been writing for another site. But, a couple of colleagues at the other site convinced me that eHow was a great place to re-purpose content and earn some additional income. One thing that turned me off was the lack of site editing, but I am glad that they've started to incorporate that more in the site as of late. I think it will bring the quality of articles up significantly, and in turn will help people make more money. Once I got to eHow, I really enjoyed their easy step-by-step format, which is unique to their site. It makes writing online for money easy and fast.

2. How many articles have your written?

As far as eHow writers go, I have not even hit 30 articles. I admit that I have been slacking lately in that area. Part of that is because I also write for Demand Studios, the company that owns eHow, and I create a lot of content for them. However, my articles still earn money every month, despite the fact that I haven't written a new article in about three months. It is a testament to the power of residual income. Outside of eHow, however, I have close to nearly 700 articles on the web. At least!

3. Do you have a background as a writer?

I do. I started as an editor for a consulting firm years ago, and then decided to focus more on my writing. I love to do both. As an internet junkie, I focused on the strategies behind writing for the web early on, which has helped my success today. In fact, a lot of my freelance work now involves consulting with businesses or traditional newspaper reporters on how to make the switch to writing for the web. It's an art all its own, and I feel fortunate to have gotten my feet wet early. That said, I know many, many people who have never written anything before who are wildly successful with sites like eHow.

4. What can you tell us about your eHow earnings?

My eHow earnings pale in comparison to what some other writers, such as WriterGig, make. However, I am fairly certain that if I were to be more prolific on the site that would change. I think it is important to point out that eHow earnings continue to come in month after month, long after the work is done. I've taken entire months off writing online and still made enough to cover my mortgage, car payments, bills, etc. eHow earnings won't happen overnight, just as they wouldn't for any other site, but if you stay focused and motivated, you will be rewarded month after month with income.

5. What are your goals concerning eHow?

Other than being more prolific and getting back into creating more content on the site, I don't have any specific goals. It's motivating to see the monthly earnings start adding up, but that only happens when more content is produced. I would also like to see one of my articles as a featured article of the day.

6. What motivated you to write an ebook?

I am really passionate about writing and about putting my love of writing to work for me. I know many freelance writers who think writing online is a waste of time. But, while I am submitting book proposals or writing freelance jobs, I have online income earning for me. I wrote my eBook for a couple of reasons. The first was to make the concept of writing online easy to understand for the average person and to share what I know. The second was to answer a call for demand. A lot of my readers and online friends had been asking me how to start doing what I was doing. I found myself spending a lot of valuable writing time replying to emails from people who wanted to get started with online writing themselves. My eBook filled both those needs.

7. Tell us a little about your ebook and what it covers.

My eBook is designed for someone who is at the beginner or advanced-beginner level of writing online. While it has some new search techniques and ideas for people who have been writing a long time, my next book, due out in June will cover the advanced material for people who have already built up a nice library of content and want to take their online writing income to a new level. My book covers the basics of SEO, how to effectively use keywords, and the common mistakes online content writers make when they first start out. One thing I also share is an easy, three-step system to evaluate keywords so people can write smart and not hard. I also review sites that pay people to write and the pros and cons of each site. I also offer affiliate marketing basics and how to use it in online content writing.

8. What else would you want us to know about eHow and your experiences there?

I think eHow is a great place for writers to get their feet wet and earn a legitimate online income at the same time. The communities and groups can provide a lot of answers and support for people who are new, but they can also help seasoned writers, as well. I would advise writers to remember that eHow, like all sites, isn't going to make a writer rich overnight. It is a process and does require time to build up a bank of online content.

eHow Ebook Author Interview: Anthony Delgado

What follows in an interview with Anthony Delgado, author of Need Extra Cash? Write Articles That Pay. Anthony is a husband (his wife also writes for eHow), father of two, and is currently in school, studying to become a minister. Of particular interest to me was that eHow now provides 45% of Anthony's family's income, helping him to juggle all these roles.

Thanks to Anthony for participating in this interview.

1. What led you to begin writing for eHow?

I started writing for eHow in October of 2007. The month prior, my wife signed up and she was just having a lot of fun with it. I started writing just for fun. I wrote exclusively about whatever I was doing or whatever I thought was interesting. Needless to say, earnings were pretty meager. I didn’t start taking the writing seriously until August 2008 when I decided to put my SEO knowledge to the test and see what it would do for my earnings.

2. How many articles have you written?

Currently, I have 450 published articles.

3. Do you have a background as a writer?

No, not really. I have an aptitude for it, but never actually wrote for anything other than school. Since eHow, I have had several blogs, written for many other sites and now am an editor for the Marketing Department at Handmadenews.org.

I do have a background with the internet. I’ve been building web pages practically since the beginning of the internet. I also have some experience with networking. I think this knowledge is what makes me successful on eHow, not my ability to write.

4. What can you tell us about your eHow earnings?

At this moment, I am making about 45% of my family’s income off of my eHow earnings. This is a slight drop from a couple of months ago, but I have not written a whole lot in the last few months. Even still, the money keeps coming in consistently.

5. What are your goals concerning eHow?

I’m not planning on doing a whole lot with eHow for the time being. I discussed this with Rich about a week ago. Someone had told him that I was leaving the site; that’s far from the truth. I’m available for anyone to message me through eHow, just I always have been, to answer questions and help. I receive several messages a day from people who have questions or want me to analyze a specific article. It’s a joy for me to help. For time purposes though, I need to avoid browsing the groups and forums, so I have backed off of that. I am also focusing on other ventures, but do plan to return and write more on eHow in the future.

6. What motivated you to write an ebook?

Originally, I did not intend to sell the book or even publish it in book form. It was going to go up on a website for free with some Adsense code, so I could make money that way. It took me well over four months of testing, research and a lot of trial and error to get the information to where it needed to be. I wanted to make sure that anyone who used the info would be successful. By the time I had completed the ebook, my earnings had tripled simply because of the handful of test articles I wrote on eHow. They went from about $90 in August 2008 to $270 in November. In that period, I only wrote 55 articles. That’s an average of $3.25/article/month and most of those began earning more once they had matured (30-90 days). December earnings were enough that I decided to quit my “day job” and go back to school like I had always wanted.

If I could jump $180 in earnings in three months, anyone can. Since then, I have literally written hundreds more articles and my earnings have increased exponentially. Like I said above, eHow now accounts for 45% of my family’s income.

Back to the motivation side, I really just want to see others succeed like I have. The price for the book is minimal in comparison to the reward. I also developed a free keyword tool which I think everyone should take a look at. It will make a huge difference in the amount of traffic you get to your articles.

7. Tell us a little about your ebook and what it covers.

The big thing my ebook offers is a video walk through that I made for all of us visual learners. It really helps to make the things I am talking about more cohesive and understandable. “Need Extra Cash” is not just an eHow book. I have many bloggers using my book successfully. Others have also found success on AC, Suite101 and Bukisa by using it. There are two primary elements. It includes the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) concepts as well as ad targeting methods. Neither of these are an exact science, so it is more of a guide, so that you can find what works in your niche, rather than a specific, step 1, 2, 3. I actually teach about SEO a bit, rather than just give the methods, so that customers can adapt to use it on other sites. I also included a handful of other resources, such as page layouts for maximizing ad revenue, for those that have blogs or their own sites.

8. What else would you want us to know about eHow and your experiences there?

A quick note on time: eHow has allowed me to do something that no one is really doing in this economy. Because of my success with eHow, I quit my job in December of 2008 and wrote a mass of eHow (45%) articles and Bukisa (5%) articles. This made up about half my monthly budget. At the end of December I started school. I’m attending about ¾ time, working towards my Bachelors in Theology and Ministry. In the meantime, I only have to work 20-25 hours to feed my family because of the supplemental income I get from eHow. eHow is an awesome opportunity for anyone who needs to make a radical change in their life like I did, or just get a little extra.

I sincerely wish everyone on eHow the best success and am here to answer any questions.

eHow Ebook Author Interview Series

Inspired (and surprised!) by the popularity of my compare and contrast review of four popular eHow ebooks, I decided to expand on it a little bit by interviewing the authors of these ebooks so that you might get to know them better.

I've asked the same set of questions of each author so that you can really see their differenct personalities and approaches to eHow. Feel free to ask questions of the authors in the comments. I have found all four to be very helpful people when it comes to helping other eHow writers.

My eHow by the Numbers.

Because I find it interesting, helpful, and motivating when others share their numbers, I thought I would do the same. Since eHow hasn't updated in a few days, all of this is more or less as of May 1, 2008.

My eHow by the numbers:

Number of eHow Articles: 176

Number of eHow friends: 359

Number of recommendations: 83

Number of views: 180,086

Number of points (no idea what these are good for): 20,030

Total earnings: $1044.13

Highest earning article: $70.18 (in 5 months)

Lowest earning article: $0.06

Number of non-earning articles: 10 (4 written within the last week)

How are you using your eHow earnings?

My experience has been that earnings - even small amounts of earnings - take on greater significance if they are used for a purpose.

I currently have three streams of income - one from my 'day job' and two others from side jobs, including eHow - and I recently went through an exercise where I assigned each stream of income a 'job'.

First, I identified three major income goals that we have right now:

1. Paying down debt.
2. Home repair and improvements.
3. Saving for my daughter's college expenses, which will be beginning about a year from now.

My eHow earnings have been assigned to goal #3.

A little background: We have a small college fund for my daughter and another for my son, but of course they're worth significantly less than they were this time two years ago. In any event, we had always planned to pay for college expenses out of earned income and that will still be the case. eHow is going to help us do that.

I started by transferring the total of my eHow earnings to date, $1044.13, to the college savings account. Then each month between now and and next August I will continue to do the same. Even if my eHow earnings remain at the April level, this account will have more than $3600 in it by the time she starts school.

Now, $3600 isn't going to pay for anybody's college education. But it will take care of some of those extra college expenses and I'm sure it will be nice to have when the time arrives.

But the second part of the plan involves growing my eHow earnings as much as possible between now and then. This will not only increase the amount in the account at the time she starts school, but will create a nice residual income stream that will help with college expenses the entire time she's in school.

Assuming all goes as planned, and eHow remains a viable source of earnings, that income stream will continue while my son is in college and then, after that, can be assigned to some other purpose.

Since I formulated this strategy, I've found that I look at eHow in a whole new way. Even a relatively modest amount of income like $175/month suddenly seems more powerful. And I'm motivated to grow that income stream in a way that I haven't been motivated before.

Do your eHow earnings have a job? If so, I'd love to hear what it is. If not, I would recommend that you have some fun finding a purpose for them. Dream big!

eHow Earnings: eHow vs. Minimum Wage

Felicia at No Job For Mom wrote a simple but powerful post about eHow earnings vs. the minimum wage. Felicia has recently reached the point where her eHow earnings have surpassed minimum wage. And they'll continue to go up from here!

She inspired me to do my own calculations. Including my eHow earnings for April, my hourly wage on eHow is now at $11.86/hour. That's significantly more than the current minimum wage of $6.55/hour (set to rise to $7.25 in July).

Have you done your own eHow vs. the Minimum Wage calulcations? Felicia's post will show you how. Then come back here and share!

Follow me on Twitter!

Okay, folks, Twitter is for real. I've dabbled with it for a while, but I've decided to become more focused in my efforts.

I've just changed my main Twitter account's user name to eHowJulie since it better reflects what I write about. If you've got a Twitter account, follow me so I can visit you on Twitter. If you don't have a Twitter account, it's high time you did!

Follow me on Twitter.

eHow Earnings: Passive Income Takes a Jump This Month

Well, the April earnings are in and my passive income at eHow took an almost 22% jump this month to $174.35. That brings my total eHow earnings to date to over $1000. This despite the fact that I only added two new articles, both on the 29th of the month.

I am beyond happy with the way eHow continues to provide me with passive income. And the jump my earnings took this month have motivated me to find the time to write more.

How are your eHow earnings looking? I hope it was a great month for you too!

The Niche Blogger and Lifetime Access

I am in the process of trying to decide whether or not to upgrade my membership in The Niche Blogger to Lifetime Access. Monthly membership is $19.99/month and Lifetime Access, which you can choose at signup or upgrade to at a later time, is $197.

While trying to make my decision, I realized I didn't know how many months of content currently existed so I emailed Amy Bass, the creator of TNB. As is her habit, Amy emailed me back in short order. (How does that girl do it? She seems to be online all the time! That's a good thing for Niche Blogger members.)

Amy's answer was that there are currently 9 months of Niche Blogger content, and 12 months are planned. A new month of content is being added each month.

I am on month three of TNB and the first two months of content have been great - well worth the money. I think I'll take a detailed look at month three's content before I make my decision. I am moving through TNB at a slower pace than is intended so I'd like the luxury of having access to all the content, forums, etc. indefinitely.

I know that I am grateful to Amy for allowing a member to sign up for the monthly membership and upgrade to lifetime at a later time. It's great to be able to take it for a test drive.

Are any of you members of The Niche Blogger? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Related posts:

eHow as a Test Market

eHow: March Earnings Update

My earnings at eHow have been amazingly steady. Almost to the penny when compared to January and the shortened month of February.

I added no new articles in March due to life's demands and I don't know if that will change anytime soon. Still, my earnings were $143.76. Completely passive income.

eHow as a Test Market

If you're like a lot of writers, you might be thinking about moving beyond eHow and creating your own site or blog. Or maybe you have some sites or blogs and are thinking about adding more. If that's the case, eHow can be a great test market for any niches you might be considering. Particulary if you're planning to monetize that site with Adsense.

Then again, you might not have any niches in mind. Often times the hardest part for someone looking to create a niche site or niche blog is coming up with an idea. In that case, I encourage you to look at your library of eHow articles for inspiration.

A while back I was examining my top earning eHow articles and I noticed a couple of articles written about a certain topic that were performing really well. Taking the hint, I wrote a couple more articles around that topic and, sure enough, they performed better than average too. It wasn't long before I began considering building a niche blog around this topic.

This week I took that plunge. And while I know a little bit about blogging and a very little bit about earning money online, I decided to follow the advice of Amy Bass, who has a niche blogger program that spells out exactly how to earn money with niche blogging.

I considered using another popular program, which I actually bought and read, but I never could quite get my head around the method. I'm sure it's a fine program and that it works well for others, but once I explored Amy's system it all sort of clicked for me.

Amy's system is laid out month by month and - get this - it's in blog form. How smart is that for someone who is looking to make money blogging? The cost is $19.99/month and you can cancel at any time. For each month that you stay a member, you get access to that month's blog posts.

I am ending month one and coming up on month two. So far, the $19.99 I've paid for month one has been worth it for just this one piece of information: The Niche Blogger explains EXACTLY how to evaluate a niche to see if it's worth pursuing. That, combined with eHow as a test market, allowed me to move right away on one of the niches I was considering.

Of course month one provided lots of other information, but even if I only took away that niche evaluation piece, it would have been worth it to me.

The point of this blog post, however, is this: evaluate the writing you've already done at eHow and see how you can make it work for you. If you've got an article that's performing well, write something else on that topic. If that article does well, write a couple of more and see how they do. Then, if you seem to be onto something, evaluate whether it would be worth pursuing as it's own site.

You can use Amy's method to do that, or evaluate using something else, but if a topic is doing well at eHow, it's might very well do well somewhere else.

Popular eHow Ebook Updated

Anthony Delgado's popular ebook Need Extra Cash? Write Articles That Pay has recently been updated. Several additions and clarifications have been made and the length of the ebook has been expanded from 25 to 37 pages.

The book is now printable as well. I know I prefer to read ebooks on paper rather than a computer screen so this was a great upgrade for me.

My favorite new feature in Anthony's ebook is the Quick Guide at the end. The Quick Guide takes you through the entire article process from getting the article idea to promoting it once it has been written and everything in between.

The Quick Guide makes a great checklist to use to make sure you are getting everything you can from your articles. Basically it puts the ebook into a condensed, bullet point form so that you can be sure you are actually using everything you have read in the ebook. Good job, Anthony!

The price of the ebook is still $19.99. However you can save 10% by using the coupon code "GEORGE WASHINGTON" during checkout.

eHow Passive Income Update for February

My eHow earnings in February were $131.97. While that is less than my January earnings of $143.13, the month was also three days shorter. Had my average daily earnings rate continued for an additional three days, I would have exceeded January's earnings.

I continue to be very pleased with the passive income that eHow generates.

Bukisa Changes Minimum Payout Level

If you're using Bukisa to promote your eHow articles (or considering it), you might be interested to learn that they have added two new minimum payout levels of $10 and $25.

Prior to now, you had to earn $50 to receive a payout, which was frustrating for a lot of people. Now you have a choice of six payout levels: $10, $25, $50, $100, $200, and $500. When I logged in today, my minmum payout had defaulted to $10, which was great.

If you've not heard ot Bukisa, it's another online writing site that pays you for content. You can also earn on the content of your referrals, which is great for creating a passive income stream.

Bukisa is new, and the earnings don't yet compare to eHow, but it's a great way to build links to your content and earn a little something at the same time. And now that the minimum payout has been reduced to $10, you won't have to wait so long to see a payment.

Using the eHow Widget

I'm not going to lie. I'm in love with the eHow widget. It's such a professional way for us to feature up to five of our eHow articles. In fact, someone on the eHow forums said she started a blog just so she could use the widget. How cool is that?

So which five articles should a writer feature? In my opinion, you should go one of two directions:

1. Feature articles that have been performing well for you. Play to your strengths. Don't try to prop up articles that aren't doing well; help the high performers do even better!

2. Feature new articles. Help your new articles get views (and hopefully earnings) by getting them seen in the widget.

This is also a good time to mention that when at all possible, use a photo with your article. That widget looks so much better (and clickable) with those photos featured along with the articles.

Quick eHow Tip: Related Articles

You should always attempt to include your own relevant articles in the related articles section of the eHow template. The idea is that when someone clicks away from your article, you want them to click on something that benefits YOU, whether that is an ad, an affiliate link, or another of your articles.

I've found, however, that when searching for my articles using the search function in the eHow article template, I can't always find them. Even when I put the title in word for word.

One trick I've found is to use different combinations of words in my title until I hit on my own. I may have to remove the 'How to' part of the title. If that doesn't work I'll remove other words and then add some back if necessary. Sometimes I can find it when entering just one or two words from the title.

The good news is that once I've played around with this enough, I can usually hit on the article I'm looking for in the search results and add it to 'related articles'. Hopefully that little bit of persistence pays off with additional article views.

eHow Article Widget is Live!

See that cool eHow list of five of my articles below and in the sidebar of this blog? That's the new eHow widget and any eHow author can get on to put on their blog or other sites.

The eHow artaicle widget features the five featured articles that each eHow author can choose from their list of articles.

To get yours go to your eHow profile and look on the left sidebar. There you'll see 'Custom Widget' and you can grab yours and start promoting your eHow articles today.


How to Videos & Articles: eHow.com

Two Bits of Good News: eHow Earnings Updates and eHow Ebook on Sale

After a rocky period at eHow regarding earnings updates, everything finally seems to be back on track. Earnings are updating daily and usually around the same time.

Regular earnings updates make a huge difference to eHow writers. It's nice to get that daily feedback, no matter how small the update. And if you're tweaking articles or using SEO techniques, it's important to know if your methods are working.

Another bit of good news: Janet Ford's ebook How to Write for eHow: The Ultimate Guide to Writing on eHow is currently on sale for $15. That's a huge savings over the regular price of $27. I don't know how long the offer is good for. If I am able to find out, I'll let you know here.

I've reviewed Janet's ebook and also compared it to the three other ebooks currently being offered by eHow writers.

eHow Ebook Authors Sweeten their Deals

Two of the eHow ebook authors have recently added value to their ebook offerings:

Annalise Kaylor, who has written Writing Online: Making Money and Residual Income with Online Content has updated her ebook package to include two bonus books: 101 Awesome Headline Copywriting Tips and How To Succeed As An Article Writer. The second book is 330 pages long. Quite a bonus!

The new discount code is "Package" and it gives buyers all three books for $17.00.

Writergig, author of How to Earn Passive Income at eHow.com: Residual Income for Web Content Writers, has also updated her ebook to include the following:

• Expanded information on search engine optimization and keywords
• Detailed information on adding affiliate links to articles
• A specific section of tips on writing high earning articles
• Updated information on promoting eHow articles with backlinks

This ebook has been expanded from 22 to 34 pages and sells for $25.

Results of The Passive Income Experiment I Didn't Know I Was Conducting

As I wrote about earlier, I only added three articles in January to my eHow library. That wasn't my intention, but life got in the way.

As it turned out, only one of those articles earned anything: 35 cents. Which means that almost all of my earnings for January were passive income. Income that I earned for work I did prior.

So what was the result? My January earnings were $143.13, an almost 10% increase over December's earnings.

Regular eHow-ers know that things have been a little rocky over there lately. Bugs in the system make writing frustrating, and lately those bugs have extended to views and earnings. It's easy to get discouraged.

And still, with all the rockiness and life getting in the way of my article writing, I continued to earn and, in fact, had my highest month yet.

eHow as a Source of Passive Income: How Passive Is it?

Due to life's circumstances I've only been able to write four articles at eHow this month. To date none of those four articles has earned anything, which means all of my earnings are coming from work I did prior to this month.

This is my first chance to see how eHow will perform as a source of truly passive income. So far I'm pleased with the results.

I'll post an update of my income at the end of the month as usual.

A New eHow Author and Ebook Review

You “meet” the most interesting people on the eHow forums! I want to introduce you to Annalise Kaylor. Annalise is relatively new to eHow, but she is not new to writing online. In addition to doing freelance work, she is the managing editor and a SEO specialist for a major online university.

Her background is important because, like several other successful eHow authors, Annalise has written an ebook designed to help others make money by writing online.

I recently finished reading her book, Writing Online: Making Money and Residual Income with Online Content, and wanted to share my thoughts with you in this review. I have also added Annalise’s ebook to the compare and contrast review I did of the other three eHow ebooks. That post has proven to be very popular with eHow writers overwhelmed by the decision of which eHow ebook(s) in purchase.

Now for the review. Annalise’s book covers eight topics, in addition to an introduction and summary:

· The difference between passive income and residual income
· Understanding keywords, keyword phrases, and SEO
· Writing content to suit keywords
· Other online writing tips
· Websites that pay you to write for them
· Adding to your passive income with affiliate programs
· Other options for earning passive income
· Marketing your content and your site

The following sections are the ones that I thought were especially worth highlighting:

Understanding Keywords, Keyword Phrases, and SEO

If you’ve spent any time on the eHow forums or invested in any of the other eHow ebooks, you no doubt know a thing or two about keywords and SEO. It’s not hard to educate yourself on the basics of this topic and as I began reading this section I found myself a little bored with the basics being covered again. (Of course if you’re a beginner in this area and don’t know much about these topics, you won’t be bored at all; the book does a great job covering the basics.)

As I continued reading, however, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about one keyword technique that I hadn’t seen covered anywhere else. And Annalise also lays out a system of analyzing keyword results that is unique. In a later section she shows you how to use this system when writing your articles.

Other Online Writing Tips

This section is short, but sweet so don’t skip it. It’s a bullet list of information written by someone who knows her way around writing for the web.

In re-reading the book for this review, I was surprised to see an issue addressed that recently received a great deal of attention on the eHow forums. I also like her ideas for getting more articles (and therefore more money) from your content.

Websites that Pay You to Write for Them

This section will be especially valuable for anyone looking to branch out beyond eHow (and really everyone should plan to do this at some point to avoid the “eggs in one basket” syndrome).

Annalise has had some good success writing for another website and her section on this site and the section on eHow are the most detailed. Two other sites are covered with a little less detail, and the section ends with a bullet list of other sites to look into.

Adding to Your Passive Income with Affiliate Programs

If you’re currently using affiliate marketing you aren’t going to find anything new in this section. If, however, you’re an affiliate marketing beginner (or you’re wondering ‘what is affiliate marketing?’) then you’ll find this section will give you a great overview and answer a lot of your questions.

The book even explains how to add an affiliate marketing link to you articles, which is one of the basic questions many web writers have but are afraid to ask on message boards or forums for fear of looking foolish.

Do I think the ebook is worth purchasing?
Yes, I do. I’m a big believer in these ebooks because, the fact is, if you even pick up one suggestion that you begin using you will likely recoup the cost of the book a much more. I’ve written 160+ articles on eHow and I’m still learning.

I can even handle a little repetition. Obviously with each eHow ebook I read I get less and less new information because I’m getting the basics again. But I find that even though I may have read something before, reading it from a different author or source causes me to “hear” it a little differently.

If you’re a beginner, this book is full of great tools that will help you earn more with your eHow articles or other online writing. If you’re already writing or have read other eHow ebooks, you’re likely to pick up enough new stuff to make it worth your while. Either way, there is a money-back guarantee if your earnings don’t increase within 30 days so there’s no risk.

So what’s the bottom line?

The book sells for $25 but is being offered now at $15 with the discount code NEWYEAR. When you go to the site and add the book to your shopping cart, you can enter the discount code and see the discount taken before you complete the purchase process. I mention that because I know I always appreciate seeing the discounted amount before I have to enter any payment information.