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!