Commentary on the eHow UK Debacle

As most of you are aware by now, eHow 'cloned' 'mirrored' or 'copied' (no one can agree on a term and eHow doesn't like the term 'cloned') the US site and launched it in the UK. Along the way, they turned the 'laws' of SEO on their head and made it so that UK content outranked the US site. All of sudden earnings, mine included, were in the toilet.

If you are not familiar with SEO, the way Google is supposed to work is by recognizing the original publisher of content and ranking them higher than scraped duplicate content. Somehow eHow scraped writers' articles and then outranked the original writers on the US site. They basically subverted traffic and revenue to the cloned site.

To make things worse, eHow denied and denied and denied that there was a problem. Only through the persistence of a few vocal writers did eHow finally investigate and admit the UK site was the root cause of the earnings drop. eHow then agreed to remove US scraped content but that has yet to happen.

Now it's members against members--arguing amongst ourselves like a dog chasing a tail. One faction of members are afraid if writers make too big of a stink that eHow will shut down the Writers Compensation Program (WCP).

The other faction is, rightfully so, pointing out that if they hadn't spoken up, eHow wouldn't have done anything and one of the premiere passive revenue sites on the internet would've ceased to be profitable for writers. So kudos to the people who stood up and pushed and jumped up and down until eHow finally paid attention.

None of the writers making money off of selling ebooks spoke up against eHow, which is interesting to me and it is one reason why I have not signed up for any affiliate programs. I don't want my income sources to erode my ethics. I'll use a referral code here and there, but that's about it (and I never make money from those anyway, although I keep hoping!).

Ultimately, pushing eHow to deal with this issue is to their benefit in the long run (as well as that of the writers). If the company undermined the WCP to the point where no one made any money, I have to wonder what would happen to the site. Or the initial public offering they keep talking about. Probably not good things.

The reality is, if the WCP had been completely subverted by eHow's content scraping and mirror tricks, all the writers would've moved on to greener pastures, quickly making some other site the best new thing in revenue income. The influx of so many experienced content providers, would have further eroded the eHow brand while, at the same, time strengthening competitors.

Again, I say, it's really to eHow's benefit to remove the cloned content. The writers would've suffered in the short run, but would land on their feet in the end. There are waaaaay too many competitors looking to eat up eHow's market share for their not to be an influx of new opportunities. Competition is already happening without eHow helping it along.

But what about the Terms of Use (TOU) everyone asks. Well what about it? Yes, eHow can use our content as they see fit. Yes the TOU does say this, but I would argue there are some holes in the TOU. eHow is not completely free of liability here. Also, my personal expectation, would be some disclosure of how they plan/planned to screw over writers.

I would have never written for eHow in the first place if they had told me they were going to ever do what they did and I think a lot of other writers would've avoided them as well. It's one thing to use our content to build a distinct non-eHow brand elsewhere, another thing to use our content as a mirrored funnel that bypasses our accounts.

I would expect a new TOU to be issued as eHow works to rectify what went so horribly wrong with their UK business plan.

And make no mistake, this is a failure on eHow's part. They made some serious mistakes. I hope they take the time resolve them in a way that is equitable for all parties.

Lastly, eHow is still the best paying revenue sharing site on the internet. However, that could all change this year depending on the choices they make and what the competition does. 2010 is going to be a crucible for eHow. Will they burn or rise like a phoenix?

eHow's Plagiarism Flag Stealing Earnings from Writers without Due Process

I've been watching the plagiarism flag sagas of several eHow members and been following the situation closely--even corresponding with members who are dealing with this. The post below was posted by one member on the eHow message board this morning and I asked if I could reproduce it here as I think it covers everything that is wrong with eHow's plagiarism policy. Especially note the sections in italics as they are particularly salient.

This is an important issue and I think eHow writers need to push eHow to review their plagiarism policy and make it more equitable.

Mrasey writes (having dealt with the plagiarism flag all week):

I would imagine now that new content goes through a plagiarism check that the number of plagiarism flags on eHow should diminish. Because they will have an internal time/date stamp that the content was unique upon initial publication. I would hope that future plagiarism flags would not result in temporary suspension or removal precisely because of the time/date stamp. This should allow eHow to feel pretty confident that their flag is catching someone offsite who has stolen content and they should be able to implement a system where authors are notified of the problem and given 2-3 days to prove their innocence, if that is necessary.

I hope that eHow does modify their plagiarism policy to incorporate the credibility given by the initial plagiarism scan upon publication.

Old content will continue to be a problem, however. This is what happened to me. I edited an old article and hit publish and got a flag because of all the sites that had scraped my work from eHow. Because eHow removed the article, I didn't have a direct link and that made it difficult to prove my case to some sites (although I ultimately prevailed in all cases at having sites remove my content). Further, when my article comes back, I will have lost quite a bit of money and based on what others have said, lost rank in the search engines which will hurt my income for months to come.

So while it is demoralizing and depressing, it is also a financial issue. All my hard work is wiped out because I am presumed guilty without sufficient evidence of guilt. That is my core issue with the way eHow handles plagiarism. They have no idea who is guilty, but pass judgement all the same. Judgement that hinders the author's ability to defend themselves and has lasting negative effects on their income.

It would be one thing if content was removed for a day and if these investigations were executed quickly, but that's not what happens. These plagiarism flags drag out. Content is removed for weeks at a time and the length of time it takes to resolve these issues is what creates the biggest chunk of financial loss.

Also consider the money eHow makes on the redirect to other pages when someone tries to visit your suspended content. Is the author compensated appropriately for this income once they are proven innocent and reinstated? Does that factor into the secret algorithm?

From a corporate due diligence perspective, I have to wonder how it is that it's okay to essentially cost people money based on suspicion alone. How is that protecting anybody? As much as eHow wants to avoid legal liability for plagiarized content, they actually create an additional legal liability, in my opinion, by robbing users of income without due process. eHow has closed one legal liability door and opened another which I don't think was the goal.

I think there are serious issues with their current policy. All it takes is the right mix of circumstances for someone to put together a legal claim.

Mrasey

IS EHOW STEALING FROM THEIR CONTRIBUTORS?

There's been an uproar over the second round of article deletions at eHow. In case you weren't around for the first wave, eHow has been deleting content that doesn't meet either their standards or terms of service. Fair enough, however, writers have been complaining that high earners are being deleted and pointing out that eHow benefits financially from removing competition for their wholly owned content (i.e. articles they paid for from the Demand Studios side of their business).

Willow Sidhe has written a thoughtful post on the topic and I responded with a lengthy comment which I'm reproducing here:

I think this is well put BUT Ehow does have a financial incentive to discriminate in favor of their wholly owned content.

Remember, they can see the comparative stats and we can't. It has to occur to them if they eliminate the competition they can increase their earnings. What they do with that information, I don't know. Ethically they should ignore it, but greed does strange things to corporations.

I agree with you that many of the articles people are sharing have problems that justify their deletion. But we haven't seen all the articles and it is a strange business model that deletes moneymakers. You would think they would at least give writers a shot at editing because that benefits everyone.

Personally, in my opinion something doesn't smell right here. Ehow needs to be more transparent because this is affecting their credibility. Right now, I'm assuming they are acting in good faith and have just royally botched the writer relations side of things.

Then again, having worked in Corporate America, that kind of massive customer relations fail is often indicative of management quality and thought process. When I go down that thought path, I am disturbed to realize they could care less about their contributors. That's not good.

If Ehow continues to do arbitrary things that piss off writers, that would be a strong signal of a deeper problem.