Ehow Stealing Again??????

Wow. I have pretty much been staying away from eHow of late and focusing on other revenue streams, but today I pop into the forums and what do I find?

A thread where writers are discovering that eHow is taking their article images and using them on other content elsewhere. Also, the hyperlinks associated with writers' images are being redirected to Demand Studios content NOT the original contributor and owner of the image.

Here's  a link to the eHow forum thread on this issue.  I have a terrible head cold so I haven't been able to fully process the effect of this deceit, but here are some quotes from the conversation on it that I think are edifying... (Note: The wonky formatting is not my doing, it's just how it pasted into the Blogger template.)

"Here is another example of unfair eHow global photo banks.....Here you will find my image of Bailey and her Hot spots....now you would think that My image would link to my article...nope it goes to another eHow members article.  My image is shared with all, not one person asked me if they could use it.   I get no traffic from my image....now how is this fair?????"

"Personally I think we should convey a message to eHow that using our images on other  writers articles is unacceptable.  My kitten image took me 7 hours to shoot, I laid in a bush and waited for those kittens to strike a pose...It is not a stock image and it is not up for grabs ....It is protected with a creative commons Lic...and it is indicated on my intro photo...do not copy, all rights reserved but eHow took it without my permission, and I am not happy.  "

"I had this same problem.  LiveStrong...a Demand Media site, was using one of my images with MY TITLE and linking it to a Contributing DS writer of a different article.  I was VERY PISSED!  I wrote to DM and boisterously complained.  It took a few weeks, but they finally have the image linking to MY article.  I'm okay with that.  That's a good backlink.  I'll take traffic from LiveStrong any day.

Susan, you need to do the same thing.  Write to DM and demand that they either provide a proper backlink to your article, if they are going to use that photo, or else take it down. Request that your demand go to the Content Editor. 

I had to complain twice, before it got changed, btw."

"Wow. Wow. Wow. Is this ever WRONG! I just did some checking and so far, ALL THE IMAGES I checked--pictures I took of projects I did myself ALL LEAD TO DS contributing writers' articles instead of mine. That is, the first of the two choices one is given in a Google search. The first choice always being the larger of the two images. For example, my biggest traffic draw EVER is the Wild THing Muppet, and the article it links to is not mine! THat is ME IN THE PHOTO and you don't have my permission to use me for your own purposes!
Excuse me, but up until now I thought some of the complainers were going over the top in wanting to shut eHow down, and I still would rather just see eHow start practicing GOOD FAITH and LEGALITY, but if this continues, you bet I will be pushing for a shut down of this scam site. I want my pictures pointing to MY articles and only MY articles."

Don't know why the below is in bold (I hate it when Blogger goes wonky), but here are some final thoughts...

What do you think? Is this okay for them to do this? Unfortunately, one legal issue I can think of is that licenses from sites such as istockphoto probably do not permit this kind of wholesale use of their artists' work.   In my cold medicine haze, I can't lay my eyes on the WCP terms of use but I think use of photos is probably covered in their TOU (although as I've always said, just because it's in the TOU doesn't make it right nor mean it can't be changed). However, eHow needs to disclose exactly how they will use those photos so people don't end up in trouble with third party photo licenses.  

It's not helping that they do all this crap in secret.

On top of that, there still may be the legal issue of unfair competition. It's unfair and unethical for eHow to take people's work and use it against them to undermine their earnings.  

Here is some great information on unfair competition.
 

Niche Blogging Back Link Strategy

I have recently discovered the concept of do follow blogs and do follow forums. So I am making a list and plan to target these sites as a means to acquire back links.

If you are interested in doing the same, just google do follow blogs and do follow forums.

Earnings Addendum

I realized I forgot to mention a few things in regards to earnings...

1. My eHow UK 'compensation' was a joke at $29. This came in January though not February.

2.Adsense earnings came primarily from: My own sites, Infobarrel, and a tiny bit from Hubpages. Even though my own sites are now outearning Infobarrel, it has taken since July 09 to get there. Infobarrel earned much, much faster. Working on a site with pre-established page rank really helps.

Only... I still don't know what Hubpages' problem is. WHY am I not seeing more money there???? I don't get it at all. And I continue to write hubs, which seems like a waste of time.

Oh, and the Suite 101 editor loved my article and said it was "fantastic" so phew.

March Earnings

March earnings are in and...

I'm still treading water at $300 a month.

If February had been a bit longer, I would've earned an extra $20 which would put me back where I was on eHow earnings-wise before everything nose dived. I am slowly weaning myself off ehow because I can't trust that it will always be a source of income. So I spend less time on the forums. Less time on articles and more time elsewhere.

Adsense grew quite a bit for me. From $14 in Jan to $20. Wow! Finally some progress! I can almost afford a pizza! I am living the niche blogging dream!

Amazon is always a crap shoot, but it performs well for me. Over $50 in February. No way to know what it will do in March.

I heard from Life123 that my one article I submitted (before they shut down) hit the $5 mark. I haven't been paid for it though and don't know if I ever will.

Same with Seed. They owe me $30. As far as I know, I've done what I was supposed to do in order to trigger payment. A month later, nothing.

I am back on Suite 101 and just sent in my first article. Which I hated my article, but I have some weird mental block about Suite since I had a bad editor experience the first time I tried to write there. I have literally agonized over this one stupid 400 word article for almost 2 weeks! Insane! And I still think it sucks. I just closed my eyes and hit submit anyways. I need to get past the hump and move forward. Hopefully, I get a nicer editor this time.

I saw that Maria a.k.a. Writergig left a comment in response to my censure of the lack of honesty/disclosure from those writers/bloggers/ebook authors making money off the ehow craze. While she may feel she is above board well... I don't know, I still think there's an ethical and moral obligation to be sure people understand what happened on ehow so newbies go in with their eyes open. There's still a lot of 'ehow is great' rah-rahing going on and I feel for new writers who have no idea what the history is with ehow and how fast the industry can spin on a dime.

Besides, there's a lot of confusion about what happened on ehow which has led to lots of misinformation and conspiracy theories--people need to be able to sort the wheat from the chafe.

So, is there money to be made on ehow?

Yes.

Is ehow great?

I would say no. I don't think anyone should be encouraging others to think they can make a huge income just by writing at ehow alone. I think the game has changed, the internet has shifted under our keyboards. We are writing in a brave new world now. It would be nice if those who have gone before, showed the rest of us the way.

Hilarious Video about Writing for Demand Studios

Oh. My. Gawd. This is hysterical. I laughed until I cried. If you write for Demand Studios or are thinking about it, this is a must see.

Ehow January Earnings and UK Update and a note on Life123 and Seed.com

January has come to a close on the heels of an announcement from Demand Media promising to "generously" compensate eHow writers whose content was used on the UK site to the detriment of writer earnings.

I see lots of people saying they don't understand the UK issue and telling the complainers to be quiet. Respectfully, I say if you admit you don't understand the UK issue, then it is you who needs to be quiet. This was a big deal--it is the writers that shape the industry just as much as the clients/content mills/magazines/editors etc.... What the writers do matters and if you haven't taken the time to figure out what does matter then you have no business having any opinion at all. In this case, the writers won an amazing victory that will benefit writers for years to come because it will shape the web content business model in a material way.

In other news, Life 123, the content site that paid based on views, abruptly closed up shop this past week. They say they'll pay their writers, but we'll see. I smell a scam here. All those people who wrote content that hadn't yet had time to mature to the $20 pay out level are probably going to lose out.

Life123 illustrates that nothing is forever in this industry and if all your eggs are in one basket, you're asking for trouble.

As for Seed.com. It seems very professional. The assignments are more journalistic, looking for expert interviews and the like, than other content mills. But there is a distinct lack of a good style guide and comprehensive writer guidelines. You're left to try and figure out a lot of things on your own, which probably plays into the rejection rate on Seed. So, write at your own risk. The pay is good, but it's competitive and editor response times are slow. Recently, prices went down with the disappearance of the $100-$200 assignments. I wonder if Seed will eventually realize that, if their competitors are only paying $15 per 500 words, then why should they pay $20 or $30?

Okay, so earnings.

1. eHow is still down from November's high, but the earnings are still there. I'm off about 20% and haven't seen any positive growth for 2 months. I'm averaging $2 an article. I had one $20 day and one $15 day and the rest were below average. I've even added articles in an attempt to boost earnings and it doesn't seem to be helping. The UK's negative effect on earnings is much more pervasive, I think, than people realize.

2.Adsense is picking up. This is due, in large part, to Infobarrel. I am seeing clicks most days of the week. The totals are still low. $12 last month. $14 this month. Not getting rich, but seeing any up tick in activity is a positive change for me.

3. Amazon is down from the Xmas shopping high, but still respectable at more than $50. I have had some affiliate sales from Infobarrel articles.

4.Niche sites. Of the crappy niches I am working, a few are starting to show some potential. Even had some ad clicks. I really need to devote myself to this--which I think I've said this umpteen times here. The truth is, for me (because it's different for others), life with a small toddler is much more conducive to one-off articles than strategic web site campaigns. But we'll see.

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?