In a continuing effort to learn from the eHow UK site issue, here is a traffic graph from Alexa.
The blue line represents popularity on the entire web – all countries – all sites. Normal traffic goes up and down but this pattern is not normal. Clearly the eHow SEO team had a breakthrough in late October 2009.
We can assume that close to 100% of eHow UK visitors visited the eHow.com site before the eHow UK launch.
Surely the UK clone had a huge effect on the residual income writers, right? Well, maybe it did, but maybe not. Compare this chart showing the number of page views on the eHow.com site.
The eHow.com chart does not show a matching drop in eHow.com page visits to match the ehow UK rise in popularity. Could it be that the UK site brought in new visitors? Hard to say for sure.
This we can say for sure. The eHow UK site will always siphon off traffic that could have gone to articles on the original eHow site. It does not really matter where in the world the traffic is from since anyone in the world can generate revenue for the site on an adsense model. For example, eHow UK is still very popular with US based websurfers (traffic rank 7,324 in the US)
Other Lessons
Creating a site that encourages users to surf around, view, comment, rate, and recommend articles really drives the average number of page views up. There is likely no direct value to the individual writer to have lots of “internal” views (like this eHow article that never earns me much of anything) but there is some value to the overall site ranking and status to all this internal activity.
Is eHow still a good place to write?
In spite of eHow’s poor public relations, I strongly believe the answer is yes. eHow is one of the top 50 ranked sites in the USA and carries an Alexa rank of 152 today. To compare, this blog, while increasingly popular, is still a little below an Alexa rank of 1 million (but it’s moving up!).
Ultrasuccessful eHow writer and eHow eBook author WriterGig agrees that eHow remains a good place to write. And speaking of WriterGig, I recommend you get Maria’s excellent book because it has not only helped my eHow earnings a lot, but applying the principles in her ebook has helped Innovative Passive Income rank high for some pretty good keywords already.
All you writers will enjoy this little video. It is particularly targeted at Demand Studios writer’s experience.
A Little Note About Blog Monetization & Adsense
Returning readers might notice Adsense Ads have just been added to this site. My research indicates that Adsense is a very poor way to monetize a blog. I do not expect to earn much or anything from Adsense though, so why are the ads here?
1. Since this blog is about passive income and the journey to reach it, I like to experiment. Adsense is the biggest internet advertising network out there and there are lots of people selling materials promoting Adsense as a way to earn passive income.
2, My sense is that Adsense has better traffic tracking then Google Analytics, so watching the Adsense impressions count provides an alternative way to gage the effects various actions have on site traffic.
3. I plan to build a separate content site on an unusual niche that will heavily use Adsense. I’m using this site to see how my posts impact the types of ads that display.
You see, one of the key reasons for Innovate Passive Income is to try different things and share the results with you the readers. So watch for updates as my projects progress.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
You definitely raise some good questions (eHow UK vs eHow.com ). But like you concluded with, it is still a good site to write for. If there’s another site similar to eHow with a good community and ability to rank and earn from articles quickly, I’ll be the first one to try it ;)
Wow, that is some thorough analysis. My earnings are still way down in February and I don’t expect them to pick back up anytime soon.
Appreciate the information! Thanks.
Adsense can work if you learn about and experiment with ad placement strategies. You have one small unit way down near the botton of the page; that’s not the optimal placement, and the low click thru rate will just confirm your pre-conceived notion that Adsense is a poor way to monetize a blog. Try putting a larger text-only banner near the top. Just sayin’…..
Absolutely, I picked a poor placement (though it is near the bottom to the right of the article). I think adsense has its place – but maybe not on a blog like this one. From your email address – I’m guessing you can teach me something about using adsense properly.
Very interesting about the Alexa stats. I appreciate the eHow staff’s efforts to ensure that eHow writers are compensated for articles that appear on the eHow UK site, but am curious how that compensation will compare to the potentially lost revenue since late November/ early December.
I’m glad we concur that eHow is till worth the effort; I also think online writers, especially those interested in long-term residual income models, should diversify income and have control over the bulk of their writing material through niche sites and blogs.
Hi Jade, and thanks for stopping by CD. Glad to see you’re still on top of things. And I gotta say after this latest prank by eHow that if anyone still thinks eHow is a viable option for earning residual income online, they had better think again. Writers should be dividing their time between sites like Suite101, HubPages, and InfoBarrel, and their own blogs with afflilate links and getting the away from anything to do with Demand Media as fast as they can.
Things will never get better on eHow. They fully intend to squeeze residual writers out. They’re doing it step by obvious step, and lying so they can keep the nearly-free content up until they replace it with pre-paid articles, using their unique insider info on search analytics to determine exactly which content to replace.
Read this article for some real insight on the eHow buisiness model.
http://domainnamewire.com/2010/02/03/in-demand-how-demand-media-is-profiting-from-web-content/ It was linked off the Demand site.