On January 29, 2010 eHow released a video blog admitting that the eHow UK site did indeed impact writer’s earnings. The eHow GM stated they would be “generously estimating” the lost earnings and compensating the writers in February. Curiously they were very careful to use “UK beta site” and variations of this term – a new term in the debate as far as I know.
It is great to see eHow stepping up to the plate and solving the problem by paying the writers fair compensation for using their work on eHow UK. Many writers suffered 50% earnings drops when the UK site ramped up. Some of those writers need the cash to pay bills and mortgages in a tough economy.
eHow likely targeted the UK as the second largest market for eHow visitors. I expect that there will be some residual loss of income to the US writers since the eHow UK site will siphon off UK based visitors from the dot com site, but this is true of all other competition from other “how to” sites.
We can all learn some lessons from this episode.
1. In the digital world you can’t get away with deliberately or inadvertently screwing your partners. 20 years ago you could take an article, publish it overseas, and likely get away with it. Today with everything searchable instantly the world is too transparent for content abusers to get away with it for long.
2. Think three times before you say something online. eHow spent months repeatedly failing to answer questions about the eHow UK site and repeatedly blaming earnings drops on factors like Google and seasonal fluctuations. These statements have been documented for all to see essentially forever – even though eHow staff have deleted their forum posts to cover their tracks. The damage is done with the writers and to the eHow brand. Don’t repeat such mistakes with your business.
3. Crowd Sourcing/Crowd Pressure is alive and well. eHow was forced into removing the content from the eHow uk site, and then forced into compensating the writers by informally organized groups of writers using social media tools to apply pressure and get the attention of a large company. Pressure was applied through:
a) the eHow forums – where eHow pushed back by deleting posts and penalizing writers (their word not mine) who they felt were “unruly” (their words, not mine)
b) blogs – including this one – and blog comments.
c) independent forums
d) Twitter/Facebook/Digg/Stumble etc.
e) Threats of class action lawsuits
The many eHow writers who participated (and readers of this blog) can learn from the eHow UK experience and use the techniques even more effectively next time they want to push any issue.
Finally I am going to share something that, as a new blogger, blows me away:
http://innovativepassiveincome.com reached #6 on Google for “eHow UK” and this blog even outranked the actual eHow UK site at one point. The blog today sits at #5 in results for key phrase “eHow UK scam” even though I have not been pushing those words.
I want to thank you, the readers, for showing so much support to this young blog. In the months ahead I will continue posting on topics of interest to passive income seekers and I look forward to continuing the conversation as we move forward together to financial success.
JadeDragon
PS: See the follow up post where a Demand Exec apologizes for eHow as a result of a comment I made. Good for them.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The forums are buzzing and I am waiting for “the other shoe to drop”. It was a great video blog in my opinion. I am glad that this is over as far as UK and compensation for writers. With what I consider a low amount of revenue per month on ads (about 11K) I doubt that many writers will get what they feel is their due. I know several that were vocal months ago did lose a lot. I hope ehow is able to determine a fair standard. Great blog you have going here!
I read some more about the $11,000 a month. It is just an estimate by Alexa. Those estimates are wildly inaccurate. My furnished suites site has some crazy estimated advertising revenue when it is not monetized and then some of the big sites are way undervalued. Pretty much Alexa is useless for estimating value or revenue from a site.