Forget RRCR – Get a New eHow Plan

Many eHow writers get into social groups that RRCR each others articles. This activity is pretty much worthless and takes away from time that could be spent actually making money for both the reader and the writer. That statement might make me unpopular, but if you read on I will present a better plan. Let me explain.

First, let us get the fact that there is a secret eHow algorithm out of the way. Yes, eHow tries to make how it pays the writers a big mystery but seriously we can tell a lot about the algorithm by observing how various articles earn or do not earn. The assumptions in this post are based on pretty valid observations and assumptions

The first R is for Read. Obviously reading articles is not going to make the reader any money. The only exception is if the reader goes out and does something profitable with the information.

Having an article read on eHow also makes the writer no money. Many articles (like those targeted at other eHow writers) get lots of reads and earn zip.

The second R is for Rate. Rating an article (clicking the little stars) seems to have zero effect on earnings. People hit by the one star bandit sometimes report good earnings and articles with multiple 5*s can be very poor earners. Although eHow talks about “usefulness” being a factor in the secret algorithm, it is highly unlikely that these little stars are factored in since RRCR activity is rampant completely skewing any reasonable rating system.

The C is for Comment. A lot of the RRCR members leave meaningless comments that add nothing to the value of the article. Repeating the title or saying 5*****’s is not going to earn either the writer or the reader a dime. Want proof? This article How to Save eHow Articles has 19 comments but does not earn at all.

Some argue that the comments help with SEO but eHow writers have tested this out by making totally off topic comments with no adverse effect or benefit. Some say that the search engines only look at the first third of the article anyway (though the ad bot seems to look at later steps to find keywords in my experience). I have never seen any evidence that comments add to the earning potential of an eHow article for the writer and it certainly does not make the reader any money directly. (Blog comments are a different story altogether.)

The last R is for Recommend. This involves going to the writer’s profile page and hitting the Recommend button. Since the Recommend button is not even on the article page and all earnings are tied to articles, it clearly has zero effect on earnings. Some accounts have no articles (social accounts, secondary accounts, RRCR accounts etc) and some of these zero point/zero article accounts have positive recommendations. Have any of these zero accounts earned one cent on eHow? I doubt it.

Are there any benefits at all to RRCR? Well some people find it fun and some get an ego boost from getting 5*s and Recommendations. I’m not saying don’t recommend a helpful member or give an article a meaningful comment. Egos are important after all. I’m just saying that these activities have no monetary value and generally our time is better spent elsewhere.

A Better Plan

Bookmark: There is a nice little toolbar that includes Digg, Stumbleupon, Facebook and other bookmarking and social sites. As a reader I do not recommend bookmarking every article you see to Facebook because your friends will soon hate you. However, if you see a funny or engaging or really useful article by all means use those little social bookmarking buttons. The extra traffic from outside the eHow community should help your eHow friend earn. Also there is a big perceived credibility difference between a Digg for someone else’s article and a writer Digging their own work.

Build Links: Are you an established member on a forum or do you have a popular blog? Look for opportunities to promote your friends articles with nice attractive inks to quality content. Getting a thousand hits from a good forum link is going to be worth way more to your eHow friend than a RRCR drive-by.

Here is a good post by Felicia Williams on what follow and no follow links are about if you need more info on links.

Create Webpages: Providing short write ups pointing to ehow articles on sites like Xomba</a> and SheToldMe can actually earn you Adsense revenue for your efforts. Your friends’ articles get a boost from the links and any traffic they generate while you get traffic from links your friends build for you. It really is a win win for everyone.

I hope that shifting focus onto activities that actually drive outside traffic to eHow articles will quickly replace the worthless circles of RRCR that so many new eHow writers get sucked into.

Put the Plan Into Action:

I am looking for 10 eHow friends to join me in webpage creation and link building exchanges.

The deal is real simple.

1. Post into the comments below that you want to partner with like minded people. That will tell others you are committed to try this.

2. Go to my contact form and send me a note committing to exchanging link building efforts.  I’ll need your eHow profile link, and a link to your blog, niche website, or other online content you would like to see promoted.

3. You commit to choosing 10 pieces of my content (my Jade Dragon eHow articles or posts on this blog) and creating 10 good links for my content and I will do the same for 10 pieces of your content. We each move in different parts of the internet so this should place links in places we might not think of or go ourselves.

Valid links for this challenge would include:

a) well trafficked forums with a proper introduction or insightful post to go with the link
b) on sites like Xomba or SheToldMe that require a short write up
c) on a webpage that you control related to the topics of my content and vice versa.
d) 10 different articles linked or 10 different links for the same article. It matters not.

4. Send a report to your partner with links to the 10 links you built. This provides many benefits including:

a) Enhanced accountability
b) Discovery of good places to put future links for oneself or other partners
c) Enhanced understanding of the effectiveness of different link strategies on views and earnings for the writer.
d) Motivation for the partner to finish creating links to your work.

If each of us partnered with 10 likeminded people we would each gain 100 valuable links quickly AND we would each create some online content to benefit our own residual income streams for a long time to come.

Who wants to get started today?

I also suggest reading  Web Writing For Profit: the Triple A Solution for more strategy as you build websites and links to content.

Tagged as: Article Marketing, ehow, freelance writing, linking strategy