The quest to create valuable content can be maddening. How many times have you gotten what you figured was a great idea for an article and then found out no one cares? For me – too often.
Here are the 10 eHow articles I thought were great ideas when I wrote them but that have not earned a single cent.. Maybe the nice links to them here will magically lift them to new heights (or not).
Articles on How to Blog
#1: How to Build Links for a Blog with Xomba – Kind of a new article that is not drawing traffic …yet? (I can only hope). Maybe everyone with a blog knows about Xomba but I really doubt it. I can tell you that Xomba is the 4th single largest contributor of visitors to Innovative Passive Income even though I have not done a whole lot there yet. So if you blog or write on eHow, for goodness sakes sign up now for Xomba and start writing about stuff that you can use to build links to your work.
#2: How to Increase Blog Comments – Ok so bloggers don’t tend to click ads. Increasing blog comments has been covered lots of times already. Still it seemed like a good idea, but apparently one with little market.
Articles with Not Enough Advertisers
#3: How to Collect Monopoly Stock Certificates low traffic but the bottom ad block includes the best ad for the topic www.scripophily.com and another similar service plus a penny stock ad and a useless filler webcrawler ad. What I do not understand is what breakdancing and hair care have to do with a stock certificate collecting article?
Related Ads
- Breakdance Step by Step ?????
- Short Hair Styles
- Lighten Dark Hair Dye
- Hair
- Great Hair Day
- Gray Hair Products
#4: How to Collect the Dow in Stock Certificates has the same issue as it’s Monopoly cousin. I was hoping for some blue chip ads to match the blue chip companies listed, but instead the article gets penny stock ads, blank stock certificate ads and this odd list of more hair ads:
Related Ads
- Clean in Place
- Short Hair Styles
- Great Hair Day
- Hair Magazine
- Makeup for Hazel Eyes ?????
- Black Hair Cuts
#5: How to Reduce Electro-stress Through Feng Shui – No one apparently cares about this obscure topic. There are a couple related Feng Shui ads, but overall there seems to be a shortage of advertisers in this niche.
I really believe the problem with these three articles is a lack of suitable ads in the Adsense system. Moral? Write articles with enough advertisers!
Articles for eHow Writers that Can’t Click Ads
#6: How to Enhance Existing ehow Articles – 36 comments against 101 reads.
#7: How to Save eHow Articles – has been seen 100 times to date with 19 comments.
These articles are ones I never expected to earn on anyway since the target market of eHow writers is prohibited from clicking on ads. I wrote them as a public service and to build my online visibility among eHow writers. At least I’m getting what I expected.
Articles on Topics No One is Looking For – Too Long Tail
#8: How to Create a Coin Navy has great targeted high value ads about coins and precious metals. The one boat ad is understandable and there is not much I can do about it.
No one is going to search out a Coin Navy because it is a novel idea so they need to see a link to this article to go read it. I’m pretty sure some targeted links are the only reason it gets any traffic at all.
#9: How to Save Time in University with Academic Overload and
#10: How to Get Out of College Faster with Summer Courses have wonderful targeted education ads, but little traffic. I even used the Summer Course article as a test in an eHow forum thread about the effects of changing the article name, but even that did not get it traffic from eHow writers or search engines. I think these two are examples of long tail article writing gone way TOO long.
Had I properly applied the lessons in WriterGig’s book on writing for eHow to these ten articles they likely would never have seen the light of day or now mock me with a fat zero in the earnings column.
Let’s learn together – this article has a companion thread in the eHow forums.
Which articles stink for you? Why do you think they stink?
Comment with the stinker as your link. It can’t hurt your article to get another link, and I’ll give you at least one extra read.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
How to Enjoy a Concert is my worst paying article. It was the first article I wrote for eHow. I published it in July 09 and it has only made 8 cents. The ads are about concert tickets so that’s fine. The article is a stinker because it doesn’t get much traffic and the traffic that it does get isn’t likely to click on the ads. If you are looking to enjoy a concert, you probably already have your concert ticket so you won’t be clicking on any ads. It was a fun article to write but it is pretty much an opinion and it is not well written. The intro is too short and some of the steps aren’t actionable. I’m actually surprised that eHow hasn’t deleted the article in the sweeps. I would fix it if I thought it could be profitable but I don’t see that happening.
Ally, I think you nailed it on why this How to Enjoy a Concert article is not performing well. I’m guessing the ads that are there are not high value either. I see related articles on the top left that are very specific “How to Enjoy a Concert at XYZ”. I wonder if they get more traffic? Smaller potential audience, but more long tail.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
I have noticed ads in many of my articles that do not do well do not match up with the article. And many of my recipe ads seem to attract weight loss ads. And I have read where several writers at ehow have complained about the same ads. I think as soon as the viewer sees those ads it drives them away.
I think the UK thing has to play some role as well, though I still don’t fully understand how. I know traffic to many of my articles stopped once those redirects went in.
Here is an experiment I think I am going to try, go into some peoples articles, and see which words attract which ads. I was amazed when I did this on a very limited scale on my own articles. For instance, whener I would use the word guitar pickups it would get a truck ad attached to the word pickups. That is great if my article was on trucks, so if we could find a way to steer the right ads to our articles, I think it would be a huge bonus.
I’ve never heard of guitar pickups but I can see how advertisers might want to put ads where the word pickups appears. Is there another phrase that says the same thing without using a powerful keyword like pickup?
As for recipes – I’ve got the same problem. Who is the advertiser for How to make a Lettuce and Cheese Sandwich? Maybe a diet supplement seller if we are lucky.
By PM MrBB suggested changing the title of the Coin Navy article to include “Coin Collection” That is a great idea to focus the title more that I will implement. For this article the ads are fine, it’s lack of traffic so it needs to get found on the search engines. Thanks MrBB.
Diane Cass suggested in the eHow Forums to change the Feng Shui article around to help the confused ads. Great suggestion that I’ve just implemented. Will see how that works. Thanks for your insights Diane. Your analysis is better than mine on the problem.
Jade: The title is ultimately most important as I would guess you know. I use the free Wordtracker tool for traffic keywords and Google adwords keyword tool for advertising keywords. Some other people do this, some don’t I’m sure. It works for me. :-)
Good tip on the word tracker tool. thanks for sharing that.
Nice post, Jade.
Here is one of my stinkers:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5284348_possible-birth.html
I loved writing about it, and I think it’s great information, but it only has 47 views. I think the title is not search engine optimized. I think people, especially pregnant women expecting their first, would enjoy this article, but I feel it needs a better title to draw them in.
The ads are good, so that’s a good start!
Any other insights, Jade?
I don’t know what Hypnobirthing is but that is what your article seems to be about. I see the top ad in each block is for a hypnobirthing business. Also I see ads for Johnson’s Baby, Nestle Baby, a Lamoze class, private 3D ultrasound. Very nice targeted ads to the reader, but the readers are not finding your article because the title is so vague as you correctly guessed.
I searched Google with the very natural question “How to Have a Hypnobirth” and nothing with that title come up in the first couple pages. I also searched “How to Use Hypnobirth” and “How to Use Hypnobirthing for Childbirth | eHow” came up as the second site.
I bet you could rank quick and your traffic would go way up if you just changed the title to “How to Use Hypnobirth” or “Hypnobirthing” and repeated the phrase in the introduction, perhaps like this “More and more expectant mothers are asking – how to use hypnobirth? This article explains how to use hypnobirth as part of your labor and delivery. ”
Also add hypnobirth to your keywords. Right now even eHow does not know what your article is about because it is suggesting birth control articles in the top left and missing the “How to Use Hypnobirthing for Childbirth” one I found on Google. Just my two cents – hope it helps.
Thanks, Jade!
I am going to give it a try.
I don’t see the new title in the search results yet but a search for “How to Use Hypnobirthing brings up various eHow articles first. You need to now build a few backlinks to outrank this DS writer article – should be easy as no one is trying to help that article out. http://www.ehow.com/how_2077776_use-hypnobirthing-childbirth.htmlXXX (to break the link)
Maybe comment on a few pregnancy blogs using a “Hypnobirth Fan” and your article url for your identity. Also consider writing a Xomba article on How to have a Hypnobirth and linking over to the eHow. That should put you on top of the search engines. Also add the article title one more time into the intro somewhere to drive home the point of what it is about.
I built you some links in this comment too. Hope it helps.
Please follow any tip given in this article only after consulting your doctor. Feng Shui
Wow – I can’t get 30 readers in 2 months to an eHow article on Feng Shui but I can pull a blog comment with a mention of Feng Shui within 5 hours of the first time I ever use the words Feng Shui on Innovative Passive Income. Who said we always need eHow to help drive traffic?
Really Helpful Article by Diane – required reading:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4696224_choose-search-engine-keywords-title.html
The thread on the eHow Forums about this post:
http://www.ehow.com/forums.aspx?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat:eHow+GeneralForum:102Discussion:5dfe11ec-13e5-43a5-ab3f-9eb80c0882a2
Pretty much all of mine stink, I think. I’ve only been on eHow for about 3 weeks. I think this one is way too long, which seems to be a recurring problem for me: http://www.ehow.com/how_6004537_rich-spare-change.html
3 of my 7 published articles on eHow are about manicures, but some of the related ads for this one are Chinese Massage, Manicures, and OPI pedicure….and I have no idea what keywords would have generated that.
Thanks for dropping by Jillycakes. No one is looking for for the key words in your title – “rich spare change”. Also every word around spare change is at 5 cents per ad = no advertisers. The only similar word worth anything is “loose change” so replace every “spare” with “loose”.
There are several famous books that advocate what you are talking about though. Automatic Millionaire might be the biggest and here is another http://www.finishrich.com/lattefactor/
Try refocusing the article on a key phrase like Automatic Millionaire worth $1.17 with 18,100 monthly searches, or look for a better keyword. If you choose Automatic Millionaire get it into the Title, URL and intro 3 times.
The discussions about investments in the later steps are pulling decent value financial services ads. However there are too many steps. Consider making a second article on how to invest small amounts of money with that material and leave this one to how to save the money. You can link the two through the related articles.
Oh and check your keywords – Ehow thinks you are talking about how to change a spare tire! See how your choice of words is driving that?
Hope this works for you – we can all learn together.
I haven’t had many articles that didn’t make money; the ones that didn’t were specific to a holiday or certain time of year. Those were my first two articles, and I’ve thought about re-writing them to generalize them a bit more.
After that I decided to write more general articles about subjects I know most people are interested in health, spirituality, childhood disorders, culture, music, etc.