The eHow writers waited for the promised compensation for having their work used on the eHow UK site – and today it arrived. Is anyone happy about the generous eHow UK compensation? Apparently not. The eHow forums are buzzing with comments; (almost) none of them positive. We will see how long the comments last since eHow regularly deletes threads and posts.
We will never know what the real deal is with eHow UK because of the secret earnings algorithm. A little transparency would go a long way with the writers. If eHow wants this issue to go away they REALLY need to come out and clearly explain the calculation to the writers.
It also looks like the eHow redirect “fix” seems to be screwing up the search engine rankings costing the writers even more earnings. My earnings have fallen by about 50% in February since the “fix”. Of course the site is still trying to complete the redirect (they are working on it though).
So with all these problems, many writers report getting an average of about one day’s earnings for 6 months of eHow UK cloning.
Julie posted this link into a forum thread http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ehow.com+ehow.co.uk/ to support the idea that the UK site is getting way less traffic then the US site and therefore the writers compensation is generously estimated.
A little more research – one click away from the chart – shows where the traffic estimates come from:
“Compete’s clickstream data are collected from a 2,000,000 member panel of US Internet users (about a 1% sample), using diverse sources. Using a rigorous statistical normalization methodology, Compete creates precise projections of the behavior of the entire US Internet browser population on monthly and weekly basis. In addition, Compete provides daily estimates of share of consumer attention garnered by the top Internet sites and the velocity of change of this attention. ”
Writer and 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) is supposed to have opinioned that there are three kinds of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics. Using Compete data based only on a sampling of US based web traffic is misleading since the typical American will not select a site ending in .co.uk over .com alternatives, but a British internet user (or a surfer from Malaysa, Hong Kong or many other place with historic UK connections) will often prefer a UK site over a US based site.
The statistics show only US based traffic – and ignore the 95.5% of the world population not living in the US. OK, the rest of the world does not have the same penetration of internet that the US does, and many of them can’t read English, but still there are way more potential readers outside the US then inside the US. ehow (and its writers hopefully) gets paid based on global internet traffic to eHow, not just US based traffic. If the estimated eHow UK compensation is based on the misused data used to justify the eHow UK compensation then the compensation is likely wrong.
My take right now? If the eHow UK site is this financially unsuccessful, Demand Media should pull down the eHow UK site right now. Better to just kill the eHow UK site before it becomes the public relations and financial death of eHow and Demand Media. If the UK site is a success, pay the writers fairly.
A very good post by Cruncydata on eHow can be found here.
Your comments are welcomed. Is the eHow UK Compensation enough? Comments are not moderated (except for deletion of spam) so feel free to speak your mind.
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You’re right… I’ve read a lot of posts on eHow expressing concerns about the UK site. In general, it doesn’t sound like the uk bonus made up for the loss in earnings.
Welcome and thanks for making your first comment. I’m seeing a lot of comments out there that this is an insult.
Hey Jade- You’re right, other than the same couple of cheerleaders, not many people are very happy about the compensation. Partly because it was treated more as a bonus, and a tiny one at that.
I think the most insulting part was that they claimed there was no percentage- that it was handed out based on popularity and quality, which doesn’t appear to be able to be judged unless every article was read and evaluated. And compared. Then Julie posted that it’s even more tricky because it’s based on what UK people think is popular and useful.
Kind of hard to imagine that they could get all that info from UK people, assess each writer’s work and then decide a payout, when they can’t even figure out how to remove articles from the UK as was originally promised.
What a fiasco. Your site looks nice.
Thanks for coming by Tammy. I enjoy connecting with you as an eHow friend. Useful and Popular does not have much to do with converting traffic and profitable.
Hi Jade, Thanks for commenting on my ehow events blog. I am still in shock by the small amount of “uk compensation” and I should really calm down a bit before writing a blog post about this. $2 only for my compensation is like them laughing in my face….it really sickens me to see such a low amount and just today, the $2 seemed to be a decrease in my daily earnings. How convenient is that huh? Well you have a wonderful blog website here and maybe you will get tons of followers if you put a followers button on here. Thanks again.
Your ehow friend,
Tammy
http://helpwithyourwebsite.com
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Jade,
My earnings went from around 150 a month to a sudden drop to only around 78 in November. I had no idea of the ehow uk crap so I started adding articles like a madman and built the earnings back up.
However, My major complain is the publishing issue at this point as I literally have around 80+ articles stuck in unavailable mode, some since 1/26, and all ehow can say is we are working on it.
Are there any other sites that actually earn decently? I ask as I tried firehow but the payouts sucked so am wondering if Ehow is really the only game in town.
Steven
Steven – So sorry to hear you are caught in the publishing issue. If you can put out that kind of volume you can make serious coin on Constant Content where it is not unusual to make $50 on a single article. You can tell I’m a big fan of Constant Content – see the blog post just before this one for a lot more information. In fact, I’m working on a couple articles to sell on Constant Content right now.
I haven’t been on eHow much lately due to business (new baby!!) but when someone PM’ed me this morning about the UK compensation issue (she was happy with her UK bonus payment of more than $40) I went to see what mine was. It was a very nice bonus, but if it had not been, I wouldn’t have thought much of it either way.
When it comes down to it, eHow could completely change the algorithim on the US site to pay us each far less than we’re earning now, and be completely within their TOS in doing so. My feeling is, if the Uk site is extremely successful, maybe they would increase the WCP to pay more. But there is never any guarantee of specific payment — as we all know — so rather than complain, writers can simply write more, or take their work elsewhere if payment on eHow is not satisfactory.
Thanks for weighing in Maria – I’ve got a lot of respect for you (and I’ve benefited from your book). Congrats on the new baby :) I didn’t know.
If this were a BONUS, I’d agree completely with Maria(WriterGig). However, it’s NOT a bonus. eHow told us clearly in the video blog that our earnings were adversely affected by the UK site, and that they were going to compensate us for that. So this is compensation we EARNED, not a bonus because the company was doing well or just likes us or something! There is no way that these explanations can make sense with what has actually happened.
Agreed AJ – it’s not a bonus at all. It is (likely) only part of what eHow owes writers for lifting the writer’s work without the writer’s consent.
I considered it a bonus because I never noticed any decline in my earnings due to the UK sister site,
“When it comes down to it, eHow could completely change the algorithim on the US site to pay us each far less than we’re earning now, and be completely within their TOS in doing so.”
…and, You are OK with this?
Their website, their rules. If I want things on my terms, I write my own sites and blogs.
Last I checked, IB claims rights to work submitted to the site. No rev-sharing content site will be perfect.
I wanted more but did not expect more, there is a difference. It is what it is and I just have to keep writing and on more than one site. You never know when the ship could change course or even sink.