Online writer/blogger Chezfat has been doing some great analysis of the eHow Algorithm and the effect of the eHow UK disaster. Among other things, Chezfat’s stats show a big drop in earnings for articles in the eHow Home and Garden category. Articles are doing poorly both on a month over month basis (over many months) and on a income per view basis.
In addition to Chezfat’s good work, I’m going to throw out another explanation for the earnings in Home and Garden to tank, first a word about the secret algorithm. eHow contends that articles earn based on many factors including “usefulness”. Now clearly “usefulness” is pretty hard to quantify – what is useful to me might be old news to you. But if you look at “useful” from a business perspective it is simple. ”Useful” = $$$ eHow has no one to convert and they are not trying to help the world, they just want to make money. As a writer looking for residual income, $$$ are the point too. So where does the money come from?
In my estimation Adsense ad clicks make up nearly all of the eHow secret algorithm. Views, ratings, comments, recommendations are all meaningless from an earnings point of view. Here are a few reasons why:
1. Articles in the Sexuality Category don’t get Google Ads and they don’t earn anything at all regardless of views, ratings, comments or any other measure of “usefulness”.
2. I’ve had articles with high value keywords publish and earn a big chunk in the first or second day, then do nothing for weeks. I suspect this is a result of a bot clicking an ad.
3. I see the reads vs clicks on article over at Xomba and earnings at eHow follow the same patterns.
4. According to eHow the views represent unique IP addresses to prevent people artificially driving up views. If you track a website like this one on Google Analytics you see lots of repeat traffic. I agree that the views represent unique traffic because I’ve gone in and viewed, edited and viewed to check ads on some articles many times but these extra views don’t seem to count (a new article may show 1 view for days even though I’ve looked at it multiple times).
So assuming that ad clicks are really how we earn (and PLEASE don’t go committing click fraud either now), why would the earnings on home and garden articles drop off so much?
eHow Home and Garden Blog
Is this not a nice juicy button to press while ignoring the text ads?
And if you ignore that big box maybe these will tempt you:
Or maybe these links will interest you:
I’d bet none of these links lead to WCP writer articles.
And a newer addition hurting writers in all categories:
There are also a ton of other places to click on every page leading off to eHow 100% owned content.
Now compare the eHow site to an effective squeeze page. (I have nothing to do with this squeeze page site and I’m not endorsing them – just using it as an example.) Everywhere you click on the page leads to the sales section. Go there then click the back button to come back here (you got to see this!)
So are distractions are one of the reasons that ehow earnings are dropping for writers in some categories? I’m not saying eHow is making a mistake with their page design mind you. In fact I bet they make more money leading readers all over their web property. Readers that the poor writer brought to eHow in the first place with a good title or an effective backlink.
What do you think?
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Interesting observation, it makes a lot of sense. I have quite a few home and garden articles on eHow, and my earnings haven’t been too great, so maybe that is part of the reason.
Interesting analysis! I don’ t have many home and garden articles so I wasn’t aware of how earnings have been affected in that category. Makes sense though. I think it’s still worth writing at eHow but the more aware we are of how the site is working, the better our time can be spent. Thanks!
Ya it’s not just home and garden. They are advertising LiveStrong on some categories too. Before it was big Trails.com ads. Different distractions, same effect. I like Xomba because there are fewer distractions. Just your content wrapped around your (50% of the time) adsense ads, a bunch of your other articles to tempt the reader, and some closely related content to help readers wander around on Xomba some more. All content there belongs to writers like us, no competing Xomba owned content like eHow keeps throwing up.
Extremely interesting article. I, too, think that the more we know about eHow, the more we can benefit. I have seen a drop of about 33% in my earnings in the last three months (no home and garden articles). I have both of my adult children writing on here. One has stayed the same and one has dropped. Thanks for your insight!
Thank you for a well-written article. It supports what I wrote last month in my blog http://glorybug-thebigpicture.blogspot.com/2010/02/ehow-earnings-and-algorithyms.html
about how it appears that eHow might be cannibalizing eHow articles with its ad strategies.
You nailed it – amazing how we are all reaching the same conclusion. eHow is using Ads for sister sites to drain our traffic and we are feeling the pinch.
So how are earnings going to be effected by Demand Studios taking over the editing?
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Great question. eHow staff claim that the DS revenue share model is the same, or similar or just as good as (take your pick, they offered all three answers). These same people also claimed that there were no planned changes to the WCP.
The removal of writers ability to edit Revenue Share articles is going to hurt the earning potential. In contrast a site like Squidoo encourages regular editing and improvement.