Writing Articles - Making Money

On April 5, 2010 eHow stunned members by announcing the end of the Writer's Compensation Program or WCP.  During the eHow UK fiasco eHow community managers Julie and Rich assured members that the WCP was not going away.  I have very mixed feelings about eHow cancelling the WCP and giving writers the boot. Julie claimed that eHow's decision to stop the WCP was partially based on their inability to salvage the publishing tool.  I doubt that's it.

Writers are still compensated for the articles that are on eHow, but no one can add more unless it's done via Demand Studios.  Some eHow writers were automatically approved to write for Demand Studios.  I am pre-approved to write for Demand Studios although I'm skeptical about writing for a company that displayed such disregard for their writers. Hindsight is 20/20.  Demand Studios likely planned to end the WCP at eHow to quite some time, but they failed miserably when it came to transparency.


Essentially, eHow sent a pink slip to thousands of people, but it wasn't their first shady move. Article sweeps were suddenly routinely done to get rid of articles that didn't conform to their rules, but they failed to tell members about the changes or notify anyone that their articles were on the chopping block. 
 
Now, eHow writers need to start looking for other revenue share sites like InfoBarrel, HubPages, Seekyt, and other up front sites like Seed or Textbroker.   

To all of the writers who are still reeling from the news my sympathy goes out to you.

(note:  eHow stopped paying members for their articles on May 5, 2011)

Look out freelance writers, eHow is at it again. eHow announced today that it is stopping the Writer's Compensation Program or WCP, the part of eHow that enabled people to become freelance writers by earning residual income on how to articles. Now, what has been a long-standing argument within the eHow community -- whether or not eHow would stop the Writer's Compensation Program -- is over. I hope that somebody won.


For the past month, I have been sick and had surgery. Being out of commission is not recommended when you are writing online content and tracking the goings on of internet companies. For many, eHow was a steady stream of income and a semi-guaranteed writing gig that just folded. eHow writers are cancelling launches of updated eBook editions and many are probably scrambling to understand just what no WCP means for them.

Now that eHow has cancelled the Writer's Compensation Program, the only way to publish on eHow is through Demand Studios (DS). Demand Studios is eHow's parent company who also publishes on a variety of websites. The catch is that not everyone gets to make this transition. The amazing thing about eHow's WCP is that literally anyone could write and there was no editing process. It looks like some eHow members will be pre-approved to transfer to DS, but others will have to go through their application process. As for me, I have no idea because I still have not received an email that all of this is happening. I have not been able to get email from eHow for some time, but I also cannot edit my profile to update to a new email. Those of us waiting are supposed to receive a message on eHow's PM system.

Perhaps now every eHow writer will cease being a lousy "member" are start being a writer. That would be pretty cool.