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Is eHow Failing Its Users?

x3xsolxdierx3x | Sep 21, 2009 | Views: 386 |

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While it is not so uncommon to discover a wealth of well-written articles that pertain directly to making money on eHow, there has been a simultaneous exodus of some of this platform's most dedicated, long-term, and passionate members for a variety of reasons. The uncertainty surrounding such website elements as clear established guidelines and payment allocation, coupled with their poor customer service and glitch-ridden article submission/revenue sharing platform, make eHow a significant liability to freelance writers. Whether these writers are new to eHow, or have been writing passionately since this platform's emergence, recent experiences have caused me to become skeptical and, in fact, worried for those who are contemplating investing a significant amount of time and effort into writing and providing content to them.

Clearly eHow did something right, however, since its officially launching in March of 1999, that was worthy of its scaling the website rankings to where it boisterously mingles with such internet superpower elites as Faebook, MySpace, Craigslist, and Amazon. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, eHow appears to have lost their focus of providing a quality platform of community and support to the very users who have made eHow what it is, and has become, for all those years. While my own personal experiences alone could serve as a warning against eHow, one has only to explore the surface of their user feedback forum in order to gain insight into the mostrosity of user disgruntlement spurred by a plethora of bugs, glitches, and faulty customer service, at best.

At this time, either you are rolling your eyes at my suppose conjecture, or you are vigorously nodding in agreement. Rather than convey myself as a seemingly disgruntled, former longterm eHow freelance writer, my goal with this article is not to sabotage eHow, but rather, to shed light on my own personal experience (and, the noted experiences of others) in order to serve as a warning of sorts. Perhaps you have made thousands of dollars while utilizing eHow to the extreme, and in that case, I am extremely happy for you. Unfortunately, while no platform is, or ever will be perfect, there has been a massive conversion of eHow membership that have feelings that are similarly parralel to my own feelings of eHow neglect and abuse.

Perhaps they are frauds operating under the complete veil of secrecy that the internet offers, however, my heart can't help but go out to fellow freelance writers who have invested a significant amount of time and effort into the eHow platform, only to find that their well-written articles have fallen prey to yet another round of massive website-wide 'article sweeps'. While I have never been so lucky as to have my hard-work completely eliminated from the face of eHow (or any platform, for that matter), I would deem eHow, shady at best, when they blatantly disregard their own members by operating under unclear guidelines, only to delete a mass array of articles with little to no feedback.

Even as SPAM is clearly an everpresent force requiring eHow's constant proactive consideration, lengthy detailed posts, by users in their feedback forum, paint a picture of sheer cruelty and disregard for these same users. On one occasion, I can recall a long term eHow user detailing how frustrated she was after a recent round of 'article sweeps' claimed upwards of sixty of her well-written articles. With a plethora of platform glitches, it is hard to tell whether these deletions occured as the result of some internal error, or 'glitch', or were the result of a deliberate website-wide onslaught of deletions in order to safeguard quality. In either case, it was a drastic combination of unclear guidelines, and nearly inexistent user feedback, that caused me to deem the eHow platform a liability to those freelance writers who are truly serious about forming a longterm relationship with any online website platform.

To conclude this article, I would encourage you to post a comment regarding your experience with the eHow platform. Has your user experience been a positive one? Has eHow presented you with an unearthly wealth of glitches and bugs? Did you find Info Barrel as a result of your continued escalation of frustration with eHow?

Tags: ehow alternative; info barrel writer; freelance writer; make money writer; writing to make money;

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Comments

bestmommy

Sep 21, 2009 9:24am

Yes, I've had articles deleted on ehow and then realized that I shouldn't put all of my eggs in one basket. I've reworked them and now they live here on infobarrel. In fact, ehow deleted my highest paying article without a clear explanation, so they lost a chunk of money as well--hard to figure that one out....still don't know what the violation was. Infobarrel was recommended by an ehow friend and I'm also testing triond. I see many ehow articles that don't even start with "how to" and wonder why they allow them to stay on the site. I also wonder if each article is actually deleted by a human or do they use a computer program to weed out the ones that don't comply with their guidelines? And yes, I've dealt with glitches like hitting save and being bounced to an error page and having to post the info again. Very frustrating. I have to admit though that infobarrel has its share of problems too, but they usually get back to me with answers to my questions pretty quickly to let me know they are already working on fixing the glitch.

retireyoung

Sep 21, 2009 9:53am

I have only ever heard of complaints about this website. It is only going to work in Infobarrel's favor.

galleryofgrace

Sep 21, 2009 11:03am

Please explain why you say they "launched in March of 2009", when there are many writers who have been there for a few years.

x3xsolxdierx3x

Sep 21, 2009 1:30pm

I apologize...that is March of 1999....my mistake.....*corrected*.....

betterlifemt

Sep 26, 2009 8:14am

I am writing on E-How and Infobarrel. I am earning on my articles in E-How so I decided to resume and do both. Like bestmommy said, I am not putting all my eggs in one basket. :)

Rocky_Huber

Oct 8, 2009 8:55pm

I have been writing on eHow for about a year and a half. I have had a dozen or so articles deleted during the sweeps during my time there. There has never been any clear reason given for any of the articles that were eliminated. It's even worse now; I was never even notified about the last three articles eHow removed. Communication has given way to confusion and anger. It's a very negative environment over there, and it's too bad, it was a great site as recently as last year.

x3xsolxdierx3x

Oct 8, 2009 9:52pm

How has your experience been thusfar with Info Barrel, Rocky_Huber?

WriterGig

Oct 9, 2009 10:52am

While it's important for eHow to maintain a quality library of articles without spammy, promotional, poorly written or fluff pieces, the way in which they are performing article sweeps and deleting some decent articles in the mix while neglecting to respect the writer-members' feedback on their method is unfortunate. In fact, they are upsetting many of their best writers and most loyal members -- never a good idea.

goodselfme

Oct 16, 2009 7:09pm

You have looked into my thoughts since your post hits home. I am leary, to say the least about eHow. So many secrets make me wonder what is being shifted and what is actually being dealt with honestly. I still write on both IB and Ehow, but will hope the $$ come up on IB in time. TX for your great post and sincerity to help others with your wisdom. thumbs up!

Deborah-Aldridge

Oct 25, 2009 8:09pm

The problem I have is not so much the articles deleted, but the ones they refuse to delete, no matter how many times they are flagged or how many complaints they get about the writer. I wrote a blog post about it that explains what I mean.

http://debsdailythoughts.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/preferential-treatment-of-writers-who-violate-editorial-guidelines/

jcmayer777

Nov 9, 2009 7:10pm

You can read many blogs by furious writers about eHow. I think the biggest problem they have is the complete lack of communication. I'm glad to be right here, on Info Barrel.

MasterDayton

Nov 13, 2009 9:04pm

I've wrote for both sites, and others, and while I've made some decent money off my eHow articles, I have a lot of issues with the "sweeps" and find it amazing that consistently when one of my articles is taken down:

1) Two other articles on eHow on similar topics suddenly appear to try and take the ranking of the one I worked to build links to, and

2) The listing for my article doesn't go away - but gets re-routed to other articles or inappropriate topics. Nothing like finding an article I bragged about to family members was deleted and then led to a list of eHow articles that started with the topic of "phone sex." Completely inappropriate.

So they still make money on the search engine positions my deleted articles achieve - I just don't get any of it.

This has been very frustrating because as others have mentioned, eHow was a really solid site very recently, and I've written over 200 articles, although now 30 have been deleted, and most of those replaced by a similar and newer article.

I'd deal with a fair shake, but at this point I can't see why I should invest my time into a site that treats writers like that and takes advantage with them. Enough's enough for me.