Thursday, March 18, 2010

Saying Something Nice About eHow

It's been too long since I've updated this blog and I truly apologize for that. You might say I've been practicing the old rule of not saying anything at all if I can't say anything nice, I guess. My intention was for this to be an encouraging place where ehow writers could trade info about their experiences and hopefully learn from one another and get more exposure to their profiles and articles on the site. I'm sorry to see that is not happening for the most part at the current time.

Ehow has a lot of things to work on if they want to regain the trust of their WCP writers, meaning the writers like myself and probably most of you who follow this blog. We've signed up for the Writers Compensation Plan where ehow pays a percentage of ad revenue generated from our articles. This pay plan differs from the articles submitted by Contributing Writers who are paid a flat fee per article, which I've read to be around $15 each.

I've received .50 of extra compensation based on an unknown formula that ehow used to determine how much income may have been lost due to our articles being published on the UK site. I've read in the forums that the extra compensation was very minimal for most. Since I don't make payout every month I wasn't expecting much so I guess 50 cents is better than nothing, although I believe the actual lost income is higher.

Back to the WCP versus the CW. There is definitely obvious favoritism shown toward the Contributing Writers. Contributing Writers don't seem to have any problems getting their articles published while we are struggling on a daily basis to outsmart the bugs and greasy mechanic that so often appears after hitting the submit button. I'd like to take his wrench and....well, you get the picture. And that's one of the biggest problems right now, getting the picture to stick when I submit articles.

I've found some welcome solutions in the forums that have helped me get several new articles posted. I'm not happy with them as they are, since the pics are lacking but I just wanted to get them out there and will go back to add pics when that glitch is fixed.

How to Not Be Fooled on April Fool's Day
How to Use All the Cereal in the Box
How to Make Your Own Friends and Family Olympics
How to Make Fast and Easy Apricot Walnut Spread

One person that has been extremely helpful in posting publishing workaround tips, words of ehow wisdom and general good humor is Shirley Philbrick. If you're not familiar with her check out her articles and helpful forum comments. Does this qualify as saying something "nice" about ehow? Although, ehow as a company/website has been lacking greatly in communication and responsiveness to it's members' concerns, the ehow community has some inspiring members that are true assets to the site.

The question now is, when will the pic glitch be fixed and how will we know when it is fixed. Wouldn't it be wonderful if ehow sent out emails to notify us when bugs are fixed and encouraged us all to come back to the site and try again to post new articles? I'm getting the feeling that the WCP peeps are not very welcome anymore. It seems like ehow is trying their hardest to make it so difficult to add articles, setting us up for failure and hoping we'll just give up and walk away.

So what do you think? Were you happy with your extra UK compensation? Do you still feel welcome on the site or frustrated and defeated?

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