I’ve known for a couple of months that something major was in the works at eHow and Demand Studios. I just didn’t know it would be met with such passionate outcries from some of eHow’s contributing writers.

So.

Today, eHow announced that Demand Studios is the only platform that writers can use to contribute articles to the eHow.com site. They sent out letters to this effect this morning. From what I have gathered from other eHow writers–though I could be wrong–there were four versions of the letter. One was sent to writers who already write for Demand Studios, telling them to write all of their eHow articles via the Demand Studios platform now. A second version was sent to people who had previous applied (but were not accepted) to Demand Studios, telling them they have been accepted as a Demand Studios writer, and can immediately begin writing via Demand Studios. The third version said that the eHow writer met the requirements to migrate to Demand Studios, and should wait for further instruction (via email) after the migration is complete (these writers are able to continue writing eHow articles on eHow.com until the writer migration is complete). The final version of the letter regretfully informed the writer that they did not meet the requirements to become a Demand Studios writer, and (because of the new rules) cannot publish articles on eHow.com anymore.

The basic requirements to be accepted to migrate from eHow writer to Demand Studios writer were very simple: 1) Have at least 5 articles published on eHow.com 2) Have at least 80% of your articles accepted at eHow.com (which means that no more than 20% of your articles were removed during the article sweeps), and 3) You must be a current registered member of eHow’s Writers’ Compensation Program (WCP).

You must meet all three of those guidelines in order to be accepted as a Demand Studios writer during the eHow writer migration.

What does this mean to your articles that are currently on eHow.com? eHow assures its writers (via the mass emails) that your articles will remain on the site, and you will continue to earn revenue on those articles (provided that you are a member of the WCP). Some angry eHow writers have decided to instead pull their articles off of the site. I don’t know why they would prefer to earn $0 rather than to continue earning residual income from eHow, but to each his/her own….