eHow.com is Cleaning House
Recently, eHow did a second sweep of articles, removing many, many eHow articles that aren’t quiet up to eHow par. I had one article removed. I agree with the ruling. It was one of my early articles, and wasn’t up to my own standards, let alone eHow’s. One prolific and high-earning writer said she had twenty-seven articles removed! I’m not sure if that was the highest number of articles removed, but it’s quite a lot.
Several of the eHow writers were expressing anger and frustration about having their articles removed from the site. I wish they could just take a step back and realize how very important it is to have this sort of system in place. If eHow let the quality of the articles on their site go, then the site’s quality and integrity would take a quick and sharp nosedive. I personally like the idea that someone is making sure that the articles follow how-to format, aren’t spammy, and are well written. If this wasn’t the case, then readers would eventually stop visiting eHow, chalking it up as a site full of spammy articles written by bots or unskilled writers.
Your opinion?
I agree with you. It’s painful to see them deleted and losing any little income stream is a real kick. Writers also need to understand that the articles they are making money on, ehow is as well. This means it is not a greedy move on their part. They are simply and genuinely wanting to further the good reputation of ehow. The more people can come to see ehow as an authority site to learn how to do things, the more money we all will make in the long haul. Being someone who’s in this for the long haul, I’ll take my licks and be appreciative of ehow’s efforts to make their site one worth bragging rights “I write for ehow!”. I want this to mean something when I say it!
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I would have to say that I’m glad eHow is cleaning up their site, but I can see how people with deleted high-earning articles might disagree. I’ve seen A LOT of really bad articles, with spelling and grammatical errors galore. Interestingly, some of these articles have high ratings and comments (likely to some eHow ring). But I’m glad to be writing for a site that has some standards.
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I agree that articles need to be removed due to not meeting standards. However, I wonder about what the standards are, as I, also, have seen many articles with bad grammer, bad punctuation, insufficient content, and so short as to not even qualify to be called an article, with no pictures. I know a lot of people put a lot of effort into articles, as I do, (still working on form and quality), but see that many people who are getting a lot of ratings don’t necessarily produce a superior article, so I don’t understand how it all works, really. I enjoy doing the articles, and have to see this less as a competition and more as an opportunity to help people do things and share information. I can’t compare myself to someone else, as I might get discouraged. I need to learn what brings higher earnings, and employ those techniques the best I can. In that way, if I lose articles to a clean sweep, I will know I did my best, and that is all I can do.
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Why did I not even qualify to join? I tried to join and it said I did not qualify? How do you qualify?
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Cheyelynne, did you set up an account for yourself, or are you saying you weren’t able to set up an account at all? (Not sure if you mean you were told you don’t qualify for setting up an account, or if you were told this after you wrote some articles. Either way, I’ve never heard of anyone being told they “don’t qualify” to write for eHow.)
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