My eHow Experiment: The Results are in
Last week, I started an experiment at eHow (which I wrote about in a previous post). Today is the last day of the experiment, and my results are in.
To recap: The entire time, I didn’t promote in of my articles in the eHow forums. I didn’t comment or rate anyone’s articles, because I didn’t want the reciprocation.
The results:
Apparently, article ratings and comments have no bearing on eHow earnings. Not only were my earnings not negatively affected, but they actually increased by 15%. This increase in earnings might be (in fact, probably is) because existing articles were “aged” a little longer. I did receive income on some articles that were only a day old. Views did not suffer, either. Although my views were down slightly (due to not promoting within the site’s forum), I still received a pretty significant number of views on my articles (including those that were only a day or two old.
Knowing this, I can now dedicate more of my time to other projects, and not worry about spending time promoting within, or worrying about my ratings and comments. I know that I’ll have a steady stream of passive income rolling in from eHow while I concentrate on my blogs and sites. That’s welcome news to this already-busy mama. 
Honestly, I don’t know how people do it because I don’t have the time nor the inclination. Great post, I will have to take a look around your site! (Found you through the link you posted in the forum to this page!)
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Glad to see this. I’m not much of a social networker, and I’m glad to know that it shouldn’t affect me negatively.
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I used my twitwall link as website since everyone on ehow can find my Alrady ID. LOL
CYN this is really intersting. The qustion I have though is 2 weeks is not enough time IMHO> IN march earnings were just starting to rise after a drop from ehow changes and glitches. AT least that is my summation of what happened in those months.
I think to do this experiment for a muchlonger time might yeild different results. Also the unknown factor is who is the reader looking atyour article…. Habit vary if you know what I mean.
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@alrady I haven’t written about it (yet?) but I have actually continued the “experiment” since this March 3, 2009, blog post. I don’t RRC, and I don’t participate in the nightly “articles of the day” post in the chatter forum. Since then, I’ve seen a huge increase in my earnings. So we’re going on more than four months now, with no negative effects from my not participating in reciprocation.
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