The Great eHow Experiment

Just over six months ago I joined eHow. I did it because a friend invited me and it looked interesting. If you aren't familiar with eHow, it's a website filled with thousands of articles about how to do things. How to fix your fix a flat tire, how to make your own soap, how to write how-to articles. It's the go-to place for how-to articles.



My friend who invited me to join sometimes writes articles for them, and she was encouraging me to do so as well. Whe explained that you can make a lot of money writing for them and that it was easy. I joined... but promptly realized that I couldn't think of anything that I knew how to do. Plus the site was overwhelming. All the good ideas seemed to have already been taken and the advice I got in their foroms was almost as complex as the site itself. There was a lot of talk about SEO's and CTR's and actionable verbs. I decided I would wait until I had more time to figure it out. Then I forgot all about it.



But then about a month ago and a half ago I decided to give it a try. And it turns out that it could be very cool. Here's how it works:



Step 1. You write step-by-step "How to..." articles.

Step 2. eHow and google put ads on your articles.

Step 3. People looking for DIY projects or car advice run a google search and find your article.

Step 4. IF you've written a good article and tweaked it following the advice in the forums, the ads your readers find will be ads for products they want. So if you wrote about how to build a flower box, your readers will find ads for lumber and fertilizer and seeds.

Step 5. People click on those ads and you get a little money from each click.

Step 6. You get paid.

Step 7. You get paid again.

Step 8. You get paid again. Because your article stays posted on a major website that gets millions of views, you'll get paid every month for as long as eHow exists and people click on ads.



How well does it work? I don't know. I think that it depends on how much you write. But there's a boatload of people on their forum that are making hundreds each month and some that are making thousands each month. And the genius is that your work keeps earning money even if you just decide you're done writing and walk away.