Ehow.com has been catching a lot of heat for their shady practices for several months now. I wrote a previous article discussing all of these issues which can be found here.
I received an email today stating the following:
Hi sherwinator,
Payments have been issued for January 2010 earnings and you may notice that your “Payment Issued” is higher than the amount in your “My Earnings” compensation console. The reason for this is that the issued payment includes historical earnings from eHow’s UK beta website on top of your January article earnings.
However, please note the standard payout rule for the Writer Compensation Program applies to this payment cycle. If you earn less than $10 in a month, we will carry over that amount and pay you once your earnings exceed $10, or at year’s end in the event you do not reach $10.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us here.
Best Regards,
The eHow Team
So I went to look at what EHow decided to pay me for the months in which they practically stole my content. Two dollars and 60 cents. That’s $2.60. You have got to be kidding me. I make slightly less than that per day from one of my popular articles. And keep in mind this is for about 6 months worth of missing compensation.
Does ehow.com think that they are going to get away with this? I’ve already heard a bunch of people are starting to consult their attorneys, and I definitely smell a class action lawsuit coming on now. Good luck to Ehow. Punitive damages, here we come…..
Written By: The Sherwinator
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I really hope that people over at eHow are gonna come together on this deal. If for no other purpose than the let EVERY writer on the internet know how we have had to bend over and well I am too pissed off to even finish. The more I think about this the madder I get and I am sure that later tonight I will probably be banned.
One of the problems with class action law suits recently is how the lawyers have been making all the money (millions of dollars), and consumers get crumbs.
I don’t know if you caught the report on NBC Nightly News on the Ford tires lawsuit (from the tire problems couple years back). The lawyers made tens of millions, while consumers got a coupon for a few hundred only if they bought a new Ford car that same year!
Needless to say, the coupons were worthless for the vast majority of people.
.-= The Digital Life & Tools Blog´s last blog ..Latest Windows XP Update Crashes Computers =-.
Here are the facts. EHOW is one of the buggyest sites you will ever write on. The publisher wizard they use is constantly breaking down, eating up half you articles steps, or freezing your articles in limbo so you can’t get at them and no one can read them.
Communication sucks. Day in and day out writers are asking the same questions and getting no answers. And when eHOW does respond, it is usually a warning threatening action against you and your account. No PR skills what so ever.
But as others have already stated on here, the UK site, eHOWs secret brain child, has split the community of writers right in half and has everyone going at one anothers necks. Secret, yes, their secret UK site. They secretly mirrored all U.S. writers articles onto both sites, without any of the writers permission to do so. they then made money off those articles, thousands upon thousands of articles, and told no one. When someone stumbled upon their secret site, it all came to a head.
EHOW insisted their UK site had caused no one any harm, and for a lenghty time, refused to answer any of the writers questions. Many writers took down their articles, many left the site. Others threatened to leave, and finally ehow agreed to remove all articles of U.S. writers from the UK site. In the meantime, many U.S. writers found their once thriving articles had stopped earning. That’s right, eHOW, by mirroring the usa site over to the UK site, had messed up the url’s, so many LOST A LOT of money during this time. Ehow then insisted all U.S. writers articles were no longer on the UK site, and that the profiles would be removed.
As it turned out, many articles were removed, but many more were not. Not only that, but all newly written articles here in the USA were still being cloned in the UK site. So where are we today? Well, the articles are finally removed, but ehOW still refuses to compensate U.S. writers for all the actually money they lost while their articles stopped earning. EHOW instead came up with what they called a generous compensation, not for money lost from all this, but for what they deemed the value of each writers articles were during the months the entire UK thing unfolded.
Say what? So many writers generous compensation came to under $10, many more recieved under $!. But how could that possibly be? We are talking about writers who had hundreda of articles and who lost hundreds of dollars? Easy to explain, the valus of the U.S. writers articles were not worth spit during that time, because eHOW killed their article links when they mirrored the two sites together. They continue to refuse to compensate U.S. writers for all that lost income, even though eHOE profitted from those articles. Remember, U.S. writers were paid nothing for their articles while they were on the UK site, but eHOW had ads on those articles and pocketed all the earnings.
The latest news is that outraged writers are demanding that their UK profiles, placed their from the U.S site without the writers permission, be removed. EHOW has said NO. U.S. writers are also demanding the right to edit those profiles, which contain their personal informat. Again, eHOW today has said NO. I would strongly recommend that no one sign up at that site.
And yes, I realize many will question what I have said here, so I will let you judge the evidence for yourselves. Go to eHOW right now, click onto community, and then forums. Now click onto the EHOW SITE NEWS forum, and then onto the UPDATE ON EHOW UK SITE AND U.S. MEMBER ARTICLES. It is all right there within hundreds of posts, and you do not have to be a member of the site to go in and read the remarks left by members. The further you read, the uglier it gets. Many of the most vocal and outspoken posts have been deleted by eHOW, but there is still plenty there to read. http://www.ehow.com/forums.aspx?plckForumPage=Foru
Good job covering the big eHow scam. You got $2.60 more than I did! I’m glad you are keeping this in the public eye. That’s the only way to expose this scam, warn others, and hopefully stop it altogether.
.-= Kimberly´s last blog ..eHow UK Scam Part Deux: Or, When is an Answer Not an Answer? =-.
Hello, I am know as THE PREACHER and I am educating people to all of eHOWs dirty games. Let’s talk a bit about those famous eHOW sweeps, shall we. Ever wonder what is really behind the madness? Yes, some are articles that are out of eHOW’s guidelines. Yes, some are poorly written. But many of these that get deleted are top earning articles. That’s correct, they are top earning articles, that have been in place for several years in many cases, only to overnight no longer fall within eHOW’s guidelines. How to hell can that be? What is really going on here?
Glad you asked. There is gold in your deleted articles, pure gold – for eHOW. I know, how can there be gold for eHOW in deleted articles. First let’s look at just what your high earning articles have accomplished. They have matured and rank high on the search engines. They have developed a following, in as far as online articles can develop a following. They have built up comments and views. And then eHOW comes riding in on its white horse and deletes em. All that hard work and effort is gone, right?
Don’t bet the family farm on it. EHOW wins on several fronts, and here is the secret to their dirty little game of deleting high earning articles. First, even though your articles get deleted, they are not totally gone, something very important remains behind and in eHOWs control – your URL’s. And therein is the gold, because eHOW takes your articles URL’s and redirects them to pages full of links to DS (DEMAND STUDIOS) so all your hard work and effort are now going to serve eHOW’s cause, promoting their DS articles.
These redirects are eHOW’s free bread and butter. The DS articles are already paid for, so all traffic they redirected to those articles is extra money in eHOWs pocket. An added bonus, they are now making money off the DS article ads and not paying for your articles any longer. It’s win win all the way around. Another bonus, all your deleted articles comments. EHOW uses the strength of those comments to help drive the DS articles even higher in the search engines rankings.
This is why eHOW is never clear as to why your articles get deleted. In many cases, there is no reason they can clearly state and point to. Oh yeah, we deleted your top earning articles so we can make a pile of money off of them – nope, don’t expect them to answer truthfully on this one. But now you know, redirects of deleted articles spells gold for eHOW.
http://ehowscams.webs.com/ follow the latest news on my blog EHOW SCAMS AND DIRTY TRICKS, where we show the darker side of ehow.
great, thanks for the links and your comments!
Just an ehow update, check out the newest cartoon super hero, E-HOW MAN in THE ADVENTURES OFF E-HOW MAN.
Part one; THE BRAINS BEHIND THE EMPIRE
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6322033
Part two; THE UK SCANDAL COMES TO LIGHT
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6325757
No one takes eHow seriously. I am trying to figure out a way to exclude them from google search results since eHow is so worthless. Quit writing content for them.
Is anyone doing a lawsuit now? they owed me over 1200 bucks. then erased my account.
they aren’t going away unless we expose them. people need to know they are crooks.
Paul
Hey heywood. There’s actually an ehow article on it. If I knew where they were located I would put a brick through their servers. Pure evil they are. I have no pity for you worthless writers either. So much information on that site is downright false. It disgusts me.
The articles on eHow are virtually useless. I have yet to see one that that disseminates useful, accurate, and relative information. There are several articles that are downright dangerous in that they offer incomplete information or disregard safety concerns. The site is nothing more than a shill for advertising revenues. They are a nuisance when one is trying to find actual credible information via Google. It is not a surprise that they would rip off their “writers”