Gee thanks. eHow closes Writer’s Compensation Program
Posted: May 5th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: Misc. | 17 Comments »
[Update 2] Reports are that offers are being posted now via the eHow Writer’s Compensation Panel. Also, if you didn’t get an offer, and the email you received is different than below, you probably won’t get one. Read past the break for the alternate (read: we’re not buying your articles) version of the email eHow sent.
[update] No article buyout numbers in my control panel yet. I’ll update this with some buyout vs. earnings numbers if I get them.
A sign that Google’s Panda update(s) did turn a few heads over at Demand Media, here’s the letter they just send to eHow writers regarding the eHow articles for which they’ve been getting monthly earnings payments.
Gee thanks eHow – A buyout offer!
Hi XXXXX,
We want to personally thank you for the time spent writing articles for eHow.com and helping contribute to the growth of our site. As a valued writer who’s written articles for eHow, you know we’re a site that is focused on excellence and delivering the best possible experience to our readers.
As you might remember, we stopped accepting user-generated articles under eHow’s Writer Compensation Program (WCP) in April of 2010. However, we kept articles published by members like you so all contributors could continue earning money for their work.
As eHow.com continues to evolve and become a leading destination for trusted information, we are working hard to ensure all content is professionally created and editorially vetted. After much consideration, eHow has decided to close the WCP and remove a number of user-generated articles from the site beginning May 5, 2011.
Now, what’s exciting for YOU is that we are extending attractive offers to a select group of great writers to purchase the articles they’ve written for eHow so that those articles can be vetted through our current editorial process, which includes professional fact checking and copy editing. Needless to say, your great work has put you in this special category!
Beginning today, your WCP console will have the details of your offer. The offer includes the purchase price of your articles, which is based on historical earnings. You will have until May 31, 2011 to accept our offer.
By accepting our offer you are agreeing to sell all the rights of your articles to us. We would own the articles from that point on, and will have the ability to review and revise them to ensure they meet our editorial standards. Following the acceptance of the offer, you will receive three payments: one for regular earnings paid in June for money earned from May 1-5, and two equal installments for your buyout offer, which will be paid by June 15 and July 15, 2011 via PayPal. However, if you choose to decline the offer you will receive your last WCP payment for money earned from May 1-5 by June 15, 2011.
If you agree to sell your articles, we ask that you immediately remove the articles from any other sites that have published them. If you decline the offer, articles will begin to be removed from eHow.com. However, you will retain complete control of all the content you have written and will continue to have rights to publish them anywhere. Additionally, if you choose not to accept our offer, you’ll have an opportunity to retrieve your articles from us between May 17th and May 31st, if you wish to retain them for your records. Further details for article retrieval will be shared through your WCP console.
We truly value your contributions to eHow and know that the site would not be what it is today without people like you. Thank you again and please feel free to contact support@ehow.zendesk.com with any questions you may have.
Best,
eHow Team
Here’s the altnerate email. Seems this is the version you if they don’t want to buy your articles:
Hi XXXX,
We want to personally thank you for the time spent writing articles for eHow.com and helping contribute to the growth of our site. As a valued writer who’s written articles for eHow, you know we’re a site that is focused on excellence and delivering the best possible experience to our readers. As eHow.com continues to evolve and become a leading destination of trusted information, we are working hard to ensure all content is professionally created and editorially vetted.
As you might remember, we stopped accepting user-submitted articles in April 2010. At the same time, we also closed the Writers Compensation Program (WCP) to new participants and stopped accepting articles through that program as well. Though we stopped accepting user-generated articles, we kept legacy articles that had been previously submitted and published online so that readers could continue to find and enjoy that information, and participants who opted into the WCP could continue earning money for their work.
After much consideration, eHow has decided to close the WCP and remove user-generated articles from the site. We’re doing this because these articles were not vetted through our current editorial process, which includes professional fact checking and copy editing. Your article(s) will be taken down from eHow.com this month. If you are opted into the WCP you will receive final payment for earnings through May 5, 2011, during the regular monthly payment schedule in early June. Even though your articles will no longer appear on eHow.com, you retain all ownership of your articles for use on other websites.
We appreciate the time you’ve spent writing articles for our site and want to make it easy for you to have a record of your contributions. You’ll have an opportunity to retrieve your articles from us between May 17th and May 31st, if you wish to retain them for your records. Further details for article retrieval will be shared through your writer’s console.
We truly value your contributions to eHow and know that the site would not be what it is today without people like you. Thank you again and please feel free to contact support@ehow.zendesk.com with any questions you may have.
Kind Regards,
eHow Team
Interesting play on their part. It will be interesting to see what sort of offer they actually make you.
Indeed. I can certainly see their motivation and it’s probably a good strategy in the long run. That’s doesn’t help the people who invested significant amounts of time writing for eHow though – one of which, I fortunately am not.
I’ve been with ehow since 2008, and just got my email about the offer to purchase. I’m still a little unclear on how to find my offer. Is my account and earnings page considered my wcp page? How do I find out what the offer is?
I just received the same letter from eHow… like you I did not invest too much time in writing articles for them but I enjoyed getting an extra 15 bucks here and there. Do you have a link to the WCP console? Since they took away the “my account” feature, I have no idea how to even check for my offer.
Yes, here’s a link to the panel.
https://myarticles.ehow.com/SignIn.aspx
I just received this email too. They want to offer me $18 for all of mine, one of my articles earned me $159 from last month alone. $18, I don’t think so.
Wow, that’s shockingly low! I sympathize but would encourage you to keep creating content on your domain. If your article earned $159 in one month, you’re obviously doing something right. Time to do it on your own terms
I’ve yet to see an offer on my console, but I also can’t get to the “My Articles” tab; there’s some sort of programming error that won’t let is resolve. Where are the offers appearing? Is anyone else have a login issue?
Amanda: There’s some text (in yellow, I believe) at the top of the page that explains the situation. Within that text is a link to the offer page. Note, according to the letter, no all accounts will be offered a ‘buyout’.
Thanks. Is it at the top of the first page when you log in? I’m having major issues with getting to the My Articles page and am frustrated because I did get the email saying I should be on the lookout for a buyout offer. Oh well, I emailed tech support and will keep on them, I suppose. Thanks again and good luck on your offer!
Thanks for the link. My offer was $30 so I’m not sure if I want to sell or not. Most of my articles didn’t earn much, but one has earned $90 total. Not sure if it’s worth it, though I don’t know where else I would get income from that particular article.
Mary: Thanks for sharing. I suspect many will take the offer, because as you say, there aren’t many other options to publish content. Even if you do publish your articles on your own site, it’s unlikely you’ll get the same exposure to Google that you got with eHow, and you may be even be ignored by Google for duplicate content issues.
Aha! Got it to work and I am pleasantly surprised to report my offer was decent, $740. Of course, over the past few years, I’ve made maybe 4x that with the WCP, but $700 vs. $0 is kind of a no-brainer.
I was a bit upset since they are dropping the WCP. I was earning about $3600 yearly, and although they did offer me $2108, it still doesn’t make up for the residual income in the long run.. nevertheless, I decided to take it and not have to worry about it anymore.
My offer was for 21,195. I had 800 articles with them. Needless to say, I accepted.
Wow, that’s quite a sum Ina. Congrats on the huge lump sum! How much revenue were you getting per month on your 800 articles?
Thank you, I was making about 1200.00 a month in residual income from eHow.