eHow Ebook Review

Will provide a review on this free site soon. I have read this guide and I do recommend it. It takes quite a different stance on how eHow works than the others though; you have been warned.

I will review this free site later. I have read this and do recommend it. I think this is far more appropriate for the new members than most of the others I have read.

I will provide a review on this free site later. I have read all 101 tips and I do like it. It is not the most comprehensive but it's free and it's a good supplement to the other sites and ebooks.

I will review this ebook later. This ebook is not free. I have read parts of this ebook and while it seems well written it focuses heavily on keywords. I would recommend this for someone who has begun writing, gotten the hang of the format and is now ready to make the most of it.

I will provide a review on this ebook later. I haven't read this ebook yet, but have heard many great things about it. I've also seen some less than stellar practices from some affiliates for this book though, so I'm not really sure if they were encouraged by the reading or not.

Information about how to sign up for ehow and how to fill in a good profile. While I would call this extraneous, as I do not feel any person reading "How to Ehow" would not already be a member, it is very well written. It's very thorough and not simply a broad overview of what to do. It's a fine addition for those who are totally unfamiliar with the site and easy enough to skip over, due to very detailed headings, for the partially experienced.

Photo usage. If you've ever been to the ehow forum, you know I'm a stickler for photo copyright. I hate plagiarism too, but we have a machine that deals with that fairly well. What we don't have, and what I've yet to even see, is a way to find people stealing images. It's pretty easy on some, as they say "Images by Google" or "Google.com" in the photo credit section - we all know Google isn't a photographer, but I digress. Janet covers photo usage very well and gives a few websites to find them for free and tells how to get images of the proper dimensions and of 'quality'.

Because I'm such a stickler, I'll tell everyone I use http://www.sxc.hu for all my photo needs. There are lots of free photos. Please remember that free does not mean you can just go in and grab it. Please register for an account, it's free, and download images properly for use. Also, read the copyright on the photos; some artists/photographers require you notify them or ask permission before using the image. If you do not hear from them, don't use it!

Janet also offers a great tip of how to organize your photos. I've heard of this technique working, though it's hard for me.

Videos are mentioned. This is an old and unavailable thing now. This has recently been brought back, but I skipped over it since when reading it was not available. Having never used the video feature I'm not quite sure of the in's, out's, etc. of it, so I can't give much of a review on it.

Then we get into the real MEAT of how to write for ehow.

Great advice on writing the introduction. She states what frame she is using for reference as well as her own background information on why her way is suggested. I like it. It's the same technique I already use and that I've noticed many other successful eHowers use.

The much neglected and sometimes overused "Things You'll Need" box gets a mention. If I'm not mistaken, one of Janet's examples is to make applejacks(and I don't mean the cereal). Most importantly, don't overuse this dang box! I'm so tired of seeing "Common Sense" in that box.

Janet stresses making your reader happy. As much as I agree with this and think that that SHOULD be the basis for how much we make, I've seen it go totally bass ackwards more often than not. Sometimes it seems the cheaters, the spammers, the people writing half an article and leaving out the most important steps are the ones making the most money. Suffice it to say, these people upset the honest people of eHow and when the people of eHow get upset, you'd better duck for cover. While these people may see some benefit from their ways for a while, they will eventually get swept out the door. Don't be tempted to give in to the desire to cheat and make a lot right out the gate. This is a process. Do you want $100 now or do you want $500+ every month for the rest of your life because you took the time to write lasting content?

Spellcheck... do we still have this button? I write everything in Word so I haven't noticed, especially since the spellchecker on eHow was REALLY poor and told me all kinds of real words weren't real words.

Step four's Keyword bar has a mention. I'm not sure this is still relevant. This used to be used for the internal search engine, but now we use Google Search. These words also don't appear as meta tags in our HTML coding for the search engine and they don't appear anywhere on the page. Again, extraneous for now, but after examining the Beta(I hate that Beta by the way, if the eHow Powers That Be ever see this), I have noticed that those appear at the bottom of the article as "Tags". They would be appearing on the page.

There's no way to know if that's going to be held and come over into the true version, if that's ever even released, but just in case, I'd say take the Keyword box seriously. Janet's advice for it seems dead-on, though we'll never know for sure until eHow staff actually tells us if we should use spaces, commas, underscores or hyphens, etc.

Page 48 and we finally get into keywords within the article(not that Keyword box). That's right, everyone who wants to make a 'quick buck' or thinks they can get some fast cash. There's 48 pages of lead up before you can even figure out what to do with an article to optimize it. Don't take this job lightly!

Sadly, the mention of keywords is in passing and the important links get a little poke. Your on your own to figure out how to really use those links.

Related articles. This section was apparently broken at the time of the book's writing(8/2008). It is not currently broken, though I have heard in the forums through our staff that this section may not be lasting. I also don't recall seeing it on the Beta page.

Resource section. Don't turn this into spam. Not to say that's what Janet suggests. In no way does she, I just want to stress that because I'm tired of seeing people abuse this and it sometimes seems that we might lose all the nice things we have if people keep abusing their privileges.

I can't say I support linking to your own profile page or another profile page of your other writing sites. With the extent that some people already overuse the Resource section I'd hate to see even one more link tacked onto that list. People might be curious about the writer, but I don't think the resource section is the place to introduce them to yourself.

Promotion seems to be Janet's big point. And boy does she have promotion down. There are only a few websites that are mentioned that I could think of to use for promotion(Bukisa, for example) and those came out after the writing of this ebook.

Requested articles. I'm not sure if these get the same amount of attention as they used to. During this books writing it may have been pretty important, but right now I think it's just an overrated feature. It seems to be unmonitored and often has titles on it that are already in use(detrimental now with the one of a title rule) and poor spelling and/or grammar. I saw a few requested articles swept off the site when they did the clean sweep in May.

LOVE the suggestions for overcoming writer's block. Very comprehensive. I'd add visit the forums. I believe when this was written that the forum was a little more quiet. I've heard it mentioned(wow, does that sound like it was just hundreds of years ago, or what? How times move in the internet.) that the forums were so easy to catch up on after being gone for weeks. You could catch up in just an hour. I leave for a couple hours to shop and eat and it takes me three times as long to catch up. Topics of conversation, especially in the Community Chatter forum, often spark ideas for articles. What one eHower can't do, you can and they want to see it.

Page 71. Alright, we're back to keywords. It's still just a direct to poke at those sites about and you're kind of on your own on how to use them, but Janet gives great advice on how to use the keywords that you DO find.

Janet says she spends about 2 hours a day on ehow.com in whole. LIES, JANET! Don't worry, if you ever want to see her she's usually prowling around the forums, playing games with the rest of us common folk and putting up with us as we force her to hold such fun things as the eHow Graduation votes.

Ads: I don't believe we're supported by Yahoo ads. I don't know if we ever were, but for now we are supported by Google, Vibrant, Radlinks and ehow's affiliates or ehow's own ads. Some people include affiliate links in the Resource section and create a fifth adblock down there.

Janet is one of these people to use affiliate links. Having read some of Janet's articles I know that she uses these tastefully and in small numbers. Not every article needs one and no article needs fifty. Janet's got some great advice for finding good affiliate programs. Ethics matter, Janet's got it, and she tries to encourage her readers to have it.

Finally, become an affiliate for Janet. You can figure out how to do it without reading the ebook... but why would you? Morals, dammit, morals! Let Janet teach you them!

All in all, there are a few things that need updated in this ebook, though a few of them I'm not sure what to think about, such as the Keyword box. There's some information I think could be expanded on, such as how to use the keyword finding tools.

I would definitely recommend this. It's lacking in few areas and covers some important topics in a very detailed and comprehensive manner. Be warned, this is not a short read, but eHow is also not a quick buck. You'll be happy you had this.

At $15 it's a steal. Click here to buy. Janet is coming out with a new ebook so get this now or it will cease to exist!

Pages 5-7 discuss pretty extraneous information such as earning potential being unlimited(how that became one whole page I have no idea), how to sign up for eHow, choosing your screen name, your avatar and making friends. It's a rather broad and generalized view of how to do these things. Since I can't see anyone but someone already registered for eHow buying an ebook about it, I don't see how general information would be useful. More detail for the stray non-eHower would be far more useful. It is stressed not to spam your friends though, which I see as a bonus.

Two pages discuss how we earn money. He appears to prescribe to the theory that ad clicks equal earnings. Since there is no proof that this is the ONLY way we earn money on eHow and since eHow staff says there is an algorithm, I'm against stating this as if it is fact. Especially stating it as fact when the author is so new to being on eHow.

Throughout the rest of the ebook it is mentioned that "Doing _____" is against the rules and eHow can and will delete your account for it. Well, that's not mentioned for click fraud, which is far more important than the other things where the warning was added.

Keyword research is lacking in a lot of information. I would actually just recommend Anthony Delgado's free keyword tool which was really great. I don't use it anymore since I can just eyeball most things, but even now not using it, I remember that it TAUGHT me how to do it.

What keyword information is there is ... fairly useful. I say fairly only because of the numerous typos that made it rather difficult to understand the descriptions from step to step. That's saying a lot since I already know how to use the website that was mentioned.

Title choosing mentions snagging niche article titles so that others can't have them. I don't support anyone advertising for that. That was one of the fears of them implementing this and by saying snag them, you imply, don't worry about writing a good article with it, just do the bare minimum at first so no one else can have it then rewrite it later.

He mentions obtaining 'free images'. Well http://www.sxc.hu is NOT completely free to use without giving credit(which is sadly how this author used these photos in his own articles). SXC submitters have the ability to say you need to attribute the work to them or that you need to notify them, etc. Each photo has its own usage permissions attached. There is no mention of this in the ebook and based on how the author uses photos in his articles, I'm not sure even he was aware that he might be stealing photos.

Introduction, encourages repeat of the title in its entirety as your first sentence. I can't say I support that. It looks cheap to read Title: Learn how to Brush your Hair Intro: "Learn how to Brush your Hair. Have you ever wanted to brush your hair right?" Edit: After having a conversation with the author, this may not have been what he intended to convey, but it IS what the wording conveyed even to me, who knows that is inappropriate. If you can't work it in seamlessly think about a different title or different keywords. Working your title into the intro seamlessly isn't THAT difficult and teaching people to do it well would be far more beneficial than just state your title as your first sentence.

Current publishing glitches are mentioned in the ebook (in detail) as if they are commonplace problems. In reality, this particularly type of problem has only cropped up recently, as such the details would be inappropriate at a later date. That said though, it is still a very good idea to save your article in word before trying to publish it.

The keyword section in step four is mentioned as 'fluff'. While that may be true now, I would still encourage people to fill it in appropriately with the words they used in the article. In the beta that was released for some to view these words appeared at the bottom of the article as meta tags. If that is held when the full release comes then those keywords could become VERY important.

Four categories are pinpointed as being the highest earners. This is granted as only 'from experience', but I don't even see the point of it. Many people write articles in topics they don't think will earn well and are amazed at what they see. Quite frankly, based on the author's article list, I don't see him writing much outside of these four categories and can't put much faith in his objectivity. On a side note, the four he chose are not the four I would choose, as those topics have earned very little for me.

Resource section - encourages resource spam by stating you can do 'whatever you want here'. There is no mention made of the fact that these resources need to be related to the topic at hand. An article on debt consolidation should not have a link to your Cashcrate referral on it(actually nothing should, since Cashcrate is a big scam and dangerous). That's spam and it can get your article put back to draft. It also seems to encourage excessive use of the resource section for affiliate links. I, personally, think three or more looks tacky and I have actually started ignoring resource sections on eHow because of people who use so many. Refer to Janet's ebook if you want to see how to really make use of affiliate links.

Encourages checking ads to make sure they are relevant. This is good, except the time frame told is far too short. One hour is not long enough. The ad bot can take up to 24 hours to come to some articles.

Encourages not logging into ehow at all to combat writers block. That's the only suggestion given and I'm not at all behind this. Based on the fact that the author hasn't been on eHow for even a full month and is EXTREMELY scarce(advertising his ebook was the first time I'd noticed him and he only had 17 posts at the time) in the forums, I wouldn't trust it.

I have found the best way to combat writer's block is to hang out in the forums(it's also good for combating boredom and hanging out with my peeps :P). We have all types of discussions that when someone asks a question you suddenly go, oh, I know how to do that, let me go write you an article.

Also encourages spying on people as they surf the internet in real life. Can you say CREEPY? I HATE when people stand over me when I'm on the computer. If I wanted you to know what I was doing, I'd tell you. I also just get uncomfortable with people standing behind me for extended periods of time. I do hope the author intended for this to mean seeing what family and friends are searching for and not just going to the library or café and watching people.

There are also innumerable spelling and grammar errors that drove me bonkers while I was reading. If you are going to release an ebook you need to go over it with a fine tooth comb(and even a large tooth comb could have caught most of these errors) to make sure everything is perfect.

I couldn't, in any good conscience, recommend this book to anyone. If you want to charge $20 you need to offer more than 23 pages of generic information and some incomprehensible points. The price is now $10 and this person still has it up for sale. It's utterly ridiculous to think you can sell people this for money, but I guess that's why I did a review of it.

I've been told his review 'gives away too much'. Well, quite frankly, a reviewer is allowed to give away some 'spoilers'. It proves the author knows what they are talking about and there are TONS of things that are left unmentioned. I tend to pick the most basic things to comment on, things that anyone in the forums would know immediately. This ebook... it was all common knowledge and vague at best. The way I 'revealed' here is actually more informative than the ebook itself.

Want to know more about the book? http://makemoneyonehow.com/ultimate-guide-making-money-ehow/ This is his blog about it. I am not hotlinking this, because I don't want to give it a search engine boost with a good backlink. He doesn't deserve it; you just need to know why not to fall into the trap.