Freelancing at Home

eHow removed the ability to change titles on existing content. Not only did they basically ‘fire’ all their freelance writers and toss them into the wind with a minimum of notice, but they are now slowly removing the control we were supposed to be left with of the currently published articles.

After telling us for more than a month not to edit - it was only advice, not a command, but since the publishing tool was beyond broken and was locking articles in the abyss of who knows where, it was ‘strongly recommended’ and you didn’t have a choice in the matter if you wanted to keep the article - eHow has still not come in to tell us it is safe. I had one article that has earned nothing since being published - which is strange since an article with the same keyword is earning steadily every day - just pennies, literally, but still almost every day. I realized the problem might be the poorly thought out title. I interrupted the keyword with another word and decided to take my chances with the publishing tool - the only thing I had to lose was some bad ads since there was no money on the line yet.

Well much to my surprise, the article editor opened with no problem. I even switched to expanded mode without any trouble. I even saved and published it without a problem. The problem? We no longer have control over the titles of the articles we wrote for eHow. The titles are locked in and with no ability to write new content, that means you’re stuck with a crappy title if you wanted to fix it somehow. I’m sure this was done to spare them the trouble of ‘losing’ titles for Demand Studios since they hate duplicate titles - if the titles created are static then eHow always knows what exists.

Next thing you know, they’ll completely remove our ability to put links in the resources section, remove the ability to edit the Items Needed and then we just won’t be allowed to edit the article at all. Maybe even the option to delete will be taken off the table. Just wait, eHow is slowly taking away our power as freelance writers - the powers they promised us we would continue to have even after eHow closed its doors.