EHow.com is a fun little Web site, a digital encyclopedia of small, user-written how-to guides, offering thousands of tips. Think Wikipedia, but instead of reading about the biology of apple trees, you learn to make apple pie. With the motto “How To Do Just About Everything,” eHow offers a comprehensive search engine and toolbar with which users can search for exactly what they need to learn to do. Instructions are clear and concise, and can be delivered by using text, images and even videos. At a glance, eHow.com seems to be just another Web site among the countless others floating around the web, but after clicking on a few links, you’ll see that there is potential to be accessed though the site.
Unlike Wikipedia, there is money involved. Article authors get paid, with pay scaling in proportion to the number of views each article has. With more than 250,000 articles in the database, 180,000 of the articles are professionally written while the rest are written by eHow’s members who can share their personal knowledge with the 17 million people who visit the site each month. This gives an incentive for improved articles which raise the overall quality of the site and attract more visitors. The Web site itself makes its money with advertisements, and increases its revenue with more visitors.
Based on the Top 10 eHows listed on the home page, people are seeking information on a wide variety of topics on eHow. The No. 1 article is titled “How to Grow Potatoes in a Garbage Can,” while the No. 6 article is called “How to Survive Total Economic Collapse.” “How to become an NFL referee” is No. 10 on the list, and if users go to the legal section under “categories,” there is information ranging from fighting a DUI to contesting a child custody ruling. All of this may seem random, but popularity is calculated by the number of hits and comments the article receives, so the Web site essentially caters to what visitors need most.
The list of available guide subjects is nearly endless. Learning to whistle with your fingers, that’s pretty easy. How about a guide on the best way to throw a wet T-shirt contest? Instructions on being less shy? Tips for writing a solid prenuptial agreement? A tasty recipe for alligator jerky? No matter what was thrown at it, there was something.
You probably will not find tips for illegal activities. You won’t find advice on how to shoplift or make a homemade crystal meth lab. However, you will find tips on how to notice shoplifters in your store or how to break a meth addiction.
Then again, you’ll also find how to pass a drug test, so the editors aren’t perfect.
The basic outline of each guide is the same despite the huge variety of subjects one can find. A brief introductory paragraph, a list of needed materials (if applicable), a list of step-by-step instructions, a few extra tips and warnings on the bottom, a list of related guides and perhaps most importantly, user comments. The comments will tell you what other users think of the guide and how useful it is. Best of all, unlike sites like Youtube, the comments do not consist primarily of flaming, trolling and spam.
Ratings are certainly helpful because the guides themselves are hit or miss. Some give long, detailed, step-by-step instructions, while others only give little bullet point tips. In most cases, you have to wade through multiple guides on your question of interest before you find the best one. Sometimes there isn’t a best one, in which case you can mix and match advice from each.
The home page of the site features a Today’s Top How To, and a recent one was titled “How to Make a Pet’s Halloween Costume Safe.” With an average rating of 4.5 stars out of a possible five, the article depicts an image of a Chihuahua dressed as Snow White, complete with a black wig, pink crown, puffy sleeves and a yellow skirt. A short introduction next to the picture is followed by a toolbar that offers the chance for members to post comments on the article, add it to favorites, print it or even flag it. Below that is a set of numbered instructions, five in total, which not only helps pet owners choose appropriate costumes for their pets, but also gives them advice on how to fix whatever isn’t safe or comfortable. A section for “Tips & Warnings” gives further information on how to ensure the advice will be a success, and a resources section provides a link to the Humane Society of the United States. At the bottom of the page, there is a section for comments from other members who read the article. All of this provides an in—depth look into what pet owners can do to ensure that their pets’ Halloween is a pleasurable one.
The article is written by Melissa Maroff, who, according to her member page, is a Writer/Editor from Los Angeles and an expert on pets. From her page, you can also see her profile picture, recent articles that she has written, recent comments that have been left about her articles and comments that she has posted on other members’ articles. With so much information, eHow is not only a site that provides information to visitors, but also one that acts as a social-networking tool. It is even possible for members to add each other as friends.
I decided to test the value of the site for myself. Since many of these are not pragmatic to test—I will not be buying and registering a motorcycle in South Korea in the near future—I went simple: Learning to whistle with your fingers. There were seven guides on the subject, all saying basically the same thing in a more or less detailed way. Pinch your thumb and index fingers, leaving a small gap. Cover your teeth with your lips and rest your fingertips on your teeth. Curl your tongue in a specific way, and blow hard. I immediately spit all over my monitor.
Then came the discovery of eHow’s biggest limitation: with a teacher or friend giving advice, you’re getting feedback and correction, but here, you’re given the steps and if you can’t master them, you’re out of luck. The seven different guides tried seven different ways of explaining tongue placement, and none of them worked for me. Only after experimenting on my own for an hour, placing my tongue in 100 different yoga positions, could I exhale a wheeze that resembled a quiet whistle.
Don’t even get me started on trying to blow bubbles with bubble gum. That was a miserable failure.
The Web site does have video how-tos, which are really useful for some things. Unfortunately, there were no in-mouth bubble gum cams, but I did learn how to make a neat smoke bomb from a gracious young miscreant.
All in all, eHow.com is a precious little webgem full of advice on things you never knew you needed to know. No matter how obscure the search is, chances are, someone out there has written an article for eHow, detailing exactly “How to Determine if a UFO is Dangerous,” or “How to Know the Difference in Butter Beans, Lima Beans & Madagascar Beans.” Maybe you will need to learn how to “Extract Information from a Detainee” or “Book a Mt. Everest Climb Online” one day. Better get learning.
How much should we use eHow?
Published: Friday, October 31, 2008
Updated: Friday, October 31, 2008
 "Photo: MCT Campus")
MCT Campus
eHow can even teach you how to whistle with your fingers—but you may be out of luck if you don’t have a helper.
6 comments
World's Craziest Email
I'm looking for information about the earnings of eHow members and that's how I came across this post. Very good breakdown on the site but in the comments David states that the top earners are only making 2K per month. Is that accurate David? Out of 17,000,000 visitors per month the best is only 2K?I ask this because I saw a Tweet that said "Going to write 50 eHow articles today" and wondered why someone who could punch out 50 articles per day would not just write for themselves....must be lucrative.
mojoworkin
Thanks for your article. I am one of the thousands of eHow members out there. I appreciate your honest approach to our site. We eHowers love it at eHow and its a really fun place to be a part of. The people are friendly and always have "free" advise to offer. I agree some of the information cold be better. The staff at eHow work hard to keep the site clean with well written material. As you pointed out, there are many versions on the same subject. With all free advise "its free." " Read all that you can and then read some more."
Shirley Philbrick
As an eHow writer, I will say well said and a fun read ! Most everything you want to know is on eHow !
Alrady
This is GREAT article. You have ehow nailed to the T.. in my opiion. The founders really had a great vision with this website and they are wonderful people. I tooo find it odd the obscure things that are SO popular. It amazes me that my friend can right an article on how to kill rats and mice with soda and another friend write on how to make a Sarah Palin costume and boy were those popular articles. I write for ehow and have a blast doing so. I have learned much by researching topics and writing as well as by reading my friends articles. I have had articles just impode in my head after hearing something that sparked the idea for the article. NOW whistling I couldn't tell you how to do. I can teach a 5 year old to tie shoes - but to write out the steps, no way could I do that. But, I can write how to's on other things that are fun. you'll just have to read them to find out. :)
David
Very nice overview of eHow. I'm one of the many writers at eHow, and I'd like to add a bit from the earnings side of the story.eHow is, hands down, the best site on the internet for earning money. It's easy to get started, there are no fees/tricks/scams involved, and the earning potential is considerable. I've been writing there since February, and I now make about $1,000 a month. The top earners at eHow make more than $2,000 a month. And their income is growing rapidly, as authors add more and more articles to the mix.I don't want to post links here, but if anyone is curious to know more about how to start earning money as a writer at eHow, just head to ehow.com and search for [ sarokin ehow money ] which will pull up a bunch of my articles on how to maximize your eHow earnings. Cheers.David
