How-to content by pros and members that can make some cash by writing content from home.

eHow is one of the most well known how-to resource on the web. Its mission is to offer realistic solutions for everyday questions – from how to organize your desk to how to prevent global warming. With a database of more than 300,000 professionally written and editorially directed articles, more than 100,000 how-to videos, and a rapidly growing library of member-contributed articles, eHow caters to an audience of people who seek practical knowledge.

he eHow community is one where users are educating and learning from each other. Community members write their own how-to articles with easy-to-use publishing tools that let them share their knowledge through text, images and video. They can write and publish articles on their topic of choice and, through their Writer’s Compensation Program, automatically earn extra cash. eHow members can also interact with each other through a robust set of social media tools.

Questions from our Twiistup panel:

Brian Solis: I love the idea about socializing resource communities. How are people finding out about eHow and what’s the incentive for them to contribute content?

eHow: eHow: About 27 million unique visitors come to eHow every month (Google Analytics).  The majority of those are from searching topics like “How to Boil Water” and our articles show up at the top of their search results.  But we are also finding that a growing number of people are coming to us via direct navigation.  This information, combined with our growing number of registered members (now at 300,000), lead us to believe that more and more people are telling their friends and family about eHow as a place to not only find information, but share their personal knowledge and make money.

TechZulu: How did you manage to get users to submit content when you first started the company?

eHow: Great question. When we acquired eHow.com, it was a decade old and hadn’t been touched in many years.  It had thousands of professional articles and a few million visitors.  First our development team rebuilt the site, with social media tools that allow people to create profiles, publish articles and make money.  Then a couple community managers, who are also editors, started to cultivate the few folks that had found the site.  We guided them through the process. They gave us feedback and we iterated our tools to make them better.  They told their friends and colleagues.  And it grew, and grew to hundreds of thousands of people – many making hundreds of dollars a month – contributing to the site.

Brian Solis: How is eHow planning on reaching more people to boost/share the valuable content within the community? It seems that sites like Yahoo Answers are among the first results when people naturally search for information.

eHow: We are just coming off a year of explosive growth, almost 1000% YOY (Dec. 07 total compared to Dec. 08), and with the current economic climate, we have seen the number of articles written by our community increase 128% since last July.  We have some great tools on the site that can help our members to write compelling articles and make money.  Our editorial team specifically requests titles that can be “checked out” and written.  In addition, our community has set up groups to support each other and share tips on writing and socializing their articles.

For more info on Twiistup 5 and the other ShowOffs, be sure to visit the main site.

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