Some questions for the eHow staff recently posted on the “eHow Feedback & Suggestions” forum remain unanswered after almost two days. By the time Monday rolls around, the posts will be buried so far down that they may never be answered. That remains to be seen.

If you are an eHow writer, here are a couple of questions for you: Are you aware that your eHow articles are now posted on eHow UK? This is a wonderful development if writers and video makers are paid for their UK views. But if not, it would be nice to know that, and to know what all of the other ramifications of this new development are for those of us who write and own this content.

And if you publish videos on eHow, are you aware that eHow offers an embed code to anyone who wants to show your video on their site? I personally have one video that has been “scraped” from eHow by approximately 50 spam sites, and that does not include the sites that keep the link to my videos — those I don’t mind, because they give my article backlinks.

I am hopeful that eHow will begin watermarking videos like YouTube does so that if the backlink is removed, at least the source will be clear to viewers.

Since you may have the same questions and concerns, you may want to keep an eye on the forum for eHow’s responses to these questions/suggestions. If/when responses are offered by eHow staff, I will post them here:

Post #1

Questions about our articles/videos on eHow UK

Maybe this has been discussed, but I can’t find mention of it:
1. Do we earn money for our articles on eHow UK?
2. If we delete an article/video from our eHow library, is it simultaneously deleted from the eHow UK site?

And Post #2

Suggestion: eHow, please watermark videos if you’re going to allow embedding

My videos have been stolen/plagiarized more than my articles. There are several sites in India, mostly in.com that do this. The ones in the US tend to keep the eHow link to the original article, but the foreign ones do not. They present them as their own content and ignore requests to remove them.

Videos “should” pull in more views and money than similar articles, generally speaking, but on eHow, mine do not. When I search Google for “How to Make a Grungy or Shabby Background in Photoshop,” the title of my video, there are 96 results referring to it. Most of those are content scraper sites, at least one is a browser exploit spam site, and probably at least a third do not link to my video or they hide the link.

eHow videos have an “embed” feature, making it much easier to do this. The tiny little eHow favicon at the bottom of the video does nothing but take viewers to eHow’s main page if they even notice it. YouTube has the same option, but YouTube adds a large watermark so viewers know the source no matter where it is posted.

eHow, would you please watermark our videos? Otherwise, it is not worthwhile for us to go to the trouble of making and publishing them here.

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