On my last post about eHow, I got this response from Nils:

“I gotta wonder though, is that worth it? More meaningful than the$/month amount would be to know the $/hour rate, that is, how much timewas spent to earn those $30.”

this is actually a really good point, and yet it’s not an easy question to answer, so let’s do the best i possibly can to translate into multiple ways of thinking.

Lifetime earnings (ie, seven months) $106.90
Current number of articles: 72
Current earnings per article on average: $1.48 (ouch!)
Potential that I could have made from putting the same articles on Demand, eHow’s parent site: $1080
Rough comparison: 1/10th the value on eHow
Time spent per article: roughly 10 minutes.
Time spent per Demand article: at least 20, not counting rewrites
Rough estimation of $/hr: $8.90
Estimation of $/hr on Demand: $45
Earning potential on Demand: capped at $15
Earning potential on eHow: Unlimited

That last one is where they get you, where they’ve gotten me.  Just the idea that month after month, they will continue to earn is very attractive to me.  At this rate, the numbers dictate that it will take ten years for ALL your articles to reach financial maturity on eHow. However, many eHow veterans say as soon as you pass the 100 article mark, or the earning a dollar a day mark, your earning trajectory ceases to become a 45 degree angle (steadily increasing) and more the right half of a U (increasing exponentially).

So right now, no, it is not worth it for me to be putting my energy into eHow instead of Demand (used here because it’s a very adroit comparison) and probably not worth it in comparison to other efforts.  And yet, my plan is still to hit 100 articles and see how it works out.