eHow experiment - mixed results, so far

I've been using eHow since September 2008. At the beginning of last weekend (1/9/2009) I had written 39 articles, earned $4.25 so far in January and had 32 eHow Friends with one or 2 comments for each article. My earnings though small, have almost doubled each month - Sept - $1.78; Oct - $3.06; Nov - $6.00 (with my first payout); and Dec - $10.34 (second payout).

I had basically just been posting an article or two when I thought of something and signing off. I didn't really get the point of having eHow Friends, but I would approve whoever asked and that was it. Last weekend I decided to join a group, post to the daily eHow article forum and read, rate and comment on other articles to see if it had any impact on earnings.

I wrote 4 articles over the weekend. I commented on and rated about 50 articles and gained about 30 new friends. Though I may have learned a thing or two, my earnings only increased to $4.95 by Monday and were $7.27 this Friday. A little divisions shows that my daily earnings went from 33 cents in December to 47 cents at the beginning of my experiment and down to 44 cents at the beginning of this weekend. Oh well. My time would have probably been better spent writing more eBay listings, but at least I learned how to make my own dishwasher detergent!