Hi Username,

We want to personally thank you for the time spent writing articles for eHow.com and helping contribute to the growth of our site. As a valued writer who’s written articles for eHow, you know we’re a site that is focused on excellence and delivering the best possible experience to our readers.

As you might remember, we stopped accepting user-generated articles under eHow’s Writer Compensation Program (WCP) in April of 2010. However, we kept articles published by members like you so all contributors could continue earning money for their work.

As eHow.com continues to evolve and become a leading destination for trusted information, we are working hard to ensure all content is professionally created and editorially vetted. After much consideration, eHow has decided to close the WCP and remove a number of user-generated articles from the site beginning May 5, 2011.

Now, what’s exciting for YOU is that we are extending attractive offers to a select group of great writers to purchase the articles they’ve written for eHow so that those articles can be vetted through our current editorial process, which includes professional fact checking and copy editing. Needless to say, your great work has put you in this special category!

Beginning today, your WCP console will have the details of your offer. The offer includes the purchase price of your articles, which is based on historical earnings. You will have until May 31, 2011 to accept our offer.

By accepting our offer you are agreeing to sell all the rights of your articles to us. We would own the articles from that point on, and will have the ability to review and revise them to ensure they meet our editorial standards. Following the acceptance of the offer, you will receive three payments: one for regular earnings paid in June for money earned from May 1-5, and two equal installments for your buyout offer, which will be paid by June 15 and July 15, 2011 via PayPal. However, if you choose to decline the offer you will receive your last WCP payment for money earned from May 1-5 by June 15, 2011.

If you agree to sell your articles, we ask that you immediately remove the articles from any other sites that have published them. If you decline the offer, articles will begin to be removed from eHow.com. However, you will retain complete control of all the content you have written and will continue to have rights to publish them anywhere. Additionally, if you choose not to accept our offer, you’ll have an opportunity to retrieve your articles from us between May 17th and May 31st, if you wish to retain them for your records. Further details for article retrieval will be shared through your WCP console.

We truly value your contributions to eHow and know that the site would not be what it is today without people like you. Thank you again and please feel free to contact support@ehow.zendesk.com with any questions you may have.

Best,
eHow Team

As many people have predicted, Demand Media decided to cleanup the content for their articles on eHow as a result of either recent criticism or to make more money.  Either way, they are ending the Writer Compensation Program that has been a very popular way for individuals to make passive income online.  Coupled with a number of people I know who had their blogspot account shutdown recently for no apparent reason, it becomes apparent that you must own your own domain and content as you never know when you are going to receive an email like the one listed above.

I signed up for MyLikes when it first came out but I haven’t use it much. I have been receiving a lot of email from them so I decided to give them another look. If you never heard of MyLikes it is a website that pays you to promote campaigns through Twitter or Facebook. When you login there is a list of campaigns on the left panel and you have the option to choose which campaign you like to promote. Once you decided to promote a campaign, you simply need to click on “Like This” button. After you clicked on the button it will take you to a page where you can post a message to your Twitter or Facebook with a link to the actual advertiser. You will get paid whenever someone click on the advertiser link. I included a default widget above so you can see what a default campaign message looks like.

If you have a substantial followers for your Twitter account this is a great way to make some extra income. However, you don’t want to spam your Twitter account with too many ads or you will lose your follower very quickly. Depending on the Campaign you will receive somewhere between a few pennies to a couple dimes. Make sure you check the content of what you are promoting as some campaigns seem a little sketchy to me.

Part of living a frugal live style is to make sure you have enough insurance coverage. Insurance for your car, house, and health coverage are meant protect you from unexpected black swan events. In some cases if you have amassed enough asset you will also need umbrella policy to protect yourself in the case of black swan events (which seems to be happening a lot more these days).

What if you are around retirement age? Unless you have amassed enough money for retirement you will most likely be dependent on Medicare to cover a large part of your bill. However, in most cases Medicare only covers 80% of the bill and you are expected to pay the other 20%. In those cases, you want to make sure you sign up for Medicare Supplemental Insurance. This way you can ensure you are covered in the case of an expensive medical bill. Medicare supplemental insurance can be used to pay the 20% of the bill including deductibles, co pays and other health care related expense.  If you have health insurance covered be sure to think about life insurance so your love ones will be protected!  If you are looking for Health Insurance, be sure to check out AptusInsurance!

I love Starbucks Frappuccino but they are quite pricey. However, for a short time frame from 5/6 to 5/15 between the hour of 3~5pm, Starbucks is offering a Frappuccino Happy Hour in which all Frappuccino are 50% off! Be sure to start off your summer with a Frappuccino from Starbucks!

Amazon is currently offering Baby Einstein 100 for only $5 on Amazon.  If you were to purchase the songs individually it costs $0.99 for each song.  A lot of people believes music Baby Einstein is great your toddlers or new born as it helps stimulate the mind.  I don’t know much about that but I would say baby Einstein music definitely helps exhausted parents to put newborn or toddler sleep!  Nothing beats a stream of baby Einstein music!