Writing For eHow Isn't As Rewarding These Days, What Would You Do Here?

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I've been writing articles on eHow for a couple of months. At first I liked it. They pay very little, but I was simply writing for this and other web sites to get back into the swing of things, so to speak, with writing, since I used to be a fulltime freelance writer but got burned out with the work over time. Then I started to get paid, again very little, but money is money. So I kept writing for eHow. Then in early June I received an e-mail from eHow telling me that I had been chosen for a special earning opportunity, that if I wrote and submitted five how-to properly formatted articles between May 27th and May 31st they would be paying $25 for that work. The e-mail stated that they had never done this before and "if you do this then in early June you should see $25 being deposited to your Pay Pal account." That seemed easy enough. Their format is a how-to format, I had written several articles for them before this with no problem so I pushed myself to get some work done and submitted five how-to original articles, via their format, as requested, within the time specified. However, neither I nor any of the other eHow writers who participated in this "earning opportunity" ever got paid a dime for this, to date anyway. They may eventually pay it, but when I wrote to their customer service they at first said "Oh, that was a contest, check the contest forums" (although the original e-mail clearly stated that you could not enter any of these five submissions in an eHow contest) and so on. Finally, customer service admitted they didn't have anything to do with "this special earning opportunity" and I should write to the eHow rep who handles such things. I did and he basically said, "We're having to check to be sure all the articles submitted adhere to our guidelines and we're still reviewing the articles submitted." Never mind the original eHow e-mail basically said, write the how-to articles via the correct format and we'll pay you $25 by early June. Now suddenly, there is no pay and all the articles submitted via that special earning opportunity are "under review." And, of course, no one has been paid to date as promised for this work. And this morning I got an e-mail saying several of my eHow articles had been removed because they are "cleaning up the site." Of course, eHow prohibits spam, plagarism, etc., the usual stuff. However, I checked and none of my articles removed fits any of their forbidden criteria. Here's what I think is probably happening. Like most of these Internet writing sites, eHow only buys the right to publish and redistribute your work. You still own the rights to the articles and can post them elsewhere (and please don't write and tell me that you can't do that, you can legally...I've been a freelance writer for some 15 years and I know contract terms, and eHow even states in their guidelines that you can legally post the work elsewhere). I always make sure I use the same user i.d. on other web sites, so that the web sites in question will know that it is my original work. Here's what I think is happening. I think some eHow staffer is typing in the titles of my articles on the Internet and, of course, they're popping up elsewhere. Then, instead of bothering to check that I am the author of said work, this staffer is just marking it as plagarized because it shows up on the Internet, without bothering to check that the user i.d. is the same as the one on eHow, so they don't notice the work is my original work and not plagarized. Anyway, I used to like eHow, but now I'm beginning to get rather tired of their nonsense, to the point where I started just to go over and delete all my articles and simply close the account and forget it, period. On the other hand, I do tend to rake in about $10 to $20 a month from it (I only have about 50 articles on there) and money is money. Still, I hate working for web sites that do this to writers, especially when they make money off writers and then pay so little to writers. On the other hand, I can't say there aren't writers who don't make a good bit of money from eHow. I know a couple of them personally who do (although two of those same writers are furious right now because ehow removed a lot of their good pieces too and they can't see any reason for it either). Still, a lot of people like eHow. I used to be one of those people, but now not so much. What would you do here? I have the legitimate right to publish these articles elsewhere, eHow even outlines that clearly in their publishing guidelines, and I've been a professional writer for a very long time. I know all the ins and outs of copyright laws, etc., so I know I didn't do anything to break eHow rules. On the other hand, maybe I'm just reacting too harshly here. My first instinct is to simply close this account and be done with it, just due to these practices outlined above. On the other hand, maybe I would just be "cutting off my nose to sptie my face" as the old saying goes. Then, too, these web sites have helped me to hone my writing practice now so maybe I should quit these and get back to the practice or real writing now. I don't know that eHow, overall, is a bad site, but I don't like the way writers are getting treated there now. So I think staying with them for that little bit of money might be kind of hypocritcal on my part. On the other hand, our budget is tight these days and any money is welcome. Any thoughts as to what you would do here?