OK about a month ago I asked if you could still make money with Hubpages in 2011. You might want to read that again quickly but here are the results of my two case studies:
Case Study 1 Adsense Niche
Starting positions
previously top ranking hub #4
niche vacation site #7
All links were built using BMR (Build My Rank review here). All dates in proper format!
16/5 Adsense hub is back to #1 on scroogle.org 42 articles live on BMR
31/5 after sitting at #1 consistently for a week, today is back to #2 – 60 articles live on BMR
16/5 niche site dot info – #8 on scroogle.org – 32 articles live on BMR
31/5 after sitting consistently at #2 and #3 for the last week – has now dropped to #6/#7 – 60 articles live on BMR
Conclusion – a hub will rank again if you build links to it – whether you have to keep building links to it remains to be seen. For the amount of work you have to do – you might as well just build your own site. Hubpages.com will continue to drop traffic because most of the writers there believe passionately in the old chestnut “build it and they will come”.
Case Study 2: Product Hubs
Starting positions
New hub published 9/5.
16/5 new product hub not int top 100 – 1 link.
31/5 sitting at #28 on scroogle.org – 15 links.
16/5 niche site #15 12 links.
31/5 now at #5 with 15 articles on link.
My niche site is a only a bit over a year old – but is a fairly closely related excact domain match. Its less effort to get the new page on it ranked then to rank a new hub – no prizes for figuring what is the best decision going forward.
What To do About HubPages?
- If you haven’t started – don’t bother.
- If you have hubs that have dropped – then it might be worth a backlinking effort to get the top-paying ones back in position #1. For the ones that never ranked well – I’m seriously considering un-publishing them, waiting for them to de-index and placing them elsewhere ie on my own websites.
The Quantcast figures for HubPages -continue to tell the same story as last month:
It should all be slightly sad really. In some ways it is – but much more so this entire little exercise has made me really excited. While I was looking at the data for this experiment I had a real “duh” moment. The moons aligned – the scales fell from my eyes – and figured out the Next Big Thing on making money online.
But that’s a whole other keyword – so another post ! Sorry!
23 replies on “Hubpages Money Making Update”
It is a real shame about the loss of income from Hubpages. I don’t know what they are going to do to turn that situation around.
At the moment, I have created a randomly named site and posted the articles that I would have posted on hubpages on there. Sort of like my own mini Hubpage domain.
Hope that will lots of backlinking work (which I hate) to each post, I will be able to make a little cash. If it works, then I would definitely consider delete hubs and moving stuff to my own domain.
@tiptop – I am a little nervous of random topic sites -I know people with old ones that work – but the risk is that you will be labeled as a content farm – oddly after all the Panda uproar – niche sites still work just fine for me.
Oh man!!
I was hoping that this would be an alternative solution. Will have to rethink my strategy. Yikes 🙁
Wow – that Quantcast graph is pretty conclusive…
I haven’t put much effort into building on Hubpages, short of using it to build backlinks to other sites. But I think I’ll take your advice and steer clear for now. For as much effort as you’re putting into the hubs, I’d rather just build my own site in the first place.
Thanks for the interesting information – good to see that people are out there actually testing things, rather than sticking to conventional wisdom!
It wasn’t so much conventional wisdom it was more pandemonium as stuff changed for people and dramatically affected their income – unfortunately that’s the deal when you are in business and we all have to keep on moving and adapting! This is not the business for those who like stability!
Hi Lis,
I definitely agree with your analysis and have found the same thing. Some older hubs which had decent backlinks can be salvaged back up the front page, while new ones and older ones that received just a trickle aren’t doing anything. Even more disturbing to me has been HubPages’ reaction. I think one of the huge factors in them getting Google’s ire was the internal linking system that was so effective (too effective?) that it could be seriously considered gaming the system. They do nothing about that – but pass a bunch of rules that don’t seem to have much to do with anything (pixelated images?). People are much better off going to the Keyword Academy and starting off with their own sites which now take much less work to rank than a HubPage. So I’m 100% with you on this one – it’s all about the self owned properties now.
Yeah it appears that HP management have lost the plot – a lot. I agree they were very, and getting more aggressive with their internal linking. One of the changes that really piss me off that the 2nd link from your hub’s Google listing went to the HP category page – for which of course you get no credit!
I didn’t even realize that to be honest, but yeah, in my book that definitely counts as crap! On the plus side, while the initial drop in income sucked, it really gave me the kick in the pants I needed to really get going on my own sites – and the niches are doing better than ever as far as I’m concerned!
Can’t wait for a post about Next Big Thing 🙂
Gotta build the hype Vi!
“For the amount of work you have to do – you might as well just build your own site.” I have to agree. As much as I would like my hubs to rank well, they take a tremendous amount of work and once I have stopped or taken a short break, the rankings sink. I just don’t think its worth it anymore.
You tease. I want to know what the next big thing is now.
No way – I should make you sign up for the bullshit marketing email list and watch a 60 minute video before I even hint at it LOL
For old hubpages that dropped their rankings, I think re-optimizing the page is also advisable (like making the length of the document longer), as search engines are now focusing on the quality of the content, besides the link that it’s getting. User activity also plays a big role on this re-optimization process, so social sharing can also help get its rankings back.
Lauren these hubs are already about 2000 words ! No I don’t see on-page stuff making much difference – nor does the social media – its all about the backlinks
I was worried about Hub Pages and whether I should start posting there for my new site. I had been using them last year with another site, but like you said, it might not be worth it for a new site. No sense in wasting time when there are so many better ways to get some backlinks.
I look forward to “the next big thing” post!
Looking forward to reading a post about Next Big Thing.Have a nice day^^
I think HubPages will do fine after a bit of an adjustment period. A very similar situation took place with Squidoo. I’m sure it’s a temporary situation. Likely there’s already been some improvement in that direction.
I am very disappointed in HP. I also am very suspicious of their new ads system. It plasters a hub with trashy-looking ads which bear no relation to the topic of the hub. Also, the impressions it was granting me amounted to maybe one third to one quarter of total views, not the 60% HP claim to give their authors.
My other problem is that my best performing hub is about weight loss. It is based on a search of the scientific journal literature, has no affiliate links and is intended as a serious contribution to the topic. I had hoped to write more hubs like this, but weight loss is now a topic that gets automatically penalised by HP. Luckily I never had much time to produce many hubs and won’t be bothering in future unless things change dramatically.
My Hubs are just about alive, but I’m glad I didn’t do many product Hubs. The future was my own sites, and my domain buying spree last Autumn is now starting to pay off.
Personally I think HubPages should close the site to new publishers and delete any Hub where the author has a score of less than 70. They built all these wonderful scoring technologies into the site, but they don’t seem to use them 🙁
They are currently moving us all onto separate sub-domains -will it work – who knows?
Hi Lis,
Actually i haven’t used hubpage to build my blog. I have used it to build my website backlinks. I just prefer to use it as a backlink builder.
Thanks for sharing this Lis,
Abhijit…………
I wrote a findings report on HubPages. Though I must confess, I wrote trainwreck in regards to HubPages in another part, and never realized that others felt the same way.