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!