HubPages or Squidoo?

HubPages and Squidoo are alike in that they both allow the user to earn money by creating unique content and sharing that content with the host site. People using both sites are trying to drive more traffic to their own web pages, or make money from home, or have a web presence without their own site.

HubPages is to Squidoo like a ...

• text capsule is to a text/write module (HubPages lets you write a lot more)

• photo capsule is to a Flickr module

• video capsule (YouTube or Google) is to a YouTube module

• links capsule is to a link list module

• news capusle is to a news module

• rss capsule is to an rss module

• comments capsule is to a guestbook module

• eBay capsule is to an eBay module (Squidoo version offers way more options for specifying products)

• Amazon capsule is to an Amazon module (again, Squidoo's module offers more for item selection and module configuration)

Please note, both sites are evolving rapidly and both recently updated a variety of features, so this hub and its contents are subject to change as I review and compare all the new stuff!

Both web sites have little bits of tracking code that let a user earn a referral bonus for recruiting other new service/community members.

HubPages: When a new user signs up within 30 days as a result of a referral, the referring hub author will earn 10% of the advertising impression of that new author's hubs for the life of the hubs. Authors can build custom codes to track their own ad campaigns and referrals. You presently don't know who you referred, but you do see a total of people and how many hubs have been built by them.

Squidoo: When new users sign up, the referring lensmaster will earn $5 when the new lensmaster has earned $15. You do get to see who was referred by you.

My fave: HubPages wins big-time. Not only does their method offer a better pay-out to the referring lensmaster, from comparing my stats, it's clear that people referred to HubPages go on to build more active Hubs then the new lensmasters who sign-up at Squidoo. I've got about two dozen referrals at Squidoo who have maybe made a half-dozen active lenses, but the dozen folks referred to HubPages have made over three dozen Hubs and they earned me money.

Curious as to how the two sites compare in retail product offerings?

HubPages: The overall Hub Traffic statistics shows an author one day, 7 day, thirty day and "ever" traffic totals. Also listed are the hubscores, # of comments and thumbs up/down votes. Individual stats available for each hub include breakdowns of referrals within the one, seven and thirty day period, with prominent referrers listed by referral totals. In addition to what HubPages provides you, they also let you plug in a tracker from Google Analytics, thus giving you all of Google's feedback and stats on all your hubs.

Squidoo: Squidoo has *just* updated the statistics that they offer to lensmasters. Previously, there was nothing in the way of referral URLs, and only a few stats for weekly rolling traffic averages. The new stats show traffic trends, totals for visitor interactions such as emailing the lens or marking as favorite, referring URLs, royalty totals and recently purchased items from Amazon.

My fave: HubPages clearly lets you access more ROI, SEO and referral data on what you've built via Google Analytics.

Curious as to how the two sites compare when it comes to incorporating pictures?

A lot of new and potential Hub author find themselves contemplating just what it is that makes a great Hub.

When a post in the forums asked about lenses being flagged as spam, HubPages Marketing Manager Jason Menayan answered with the following:

Are all of your Hubs being flagged as spam? If not, are there differences between those that are being flagged, and those that are not?

- # of links to a single domain

- length & genuine utility of content

- originality of content

His question make it really clear as to what criteria HubPages are using to weight and judge Hubs and their content. To make a great Hub, write your own original content, make it genuinely useful/helpful/informative and include a variety of resources (video, links, pics, feeds) from a variety of web sites.

On HubPages, hubs are ranked based on traffic, clickouts, sales, votes (thumbs up/down), visitor interactions and author reputation. HubPages has said they review content for originality, and duplicate content is ranked down. Based on these shifting factors, each hub will rise and fall throughout the day.

On Squidoo, lenses are ranked in numerical order, with each lens having an overall ranking amongst the entire pool of lenses and a ranking based on the lens category. LensRank comes from traffic, clickouts, sales, votes (stars) and visitor interactions. Much time and energy is spent by the lensmaster community discussing whether these numbers are important, which number is more important and whether these things can be artificially inflated.

My fave: I have lenses with great ranks and I've had high ranking lenses over the last year. I don't have a problem with how Squidoo ranks lenses. However, what HubPages does seems more organic, it doesn't take constant new efforts to maintain a high score and the Author community doesn't expend time and effort arguing about it.

The summer of 2007 saw a boom in growth for both HubPages and Squidoo, along with lots of adult content on both sites. With each site still very far apart in size and traffic, they each picked a different way of dealing with the issue.

Still being much smaller than Squidoo and working towards bigger advertisers, HubPages announced they were doing away with all mature or adult content. Previously, the site had general and mature ratings, and hub authors who showed a propensity for adult hubs would have all their content marked as such regardless to guard against those who tried to skirt the ratings and leave adult content as general. The hub community has the ability to "flag" content they think is inappropriate for administrative review but it stays open to viewership until such a review takes place.

Squidoo insituted a multi-level "defense" after having seen a handful of bad lensmasters create large amounts of spam lenses in a short amount of time. They expanded their volunteer workforce, adding a group of "Squid Angels" picked to provide some editorial reporting over the lens pool as well as watch for TOS violations. They also added filtering to the system to automatically screen for questionable content, which first flags the lensmaster when the lens goes to publish and gives them a chance to edit it, and automatically locks the lens for review if the material is dubious.

My fave: Having watched how HubPages has been dealing with mature content, I'm pretty disappointed with their take on what's adult and what isn't and have to give a tip of my hat to Squidoo for at least making a space for such things and keeping it there. Pages of upskirt photo galleries, close-ups of massive breast augmentations and barely-there thongs are things that are not "work-safe" or child-appropriate in the real world but they continue to exist on HubPages as general content.