As a former eHow author this whole 'quality hub' situation looks all too familiar.
Anyone have thoughts on this?
After all, if I remember correctly, we went through this over there years ago before they shut down the WCP program.
I see the difference here as being that our hubs are still published but they're not being indexed by google.
True, but they started with the 'quality sweeps', same thing here...
So I suppose we just wait and see what happens with hubs that don't get repaired. I do not want to think -this is the beginning of the end. The ehow ending was really traumatic.
Traumatic is an understatement, when they shut down the WCP it hurt bad financially, I was getting 4 figures a month and it was going up fast.
They had (have) such a great KW authority in any subject that you could write 'How to scoop Dog Pooh from the Sidewalk and still look Cool" and make tons of money off of it.
Flashback? Not a flashback I'm enjoying. I just hope they treat us right. We are, in the end, people. Not just dollar signs.
Flashback! When I first say it, it felt uncomfortably familiar!
I was an eHow writer and am a DS editor, and I understand the need for keeping the quality up -- especially AP (after Panda). I wish the whole WCP and ensuing bloodbath over quality had unfolded differently at DS. I'm just now dipping my toe into HubPages -- need to study this before I submit any hubs. I hope this is a legitimate way to keep up quality and improve rankings, and not the beginning of an end.
At least HP's move doesn't result in anything permanent, the article is still live on the site and it's possible to de-idle it.
Making money from eHow was insanely easy before Google cracked down on quality, that's for sure.
I didn't post on eHow, so sorry to jump in. But I must say that I am quite horrified by this Idle Status thing. Many of my very best hubs have been given this Idle Status, and they're just not updatable. Some of them are book reviews, some of them are observational pieces about places that I've been to and had to talk about and share. There's nothing I can add to them, unless I stick an out-of-place, just-for-the-sake-of-it addendum or 'Update' or other contrived extra add-on bit - anything I add on at the end will ruin each hub, and just look ridiculous. I'm very, very annoyed that HubPages have done this, and am hoping that I can find somewhere else to move all of my hubs to.
I just keep thinking, how dare they imply that my hubs are substandard! I'm a good writer, and I resent their efforts to get rid of my older hubs just to make HubPages look a little tiny bit better. They use these kinds of measures to rout out bad writing - unfortunately, the good writing also falls prey to it.
It's only possible to de-idle hubs if you make updates to them - I cannot do this, and that's not a sign of a bad writer, it's a sign of the writing being as good as I want it to be at the time of creation.
An "update" can be as trivial as rearranging the words in a sentence or tweaking the title - it will still serve the same purpose from an idle hub point of view, i.e. it will put it in the pending queue and make it live again. Of course, if it doesn't get traffic it will go back to idle again.
I totally sympathise with you btw - some of my best hubs have gone idle. Of course, that's "best" according to my definition of the word (well-written and interesting). However, they weren't getting much traffic which is why they were given a virtual anaesthetic.
It just doesn't appeal, you know? Who wants to go back and rework old stuff, really? I'm more interested in the new hubs that I might create (MIGHT!) - it just highlights to me that I'm not the kind of writer that HP wants to be bothered with, and most of the friends I've met on here (who are still around, lots of them have left!) are in the same boat - their writing doesn't sell, because it's too personal, and has nothing to do with SEO. We're not in advertising, we don't want to write to sell.
I'm going to stick with it for a little longer though, until I can find somewhere more creative to write. I've been loyal to HP over the past two years, and I've defended some of HP's changes at times too.
Make a few changes to the first paragraph or two. That should do it!
Yes you can. As Felicity says, all you have to do is reword one or two sentences, or add another image. That's all I did with mine, and they came out of Idle. Irritating, but not a lot of effort.
Which just goes to show how silly this "Idle Hub" business is!
The idle Hubs thing here is just like Squidoo's WIP function. That's been in place for years, and I don't find it a problem.
I'm not surprised eHow had to slow down. The site was a mass of junk posts. If you have ever gone there with the purpose of finding useful content you are quickly disappointed. I could find twenty posts all about the same thing and only ONE of them would be based on any real experience or knowledge the writer had. In the end I don't even read a post at eHow unless it comes with an image proving the writer has some clue about the topic.
eHow lost a lot of credibility. Online, a site needs to be more than a dumping ground for content. A site, like eHow or HubPages, has to keep a good reputation for having GOOD content, not just a lot of useless content duplicated over and over again.
When I'm seriously looking for information online I look at independent blogs rather than any network site. The independents are far more experienced and knowledgeable than people on writing networks who are cranking out content for numbers rather than creating content which will have real value as information. That is the mistake which eHow made and I hope HubPages will manage to stick around long enough to fix their own content problems.
I cannot tell you how many times I've gone back to former hubs and thought...geesh...did I really write this junk? What was I thinking? I have re worked every single one of them, often more than once, and am always happier with my work afterwords. I like the new policy and really feel it will make HP a more credible site. This, I believe, will also bring more views and more income, but whether it does or it doesn't, I don't want to leave a legacy of work behind that smacks of mediocrity or poor substance. No matter how well you write, there is always room for improvement...so that's my two cents for what they're worth!
by WoodsmensPost 13 years ago
I have an eHow account with 17 articles and it has earned more in the last week than my 102 hubs.There has got to be something wrong with this picture?This is extremely discouraging... my traffic levels have fallen back to the level when I had 70 newly published hubs and google adsense with HP is...
by Missing Link 13 years ago
I got in on EHOW towards the very end just a few months before it imploded. I was making decent money right away----MUCH more than what I make per adsense per hubpages, etc. However, I disliked a number of other things about EHOW. When EHOW imploded there were a number of other things...
by tamron 12 years ago
If you don't already know you either have to sell your articles to ehow or remove them. I am removing mine! How long does it take for articles to not appear on Google after they have been removed? Can I move them here on hubpages right after I delete them from ehow or should I...
by Lela Cargill 10 years ago
"Writers write - Sites that want to exploit writers need to do the marketing and promotions, as well as PAY the writers for their product."From WillStarr:Bingo!It would benefit both parties if each did what they do best...writers should write, and the internet gurus (at HP) should then...
by kerryg 12 years ago
I used to have an eHow account, but when they closed the Writer's Compensation Program back in May/June, I removed my articles from the site and deleted my account.A couple days ago, I republished one of the articles here, and yesterday I got an email informing me that the hub had been unpublished...
by Don Bobbitt 8 years ago
I don't know, maybe this is just a disgruntled Rant by myself, alone.I call myself a Writer. By default, this makes me a Reader.And, as someone who has the arrogance to think I am good enough to call myself a writer and a reader, I have opinions, on my works as well as the works of others.So, with...
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