A thought regarding new hubbers and the HP ad program

1. 81

   mskillsposted 12 years ago

   Due to positive feedback regarding the HubPages ad program and myself being relatively new here (around 3 weeks), I decided to have the HP ads enabled from my very first hub.  The cents have been steadily accumulating since the first few days, but I'm beginning to question if I've made a poor decision.
   
   To my understanding, the HP program is most beneficial to those with consistent traffic that doesn't convert well to Adsense clicks.  I know the CPM amounts vary per HP ad, but theoretically the ad revenue should rise in direct relation to your impressions. 
   
   On the other hand, Adsense offers no guarantees.  Since you are at the mercy of the visitor's clicking behavior and the ad's CPC value, a hub with a few page views (common for new hubbers) can potentially earn more than one with significantly more traffic.     
   
   I apologize for rambling, but my point is that new hubbers and hubbers with hubs that generate low traffic across the board might stand to earn more from displaying only Adsense ads.  Sure, it is nice to know that I can count on a certain amount of HP revenue due to its CPM model, but isn't the risk of obtaining just a few high-paying Adsense clicks worth it the tradeoff?
   
   If someone can point me to a forum thread or hub that has already discussed this topic, I'd greatly appreciate it.  I did use HP's search, but couldn't find anything specifically recommending (or not) the HP program for newbies.

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   1. 96

      wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Nor will you find such a thread.  I have never seen anything specifically recommending HPads for anyone - the only way to find out if it is good for you is to try it.
      
      Very few newbies make any money past a few cents with adsense for months - a reasonable time for first payout is probably around a year.  My point is that while you may indeed luck out and get a click for fifty cents or a dollar it isn't likely to happen and most certainly won't happen multiple times.  You need traffic well into the thousands per month to earn significant amounts through adsense.  The same holds true for the HPads program.
      
      The only suggestion I might offer is to continue with HPads while also continuing to write quality hubs.  You won't earn much, but after a few months when your organic traffic rises to something that will produce income you can try shutting off HPads and see what happens.
      
      This has been the method used by long time hubbers.  Turn on HP ads for a month or more, then turn them off for a month.  Look at the results and see which method is most advantageous to you.  It depends on the type of hub, the type of visitor, your keywords used, the amount of traffic and other factors as well.  No one can predict which method you should use.

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      1. 81

         mskillsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I appreciate the reply, wilderness.  I imagine it would take hundreds or thousands of participants to determine a broad recommendation, but I may do as you suggest and try to collect some data on my own hubs. 
         
         If you don't mind disclosing it (and if Adsense allows it), would you say it is most common to only receive a few cents per click on your best-trafficked hubs?  And is there any correlation with CPC value and traffic at all?

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            wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            My point is that there can be no broad recommendation - the use of HPads is too tied to the type of hub you have and it's keywords.  There is some speculation that HPads negatively affects Amazon earnings; if so and if your portfolio is mostly sales hubs you would not want the program for instance.  It would be nice to be able to pick and choose which hubs carry these ads but that can't be done at this time.
            
            Adsense prohibits revealing your CPC.  I suspect there is a correlation, if not a causal effect, between CPC and traffic.  For me, my keywords and subject matter, I used to often see clicks paying 50 cents to a dollar.  After Panda, when traffic fell dramatically, these are gone and the vast majority of my clicks are well under 50 cents and often under a dime. 
            
            Perhaps Google has marked my work as substandard along with the rest of HP with the result that traffic has fallen and advertisers won't pay much to put an ad on a substandard hub.  I don't know the reason for it, but I do see a correlation.

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            1. 81

               mskillsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               Ah, I see your point. I think I'm doing myself a disservice by ignoring the relevance of hub topic and keywords at the expense of focusing solely on page views for determining if I should disable the HP ads.  I agree, though, that HubPages might want to consider allowing us to determine which hubs display the HP ads.
               
               Interesting that the Panda effect appears to have reduced the dollar amounts of the clicks in addition to site traffic.   No wonder I've read so many stories of longtime hubbers jumping ship. 
               
               While I imagine you are being sarcastic about Google classifying your work (as well as everything here) as substandard, it does make me wonder if Adsense purposely displays the higher-paying ads on sites it has deemed worthy.
               
               Oh, and I just noticed another forum post made in the last hour or so has proven one of my points as mistaken: http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/76095#post1659855.  Apparently my thought on the direct relationship between traffic and revenue for displaying HP ads is wrong.

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               1. 96

                  wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  No I was not being sarcastic.  Google has decided that our hubs are not worthy of the high ranking they used to enjoy in the search engines - nearly everyone has seen the placement of their work fall.
                  
                  To me that means that they are substandard.  Or at least not the high standard they used to carry.  Advertisers set up the nature of the articles they want to advertise on - if it were me I would choose the highest quality article I could afford.  If Google has declared that our hubs are no longer of a high standard then we will get lower paying ads.  Or so goes my thinking - I am certainly no expert in adsense and have never used it to advertise anything.

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               2. 96

                  wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  Nor do I agree with all the posts in that other forum.  I think there is at least a rough correlation between the number of visits and earnings.
                  
                  As was pointed out, the payout from those ads will also depend on the subject matter and keywords, however.  In addition, google may outbid HPads suppliers for a particular hub and thus some of the impressions will be from Google, not from HPads.  HP puts on the ads it thinks will perform best for us. 
                  
                  Be careful when comparing visits or impressions from HP stats, google adsense, HPads stats and google analytics.  They are not the same thing and take the numbers from different sources.

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                  1. 81

                     mskillsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                     Actually, I didn't realize that the HP ads occasionally subbed in Adsense when appropriate.  This changes the rationale behind my original post a bit.
                     
                     On one hand, I would love to be able to micromanage each of my hubs by determining the ratio of impression-to-click ads.  But, then again, would HubPages allow us to choose what is most profitable for us at their expense?    Well, I guess they already give us a choice to an extent (enabling HP ads), and I wonder if that choice will be removed in the future?

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                     1. 96

                        wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                        I think we all would like to micromanage our hubs.  Nor would it be at their expense (outside of the work to provide the feature).  HP can set up their 40% of the impressions any way they wanted to.
                        
                        I suppose whether the feature will be available someday would depend most on hard it would be to program it in.  An easy task - we might get it.  A difficult thing to do - we probably won't.

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2. STAFF

   Paul Edmondsonposted 12 years ago

   HP Ads is designed to bring authors more money.  There can be more than three adsense ads on a page with HP Ads and we have started an internal sales team that is working on larger deals.  A new campaign for June is about to go live that should raise CPMs.

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   1. 96

      wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Cool!  A little more income can never hurt.  Thanks, Paul, for both the update and work.

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   2. 81

      mskillsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Paul, thank you for posting in my topic.
      
      Looks like I'll need to sit tight and see what changes are in store before making any major decisions on canning the HP ad program. 
      
      I appreciate that you guys are communicating your plans with us.

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3. 77

   LuisEGonzalezposted 12 years ago

   Way to go Paul, good luck

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4. 95

   PaulGoodman67posted 12 years ago

   This sounds like great news!  I look forward to developments!  :-)

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