Am I really wasting my time here?

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Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago
I never thought I would ask that but having just looked at the large number of hubs now classified as Idle in my account why should I write any more, and what am I do with all of those already here?

A lot of them are good quality writings I know because they had previously been published in hard copy magazines or papers including the British Big Issue magazine Subject matter that is for me classified as idle is very wide, most Tenerife hubs are that way but also ones about spiders, herbs, books, singers and bands, and lot of interview hubs.

I used to be able to impress people by writing a hub about them or about many subjects but not now. I feel almost ashamed to tell some people who once enjoyed some publicity via my hubs that the hubs they are in are now thought of as Idle.

I also used to think of this place as good showcase for my work but how can I say that now?

Sadly I think that I will begin removing a large number of hubs and saving them as text on my PC for future use somewhere possibly, or just as a record of info that would otherwise be lost.
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  SomewayOuttaHereposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  too bad Bard....you write very interesting hubs and 500+ of them...and good quality writing...
  
  wish i had the answer for you...peace!
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for your response about this and kind words, SomewayOuttaHere!
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This thing about quality is just a source of confusion. There are some kinds articles that will do well here and some that won't.
  
  You might find that if you let HP's algo work out which of your articles can make you money and which won't, you do a lot better than before. That is their goal.
  
  Personally, I hope they have got things right but we won't know for a few months.
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  Doodleheadposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hubpages is a business. It stands to reason that at some point bean counters will rise to the top or the company will be bought out and bean counters installed and then the real culling will begin.
  
  No offense to Hubpages, it's the way of the world. As someone who has had their "vested" renewal income stolen at least three times, I promise you you have to develop your own controllable income, whatever, however that may be.
  
  I love Hubpages, but consider when Hubpages was new, there was less competition. The olders are in a favored position as far as ranking. They always will be. Forever. They got there first. You are in line.
  
  The way to make money is by having your own platform for whatever business you would take the time and effort to get into. Same as "working for the man"....you can be "let go" at any time.
  
  At least that's my take on things from a Newby.
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  God made scienceposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It's a business for both HubPages and YOU. Don't blame HubPages unfairly. Too bad you accuse them this way publicly. Get a life!
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  lol. You aren't even reading the posts. Perhaps you think your time here is short.
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  God made scienceposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Relax, comrade
  
  I am no Hub Pages researcher. Check that. I have read him above, and made that comment. Too bad you came to correct me, or better pretended to. Too bad, good life...
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  lorddraven2000posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Having idle hubs just gives you a chance to go in a rework them. I think in the long run the new idle setting will make for better hubs.
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You are assuming the hubs are lacking in quality which isn't necessarily the case.
  
  Many of us got our whole subdomains hit by Panda, and there is no point updating those hubs. Now they are de-indexed, we can only hope that when they clear the cache, traffic will return to our other hubs.
  
  THEN is the time to think about re-working or unpublishing hubs, not before.
  
  Traffic will never come back if you re-work and get the very hubs that caused Panda to hit your site in the first place, re-indexed.
  
  It might only be one of two, who knows?
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  MsQuestionposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It think it's plain mean. They advertise Hub Pages as being for writers! Come write for us! Have fun! Write about what you know! Now it's like your waiting in line at one of those exclusive clubs, and you're told "you're not good enough, go home!" So much for "write about what you want!" Why is everyone so judgemental, anyway? The whole Interenet has become one big popularity contest! It's as bas as being back in 8th grade! Sure it's great if you are in the "in group". But if you're not? You (or your hubs) will never get a chance! I'm probably going to quit this site.
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Don't quit and don't blame it all on Hubpages. If anyone is to blame it is Google.
  
  Hubpages IS a business, but their business is to provide a platform for writers from which they earn a share of the revenue.
  
  It is Google who moved the goal-posts, and now Hubpages has to play catch-up.
  
  You can still have fun and write about what you want
  
  You are just expected to learn a little about SEO so that what you write can attract the attention of Google searchers.
  
  That is the "in-group" you want to be part of, and all you have to do is learn how to write for the search engines.
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  Hubpages Hubberposted 11 years agoin reply to this
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Not necessarily, it has already been noticed that many of the hubs that are being idled are only experiencing low traffic, and this is frequently because they are either seasonal hubs e.g. Christmas or Halloween, or because they have only been published a few months and have not had time to build any organic backlinks or a rating in the SERPS. Quote from this week's Hubpages Weekly:
  
  " Important Facts About Idle Hubs
  
  Idle Hubs are neither good nor bad; they're just different! This is what it means when a Hub is in an Idle state:
  
  Idle Hubs have not seen much interest or traffic lately,"
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  Norman Steinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think that last line is more important than we're lead to believe.
  
  "..or may have some formatting / grammar issues that lessen a reader's experience"
  
  Formatting/Grammar issues have no effect on SERP placement or traffic, so why include that line.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I agree with you on that, although I would word it as 'less important than we're lead to believe' because it isn't important in SERPS so why mention it as you said! I very much doubt HP's algo can check grammar etc either, especially if Google can't. I should add that just happened to be included in the chunk of text I quickly copied and pasted. The important part was the first part up to the end of the phrase "Idle Hubs have not seen much interest or traffic lately". I simply quoted the whole second sentence instead of cutting it in half (and I have now removed that part in my original comment).
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  mav04posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  They are wrong about this IDLE thing. A lot of hubs are meant to be looked at once or twice. Once they are looked at, then, someone else that has never seen the hub will look at it so on and so forth. There are lots of people out there that didn't get to see the hub, because it's on a temporary down time. There new generations comming into this hobby new to seeing the hubs. If they take them off, then the new people won't get to see them.
  This gets me angry, because they advertised themselves as a place you could show your writing talents and make money. How are you to make money with adsense if they are not viewable! That was not the deal when I got here. I think this is pretty messed up, and hope that someone else can do a site like this so we could all leave and get back to writing.
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  Norman Steinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I wouldn't mind this if they just published the criteria they're judging us by.
  
  We're not stupid people, we'll fix what needs to be fixed, but we just don't know what the real problem is.
  
  They could tell us the problem and let us fix it, heck, they could even start a new forum category "help me fix my hub" and I'm sure we'll all help as best we can.
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  MsQuestionposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You are so right! This was NOT the deal when we came here! Hub Pages makes it seem like this is all FOR US....that is such b.s. It's all for THEM! They could care less about us as writers.
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  MAGICFIVEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I agree! I used to think Hub Pages was a fun place to write article - because there was no pressure! Now I realize it's like everything else in life- if you are not POPULAR, you might as well NOT EXIST! It's Squidoo for me!
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  DigbyAdamsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Squidoo will also unpublish your lens if it does not meet certain criteria. There it's called a WIP or Work in Progress.
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  smeyerzposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Personally, I do not like the "idle" hubs update...even though none of my hubs are currently idle. Hubpages should listen to us and change the update so that idle hubs could be "marked" so we know that they aren't getting enough traffic, but not do anything about it if that makes any sense.
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  Doodleheadposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Smeyez--
  I am in agreement with you.
  I think it is only a matter of time before one has to "audition" to "get in".
  That will be followed by 'x number of impressions per hub' are required to "keep your contract".
  
  Nothing against Hubpages; that's just the way businesses work.
  I hope to be wrong.
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  Rik Ravadoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I suspect what staff are trying to do is deindex poor/spam hubs. In most cases the owners won't be around to do anything so they need to be pre-emptive. Please note I'm not suggesting all 'idle' hubs are poor/spam - I've got three that are 'idle', not because they are poorly written, but because they aren't being picked up much by the search engines.
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  Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I will wait a month or so to see what happens. Overall, I understand what is being done and why it is being done. Do I agree? It is a split, lol.
  
  I have a domain that has been active for a decade, well indexed with some of my material on it. I have not ever incorporated Google ads on that site, but it does well in searches. My plan, should there continue to be issues with what is happening here, is to move my material to that domain and populate it with some Google ads and see where that goes.
  
  I maintain a PDF file of each hub on my computers, so I have images and links all saved. The moving will take some time should I eventually pursue that, but it may be well worth it.
  
  Making a drastic decision at this point would not be sound...that is my opinion. I will just keep writing and building up my library here and on my computer.
  
  Good luck in whatever direction you may choose to go.
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IzzyMposted 11 years ago
Hang fire on making any drastic changes, Bard.

I really think this latest experiment of HP may very well work; we will know next algo update I expect.

If it works, your featured hubs will come back to life, and if your hubs are interlinked, your sleeping hubs will come out of sleep mode naturally as visitors come back.

This is what I am hoping for. My account was slapped over a year ago and traffic has never returned. Maybe this will work! I have spent the last year updating, tweaking, unpublishing etc to no avail.

One good thing I did was interlink all my hubs so they are in a prime position should traffic return to have those sleeping hubs awakened. If it happens, of course.

Nothing to lose if it doesn't work, but well worth a try.

So, give it at least another month before you make further changes or remove hubs from HP to see what happens.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for the advice, Izzy! I will follow your lead on this then. I suppose I was panicking and depressed looking at all the Idle hubs I now have. I have tried all this tweaking and updating business before and it doesn't work for me unless I count some overnight much better scores that then swiftly drop again.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't know, Izzy. If I'm following your train of thought;
  
  1. G doesn't like some hubs, won't send visitors and penalizes the entire site for them.
  
  2. HP puts them to sleep, where G won't see them. Even fewer views.
  
  3. G "unpenalizes" the site as a result and sends traffic. Strong interlinking gives views to sleeping hubs and HP "wakes" them.
  
  4. G sees the same hubs it penalized the site for, and the process starts all over.
  
  What you're saying makes all too much sense; it's just that step 4 that bothers me. Maybe we should take a really hard look at hubs that "wake up" and do something to them to stop a repeating cycle.
  
  Like you, I think this thing might work, but also think we'd better be prepared to take action if sleeping hubs begin to wake up. Either chop them off completely or attempt to change them into something G likes, which can be a very tall order when we don't understand why it happened in the first place.
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I hear you.
  
  If HP hadn't announced the hub idling program, my initial plan was to unpublish all my dead hubs, and if traffic came back, to republish them one by one (slowly) until the traffic collapsed again. Then I would know that the last hub re-published was at fault in some way.
  
  But with 500 hubs or so, you can see this would be a long-winded process. Too long really.
  
  If traffic comes back, I will have to keep a very close watch on what happens in my account.
  
  I wish I knew which hubs Google hates.
  
  I'd thought it might be the sales hubs, but one of my newer subdomains just got Panda'd a couple of days ago, and it has no sales hubs and very few sales capsules.They are all informational hubs of a decent length and quality (in my eyes anyway).
  
  Of course, it could be because of the 'poor quality' hubs it was linking to throughout the site. Who knows?
  
  This is something we will be learning soon.
  
  Just had another train of thought - what if my main account (this one) got Panda'd because of other hubs it linked to through HP's interlinking strategy (and not my own)?
  
  If that is the case, traffic should return with this new change.
  
  Then again, if everyone is busy updating hubs to get the zzz taken off, there will be no change for me at all.
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  andyozposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  One thing that occured to me was that a lot of the rubbish that is on Hubpages that we get linked to through no fault of our own, is managed by people who don't even log in anymore. So they will not be aware their Hubs are sleeping and hence they won't come back and edit them, so the Hubs will remain asleep.
  I think this is a great way for Hubpages to remove a big chunk of dross that nobody ever looks at any more.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I agree, Andy, and I think that stuff is the main target. People are taking the changes way too personally. Some people just casually join HP, publish one or two spammy or weak hubs and then disappear. Hubhopping picks up some of it but only a small minority, I suspect.
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  mav04posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  But what about the majority of hard working writers? Hubs go up and down all year round. After a group of people has seen the hub, after a while, a NEW group of people (younger generations that get older for ex.) will want to see them. You don't get new people a chance to see them, and we are supposed to make money on adsense. If we can't leave the hubs we worked hard on long enough than we can't make money on hubs!
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Hollie Thomasposted 11 years ago
I've updated a few of my hubs which were idle by adding video and researching the keywords further. I have no idea if that will help or not. However, I put one hub which was well and truly dead, without tweaking anything as it was prior to the Zzz news, on the featured hub list on my profile. It started to get a few views from HP and now suddenly it's receiving double figure views and they're from Goggle.com. is this just coincidence? I have no idea.

Maybe it's worth fiddling with the keywords, adding bits and bobs and then putting one or two in the featured hubs section and seeing if this might help.
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DigbyAdamsposted 11 years ago
I now write at Squidoo, HP and Wizzley. My traffic is best at Wizzley, then Squidoo and lastly HP. I'd recommend a Wizzley account for some of your sleeping Hubs. It can't hurt to diversify a bit and see if G likes you better over there.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for the idea, Digby! I haven't tried Wizzley yet! I made a start at Squidoo but got put off when they said one of my deleted hubs from here was duplicated content. It seems a lot of hassle having to wait about for hubs to be deleted properly so that Squidoo can't find them and not sure how that works. The amount of work and messing about you are expected to do for these sites is a very great deal and there is no guarantee of any financial reward for any of it.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  From what I see at Wizzley, I reckon it is near dead, though, I would be delighted to see some kind of recovery.
  
  http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wizzley.com
  
  One telling stat is that, yesterday, 5 per cent of Wizzley's traffic was from search engines, compared to around 25 per cent for HP and Squidoo.
  
  I dare not not even step into the forums over there. I would be obliged to point out some truths and that is too fragile an ecosystem.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I do know one or two Hubbers who switched from HubPages to Wizzley and had great success with their first few "wizzles" when the site was new, but they tell me traffic has gone badly downhill since then. I wrote a few articles there, but they've never done much.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for echoing Will, Marisa! So perhaps Wizzley is not such a good plan either though I am getting others advising it! This whole mess reminds me of what went on with digital music sites for unsigned acts many years ago when mp3.com started going downhill fast. Everyone was saying go here, go there, this new site is better etc. Usually they weren't and many didn't last long.
  In my experience there are sites that get a good name and where you are more or less guaranteed traffic. This was such a site. It was another reason I liked it and stayed loyal all this time. Now I fell like a lot of my work, which has nothing actually wrong with it in the first place, is getting booted out of here! It is very unsettling and that's how I feel about it! It was just what I didn't need at what has probably been one of the worst Augusts for me ever and not just financially speaking.
  OK, current plan: put some in my Green bard blog, some in my Tenerife blog, some in PubWages and some in Wizzley!
  And in the meanwhile see how the tweaking of idle ones goes here. I had a go at some last night.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, HubPages was such a site at one time - that was its great strength, until Panda hit. I honestly don't think there are any such sites left now - I certainly haven't heard of any.
  
  There are still plenty of revenue-sharing sites out there - but none of them can promise "just write and they will come" the way HubPages could do in the old days. You can't expect to make money on any of them unless you know how to market your own work - and I know that's something you (like a lot of writers) are not comfortable with.
  
  Given that, the best use for revenue-sharing sites is as promotion for your blogs. So I would encourage you to join the following revenue-sharing sites, then put one Green Hub and one Travel Hub on each:
  
  Zujava
  PubWages
  ThisisFreelance
  Excerptz
  Xobba
  Wizzley
  Infobarrel
  
  Make sure you include a link to your blog in each article (Green for Green, Tenerife for Travel, obviously).
  
  Put the rest of your Green and Tenerife Hubs on the appropriate blog.
  
  I'd suggest you move a few of your other Hubs over to some of these sites, too - then wait to see how they do. That way, you'll get an idea whether one of these other sites will work better for you than HubPages, or not.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Excerptz has closed down now Marisa. If you have content there you have the option to move it though as the dashboard is still accessible.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I reckon Ryan should swallow his pride and take an anon sub-domain here. He's been suffering the last year.
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  sunforgedposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I wrote a paragraph here explaining how off base you are.
  
  Then I figured I would just sit back and continue to watch you sharecrop for peanuts.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm guessing you don't read the forums at Wizzley.
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  sunforgedposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Not often. I did swing by to try and see what you might be referencing. All I came away with is that the "new" HP Profile looks to be heavily influenced by the existing Wizzley Profile page.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Ryan has moved on to more profitable ventures now, and he is making good money from ebooks etc. He only dropped excerptz because of the amount of spammers etc who were trying to sign up for the site, and posting stuff that threatened both Ryan's and the other writers on the site's Adsense accounts. It just wasn't a cost effective use of his time to keep policing it daily, so he made a good business decision to let the site go. I am sure if he could he would elaborate more here in person.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well, I hope things work out for him.
  
  I hope Wizzley works out even more but I don't think that is the way things are going. I might start moving my pages from there to a sub here if the next month shows no improvement.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I do too, Ryan is a guy who really does know his stuff and he earns his full time living doing various things online. I should have added in my previous comment (now edited) that he was not just protecting people's content when he closed Excerptz, but his and their Adsense accounts (due to the spammers infiltrating the site which required daily policing which was simply not cost effective timewise).
  
  Personally I am inclined to move stuff away from here right now. I have far more faith in Wizzley right now than I do in HP, (too much crazy jumping through hoops here, and as fast as they make one change, they bring in another, each of which seem to knock my income and views downwards, e.g. my Adsense income vanished when they changed the layout of the adverts, but the HP Ads income did not increase proportionately which cost me about £55 a month GBP). Wizzley however seems to be a better platform right now, and I am hearing from various people that they are earning better there than here. Each to their own I guess, but right now I refuse to publish further here whilst all the chaos reigns and we are expected to refresh content that is often only a few months old and of a high quality. It takes many many months for an article to reach its full potential, and to judge Wizzley fairly I feel it is important anything we publish there is left for at least a year before drawing conclusions, (HP could do well to remember this before they 'Zzz' new articles too, after all, it was them who said it took 3 years for an article to reach its full potential, yet they 'Zzz'd' at least four or five of mine that were under 4 months old lol).
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  sunforgedposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  eh, I threw a few niche accounts up there around the same time I started Xobba.
  
  You might think since I was in the past vocal about site changes here (that adversely effected my income) that I would spitefully? suggest that Wizzley was a great new option.
  
  Its not. Its different, has some fun layout options and less restrictions (right now) and had quality standards from the beginning.
  
  but , eh .. Wizzley all the other content farms right now, provides no better boost or visibility than one can get from starting a fresh hosted site or even a blogger blog.
  
  Comes down to whether people want to share 40-50% of their possible income just to avoid learning the basics of managing their own sites and use proprietary capsule systems (which are really just crutches since it keeps the new users from ever learning the skills necessary to stand on their own feet.
  
  I can understand moving simply on principle though
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's pretty much what I've been telling the Bard.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you, as always, for your advice, Marisa! I am making a note of those suggested sites. PubWages I am already on.
  Thank you, everyone else too, for all your comments here! I have just been catching up on it all and there's a lot to read and think about.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for alerting me to this, Will! I suppose it doesn't really matter though if the hubs were doing nothing here. They may as well go somewhere else where they have some chance, if not a lot?
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psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago
The hub can;t really get woken if it is deindexed IMHO. It will only every be accessed indirectly and not via search. If this causes Hubpages to reindex en masse, then it would just lower site rank again and bring us back tot he same place.
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relacheposted 11 years ago
The new idle feature here works just like Squidoo's WIP feature, and that's been up and running for years now. If I can maintain several hundred lenses and keep them "active" there, I can easily do the same for a few hundred Hubs here.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  +1 Yes, I feel the same as you.
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DigbyAdamsposted 11 years ago
Bard, Wizzley is also very strict about duplicate content, so you have to make sure that they are de-indexed before publishing a Wizzle. I wouldn't write off Squidoo, either. It took me a little time to get used to it, but now I love it.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well Wizzley is not for me either then! My point is this: why should I spend a lot of time adding to or rewriting articles that had nothing wrong with them to start with? Seems to me that a whole bunch of websites are all police-forcing what is on them in much the same way! Personally I don't like it! It is almost as if they are all run by the same people.
  
  I am not happy about this at all!
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  Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hello Bard of Ely,
  Earlier this year I moved a few pieces and also wrote a few new ones for Wizzley. I thought it was strict, and I wasn't getting traffic, so I moved them back to HP, and put a few on my own blog. But as I waited, the few I left on Wizzley started to get views. I just have 10 "wizzles" on there now. At first it seemed many disgruntled people from HP left here in a huff, taking their hubs and anger with them. Wizzley is based in Germany. I don't know if it makes a difference, but I write about Metaphysical topics, and they just don't do well in Europe. They like "how to" and informational items, or customs from other places. Then I went to Infobarrel, and they also require 10 pieces for approval. But like Wizzley, they didn't make me wait until they approved all 10. They are approving them and they are going live one by one, though it takes a few days. IB is almost the same as HP, Wizzley has a few more quirks as far as pictures and stuff. Since you wrote professionally, I'm sure if you wrote or moved just 2 or 3 to either site, or both, they would get approved right away on either site. Mine did, and I'm only the author of a self published book. I have another ZZZZ today too, but it's well written and I have lots of comments on it. I'm unsure, after a certain amount of time is HP going to delete our ZZZ ones? I only had one out of my 113 hubs, and it was dull, I deleted it. But this is good, and I'm not sure what to do with it. I guess I'll move it to IB. Good luck.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for your advice too, Jean!
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Steve, all you need to do is use the Google URL removal tool to deindex your unpublished hubs. It take seconds to enter the link you want deindexed, and then you can move the content and republish it anywhere you like after about 24 hours. Right now I am moving about 6 hubs to Wizzley because they seem to be the best performing alternative to HP right now from what I am hearing, plus I already publish there and they are so similar to HP to use. I unpublished those hubs the day before yesterday, added them to the Google URL removal tool yesterday evening, and by tonight they are already showing on there as deindexed. Easy, and saves any issues with duplicate content flags anywhere else. The link to the Google URL removal tool is:
  https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogi … ers/tools/
  
  If I am going to be cheeky can you use my referral link when you sign up for Wizzley lol? I will Private Message it to you on Facebook just in case
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for your advice too, Cindy, and I will go to Wizzley now and use your name as my referrer! Thank you especially for the removal tool.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You are welcome Steve. I am hearing pretty good reports from people using Wizzley right now, and they say they are making money there. Naturally it will take time for the articles to age again, but think of it as a longer term investment as at least they will be seen by Google again and therefore gain some natural ageing which they wouldn't have done if de-indexed here. Most of my hubs here that got 'Zeed' were high quality informative articles that were under 4 months old. HP didn't even give them a chance to get traffic or gain any ageing in order to do so. They certainly didn't need tweaking at all when I re-read them through.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I am not surprised about your hubs that you have described, Cindy! I know I have plenty of good ones that didn't need tweaking either, and as I have just discovered a really badly slung together hub of under 500-words and no original photo but about Benjamin Fulford the conspiracy theorist and that is still active. In my opinion you can spend a lot of time working on hubs here but if for whatever reason they don't get the traffic they get binned as idle! That is my considered conclusion on this matter, that it about traffic and that is it!
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  mav04posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Bard, I don't blame you not to be unhappy with this! Amen to that. This is down right back stabbing people, and unappreciative of their loyality. I'm trying to figure out a way to make a site that we can count on. A site who stands by their word!
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I personally really like Wizzley, and I recall Bard's comment related to the 'duplicate content' issue which I since solved for him by linking to the Google URL removal tool and explaining how you can de-index your own articles in 24 hours using it and therefore avoid duplicate content flags on sites you have moved content to. In general Wizzley is very user friendly and don't have all this 'hoop jumping' to deal with thank goodness.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you for agreeing with me about this! I actually have one hub that was a promotional article for my book that at one point was getting thousands of views from Facebook, though I don't know how that happened. It was once one of my most successful hubs for traffic but now is classified as idle. So that illustrates what you are saying about how views for hubs can go up and down.
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WriteAngledposted 11 years ago
Hey Bard,

If your hubs have been censored here, seriously think about setting up a couple of web sites to feature them instead and reap all the benefits.

Your Tenerife information could be presented together with affiliate links to accommodation and flights, books, etc.

I earn twice as much simply through Adsense on a couple of my own sites as I earn here with Hub Ads + Adsense combined. The sums are fairly pitiful, but nevertheless higher than my earnings here. I could probably earn more if I had the time to dedicate to expanding the sites. At the moment, they contain less than 10 pages/posts each.

I am lucky in that I belong to a programme, which lets me host as many Wordpress sites as I want as a small part of the membership perks I get for $30/month. Thus, the only extra risk I face when I set up a new site is the cost of buying a domain. However, even without that, there is always Blogger and there are cheap hosting packages to be found as well.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you for the advice, WriteAngled! I have no money to spend on websites so I need places to put my work for free. I thought Squidoo was OK and started moving stuff there but very soon got hit with a duplicate content problem. It was my content and had only existed here and was deleted here but that wasn't good enough because even if it says it has it hasn't really! Then of course, I moaned about that and people say well, what you need to do now is...
  
  My point is that all of this seems to be a never-ending stream of messing about with no guarantee of getting any money out of the end results and it's not for me!
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WriteAngledposted 11 years ago
That is true in a sense, Bard.

However, Blogger is totally free and you can monetise it in various ways.

Trouble is, there are only a few other options for on-line writers, who do not/cannot create their own sites:

1. Join freelance sites and write for up-front payments which are usually pathetic

2. Join revenue-sharing sites and be subjected to endless hassles and arbitrary rules.

Have you looked at www.wordsofworth.co.uk/ ? I know some people who are happy with that site and consider the payments they receive fair for the work done. WoW usually want people to write brief (250 words or so) blog posts about subjects with which they are familiar. They do work to deadlines, but they also pay promptly.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I am already on Blogger but got rid of a lot there to refocus the site. I had been advised it was too diverse. I suppose I could start a new account there and put all my mixed bag over there?
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  WriteAngledposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Or categorise your articles as far as you can and start several new accounts?
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Too complicated I think: I mean I have interviews, book reviews, property, Tenerife, spiders, festivals, fashions, animal rights, Wales, singers, conspiracies...there is no focus!
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  ...but Bard, why don't you just move your conservation/environmental Hubs over to Blogger (to your existing "green" blog)? Do the same with your Tenerife Hubs, moving them to your existing Tenerife blog. Leave just a couple of each on HubPages, linking to the blogs.
  
  Also, I've been trying to understand why you started a new "Green Bard" account here on HubPages, instead of putting that material on the blog?
  
  I can understand you feel the blogs aren't earning much yet, but you need to build up the content first before you can expect to see results. That means not spreading yourself too thin.
  
  "Mixed bag" stuff does not earn money on a blog. It can earn money on rev-sharing sites like HubPages or Wizzley, so either leave it here or try moving it to places like Wizzley, Infobarrel or Zujava.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's a great plan of action, Marisa, so thank you! That I can do and will.
  I started a Green Bard here because I was staying in that niche as much as possible and someone had given me the idea that a new account might work better than my main account so I thought, well, let's give that a go! Then I got stuck into doing 30 hubs in 30-days to see if that would really boost it, and it has but not financially as such as yet.
  I have just noted down your advice to work with!
  I have just deleted some hubs altogether and that is a new move for me.
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  God made scienceposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  He would write a novel on Hub Pages, and how people become rich here, and wise
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  seanorjohnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Just checked out wordsofworth it looks good but unfortunately isn't taking UK writers at the moment.
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DigbyAdamsposted 11 years ago
Bard I think it's in your own interest, not to have duplicate content. It's the one policy that I do agree with on all of these sites. If your zzz'd sites remain idle for long enough, they will de-index all on their own. So it's not an issue to move them to Wizzley.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So maybe I will leave them long enough to de-index properly then? How long will that take? maybe I can celebrate that day?
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DigbyAdamsposted 11 years ago
You can move to Wizzley anytime. When you go to publish an article, it will tell you if it finds duplicate content. If that warning comes up, then just don't publish. I don't believe that there's any penalty for that. Chefkeem is one of the head guys over there and really nice. You might contact him and let him know what you're doing, so he won't wonder.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  OK, thanks for the advice
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  Moonmaidenposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I came to much the same conclusions as you did in your first post up there Bard of Ely. Time is the only thing you can never replace and I don't want to waste any more time trying to second guess what Google and Hubpages want just so I can get back to earning something here. If you spend too much time on piddly things you end up working for a penny an hour eventually.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, Moonmaiden, or nothing at all, apart from some vague hope that maybe someday and somehow...but it never does!
  
  But I think I know what to do now and that is to follow Marisa's advice and shift a lot of my hubs elsewhere.
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Aya Katzposted 11 years ago
Bard, please feel free to move idle hubs to PubWages. That is what I am doing with mine.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  OK, Aya, thanks for another great plan of action for me. I think I have enough homes for them all to go to now.
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  galleryofgraceposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The majority of mine that are marked "idle" are ones that do not have "photos". So I believe photos will help. At least then they can be pinned.
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  Norman Steinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Bingo! Maybe your article won't rank well enough to get traffic, but every photo has an even chance of a google click.
  
  The key is using a good, descriptive alt tag and of course having a good clear picture.
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
Wizzley is fairly new, and yet another way not to limit yourself and put all your eggs in one online basket. Lots of Hubbers and ex-Hubbers on this site. I do feel at home.
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Xenonlitposted 11 years ago
I see that as a tool for recognizing when articles are getting stale. They need updating, retweeting and remarketing.

But I have over 100 hubs. The "tool" should not even be in existence for writers who have less than 100 hubs.

For new writers, it can easily come across as a manipulative effort on the part of Hub Pages to get views that Hub Pages won't help get them to get. Any hosting site has an obligation to get views.

In that sense, the "tool" needs to be improved. New writers do not need the pressure and the disappointment of being made to feel that they are not "hustling" enough for pennies.
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  The Invincibleposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Not too sure about this. Hubpages honchos claim to have done this to ensure quality and activity happening everyday. You could revive and revamp those idle hubs and re-publish to see if it gets any better.. Or just delete and write a related new Hub.
  HP staff is getting all professional these days....
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ftclickposted 11 years ago
Makes sense to me. And guess what? A newer Google Penguin algorithm is coming out soon. So more surprises from a monopolistic company.
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
HubPages IS a business. That's already understood. This thread was established to give some feedback to ADM, and the hits keep coming. Loooong thread!
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
LOL! Right answer, wrong pew! LOL! I am reading too much on HubPages' newest changes because I can't believe the amount of people who are so upset about this newest idea! Zzz! But, HubPages is a business. And that alone is understood. So much for yet another Senior Moment. LMAO! Zzz!
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  God made scienceposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Whose business? LOLOLOLOL
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postsposted 11 years ago
Hubpages is a business and we are part of it and to be specific we are also doing business here. They seem to have introduced to give idle status to hubs they think need some updates, old data prolly and less performing when it comes to grab organic traffic which is way more relevant than other sources. I am not taking this thing seriously. And yes, it's always better to run fully controllable business simultaneously with hubpages... Regards!!
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  God made scienceposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Don't take the business seriously. You will hit the wall.
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It depends. Seriousness also varies. But, being engaged in hubpages is not my primary business anyway.
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Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago
Izzy, with thanks to Relache, I think I have finally hit on what is wrong with so many of mine and been dragging my score down: Hubtrail hubs! I have loads of them and all of this is very out of date. I am in the process of removing hubtrail tags and links.
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Really? I have (literally) one or two hubtrail hubs, I'd actually forgotten all about them. How are they bringing your subdomain down?
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I was indicating the same thing!!! Regards!!
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
What is a hubtrail hub? Bard, I like you're writing. We need you here. You are one of the famous people.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  These were hubs written about travel, holidays, hotel reviews etc. People who wrote them tagged the hubs with 'Hubtrail' and added an RSS feed that linked their hubs to other hubbers writing Hubtrail hubs. This meant each hub showed ten links to other travel/hubtrail hubs at the end of it. I think they were popular about 2-3 years ago from what I recall.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you for the compliments! If I was really famous I wouldn't need to be bothered about stuff like this though!
  
  Hubtrails was a project started for hubs that had anything to do with travel locations. You added special hubtrail tags eg hubtrail-europe and hubtrail-london and RSS feeds to other hubtrail hubs. I had a lot for Tenerife and Wales. I have been removing them all now I know about this.
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Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago
This is why I think my hubtrail hubs are to blame because the project is out of date. Relache said: I only did one or two Hubtrail hubs and deleted those links and tags once that project dropped dead. (you do know that project was abandoned by the folks who started it like two years ago, right?) Those tags and links have been non-productive for a long time.".
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mackllinvingerposted 11 years ago
FEEL AS I LIKE AS.
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
Bard, as usual, I feel your pain. Your work is outstanding. But whether you feel that you are wasting you time here or not is your call. Only you know that. You kind of answered your question. Your articles are of magazine quality and have been published in magazines. With good writing and the experience of having been published in quality publications, there is also that need for marketing. The Internet requires it because it sure isn't selective with what people write. Unfortunately, there is no possibility for me to hire a gorilla or a chimpanzee to click on those ads! But, I have finally learned that as a writer, contributing to just one "safe" haven is a risk. It does not hurt to test the online waters elsewhere. Now I know why the emphasis is on not putting all your eggs in one basket. Doing that is the same thing as only investing in one stock!
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you! I appreciate your compliments! As I see it I simply don't have the 'knack,' whatever it is, of making decent money on the Internet.. Maybe I am crap at SEO, useless with keywords, or whatever, but I do know very well I so much prefer writing a job already agreed on for a publisher that promises X amount and then pays it. That is what I am looking for not all this, why not try...and you might...vagueness of this Internet writing. It seems to me, online writing is a guessing game and game of chance!
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DzyMsLizzyposted 11 years ago
Why would "magazine quality" be a problem? I was under the impression that Hub Pages considers itself to be an 'online magazine,' as opposed to a blogging platform, and therefore wanted 'magazine quality' writing.
Secondarily, "all the eggs in one basket" is an analogy as old as civilization itself, but, at my age, it is difficult to keep track of what I wrote and for whom or on which site, let alone ad programs, multiple passwords, and even keeping up with all that extra writing. I simply don't have time. I do well enough to crank out a dozen articles a month, if I'm lucky, but they are all here. If I were to split that up amongst other sites and/or my blogs (which, by the way, are sadly neglected since I started writing here), I'd dilute my total quantity, and as a result my traffic and earnings at each site. I don't see that as an advantage.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well, if you make decent money here that's fine but I don't and I have been well aware for a long time that there are magazines (hard copy) that pay large sums of money for single articles/stories, and more than I make in a month here!
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
DzyMsLizzy: With all the back-to-back changes here, I will make the effort to market my writing at this site and others. It is only common sense. I'm not someone who has 20 blogs going on and anything else thrown in. Right now, I am writing for two sites. I have one ignored blog that I haven't tended to since April. And whatever freelancing work that comes along (as long as it doesn't screw me financially), I'll take it. To say that you won't remember or you don't want to keep track of your writing? That's your decision. I have my Senior Moments, but I'm not putting all of my work and efforts in one place. If this ship sinks or it is sold, then that leaves you with a bunch of homeless Hubs. And you have to find homes from all that you have written--if not sooner. Or you have to admit that you have wasted your time and move on.
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  mav04posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hey. The only problem with spreading your eggs is many sites don't want duplicates. Unless you do originals all over which would take a lot of time. I understand what you mean, it just seems like a lot of time. I've had lots of passwords and id's. I miss the old net where you didn't have to sign up just to look at a site, and everything was free lol.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Most sites don't want duplicates, and you're pretty much wasting your time posting the same article in several places anyway. That idea stopped working some time ago.
  
  In this particular case, Bard of Ely is considering moving his existing Hubs to other sites - and obviously, each one of those is original.
  
  Personally, I don't find the ID's and passwords a lot of work. I try to use the same ID on every writing site for "branding" reasons anyway, so that just leaves the passwords, and I keep a record of those (not on my PC).
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  DzyMsLizzyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Arlene,
  You misunderstood me. I did not say I "didn't want to keep track of my writing"; I said it would be difficult to do so at multiple sites; I also said that in trying to write for multiple sites, the QUANTITY of writing would have to kick up significantly, in order to maintain the same level across the board...and not dilute any one site to just a few submissions.
  THAT is what I said would be difficult, because I have trouble enough finding time and energy to crank out what I do just here.
  If I were to split that amongst different sites, AND have to wait for the new sites to build up to start paying off--might undo some of the payouts I'm starting to realize right here.
  It's not only senior moments, but health issues with my husband I'm dealing with. When I say , "I don't have time," I mean it literally--I cannot write, or research other places to do so while taking him to his medical appointments, or helping him around the house. So, please, I don't need any "attitude judgements" about "...my decisions..."
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's a common misconception. It's true that on HubPages, you have your own sub-domain so it's important to have a decent body of work to please Google. However, on other revenue-sharing sites, each article is just part of the larger site, so it really doesn't matter whether you have one article or a hundred.
  
  If you join sites which pay via Adsense, rather than direct, then all the money goes straight into your Adsense account from all the different sites, so it would have no impact on your threshold.
  
  The bigger issue is that you will get much better traffic if you build a network of articles across several sites, each linking back to your Hubs on the same topic.
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
I just finished my fifth article for Wizzley, and was given the okay (encouragement) today to write more. The next goal is 50 articles to get to the base of its earning power. Which, I will happily do. Like HubPages, I will give this site a year of my attention, and I will go from there. Unfortunately, HubPages has come to mean more of a distraction to me as a writer. I no longer have the fun that I used to--cranking out Hubs because ADM has done nothing but make change after change after change. I'm a pretty loyal person when it comes to latching onto something or a cause, but I feel it's time to test out new online scenery. I only had one Zzz, and I had fixed it right away. If my account is going to run on green dots, then I can take that as being on autopilot until I get another Zzz and fix it. This is what it's come down to. And one of the major reasons why I've turned to Wizzley on the advice of a fellow Hubber. Also, it's a nice change to see plenty of ads on Wizzley that I have chosen--instead of white space we have been given on HubPages.
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Eric Graudinsposted 11 years ago
ZZzzzzz.

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pinkdaisyposted 11 years ago
What is Pubwages?
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Google it!
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  pinkdaisyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks. I don't make any money here anymore.
  I don't know what to do with all my hubs
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well, why not move your hubs there? I am invited to do that!
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Sue Adamsposted 11 years ago
andyoz said:
"I think this is a great way for Hubpages to remove a big chunk of dross that nobody ever looks at any more."

I couldn't agree more. I, for one, have always complained about the lack of moderation on HubPages. It was high time HP found an effective way to monitor content. The new Zzz feature helps us keep Hubs up-to-date and makes sure they are a good read.

On the other hand, I feel really sorry for people with hundreds of Hubs to tweak. That's an impossible task, especially with new changes appearing every week!

Only 2 of my Hubs were zzzed. I just tweaked the titles, the summaries, and checked grammar, lay-out etc. They came back to life within 24 hours. Thank you HubPages for helping us to improve quality.

As for running your own site - yes, definitely. All I've learnt on HP can be applied to my own sites. So if and when HP go down the drain I'll have the content and knowledge to move to my 100% earning self-owned and self-controlled web properties.

On the whole, I don't think I am wasting my time here on HubPages. I'm just spending more time on my own sites now and going easy adding new Hubs until things settle down here.

Keeping Control is the key - and you can't keep control of hundreds of pages on a site you don't own.
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Will Apseposted 11 years ago
I personally think that people need to realize the genuine dangers of keeping pages that Google has never approved of. It doesn't matter if Google's judgement is good or bad if your main aim is to avoid Panda, get visitors and make some money.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Will, how do we know whether pages are not approved of by Google, or is it by HubPages? I mean there are perfectly good hubs here, and I am talking about those belonging to other writers as well as my own, that have been idled when there was nothing wrong with them to begin with. I had one on Teno Alto. It was a good word-count, had original photos, several blocks of text, and an added video, but it got binned. Why? Is it just because people don't search for Teno Alto? Is that it, and that only stuff that gets good traffic is wanted here? It appears so!
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That is it. No traffic equals kiss of death. I see three things you can do.
  
  1. Revise the page and do some proper keyword research. Can it be angled towards people who are looking for something?
  
  2. Delete it.
  
  3. Create a micro site around the subject - where at least one article does get traffic and the others can be part of the site that people might want to refer to.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I changed the title a bit and a few minor tweaks elsewhere and resubmitted it and it is active again and going up. However, I have done this sort of thing here before and seen hubs get a brief lease of life again but then to drop. We cannot be expected to be tweaking our hubs on a daily basis to keep them current!
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I was expecting to say, 'this is a problem with the HP algo- good pages with only a very small potential audience are going to suffer unnecessarily. So you are going to have to write popular pages if you don't want to involve yourself in a lot of inconvenient updates' But it got more complicated when I looked at Teno Alto.
  
  Your tenerifeislander 'Trekking to Teno Alto in Tenerife's northwest' page is number one in Google for 'Teno Alto'.
  
  Your Bard of Ely sub-domain has been hit by Panda and I couldn't find any sign of the rather similar page on that sub 'Tenerife's Teno Alto is an "easy stroll" or is it?' in Google.
  
  'Teno Alto' gets about a 700 searches a month so it is never going to get much traffic. Do you really need 2 pages on the same subject? I doubt if the one was doing the other much good before Panda knocked over your main sub.
  
  Anyway, I will go back to saying 'this is a problem with the HP algo- good pages with only a very small potential audience are going to suffer unnecessarily. So you are going to have to write popular pages if you don't want to involve yourself in a lot of inconvenient updates'
  
  But of course the bigger issue is your Panda hit. Something caused it and getting rid of suspect pages is your only chance of getting out from under it.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for looking into it and the info, Will! I have the two hubs because they have different photos and are different routes to the same place so they are talking about different countryside and what can be expected if you walked there in each of those ways.
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  ThomasEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It is quite possible that whatever is causing Bard of Ely problems might not be anything to do with his writing. For example, he may automatically be linking to hubs that have been promoted by spam.
  
  I think it is dangerous to chase the algorithm. It can change at any time, so a long term thinker simply tries to write content that people will like.
  
  In the long term the danger is that by deindexing good work that doesn't fit the algorithm today you will find when the algorithm changes you are left high and dry.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well, I wish I knew what I had to do to get my account back in good standing again! There are hubs that I have links on that the link suggestion tool came up with before I stopped using it. I am wondering if that could have caused the problem?
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Every hub you publish is automatically linked to 6 others through HP's own interlinking system.
  
  It could be a number of those that have your dragged your (and mine) subdomain down. We will know one way or the other in a matter of weeks, when Google runs its algo again.
  
  We can only assume that Google does not send traffic to hubs it disapproves of, so those hubs should now be zzeed.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So in other words it has been beyond our control and some of us are just plain unlucky?
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It's impossible to tell. Just ask Marye Audet - her main account had a huge number of good Hubs but was wiped out by Panda.
  
  Considering your immediate need for income, you really don't have time to fart around tweaking your account in hopes of reawakening it. Get busy moving those Hubs to your blogs, it will pay off better in the end.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Before I can move any I have to get them deleted properly because I have already run into the duplicate content problem at Squidoo. Cindy has given me the Google Removal Tool link but I see that even this is not as straightforward as it appears. You have to make a change to the page you want deleted and tell Google what change you have made or they won't do it. I changed 2011 to 2012 and that has been accepted but it is still additional work I wasn't expecting.
  
  Another problem is that if I want to use the same photos I have to re-save them on my PC and make a note of any videos or links I want to use again.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  No you don't have to make any changes, you simply add the URL and the system immediately checks it, realises it is unpublished and then it asks you if you want to remove it, you click on 'remove' or 'yes' (can't remember which) and then it changes to 'Pending'. Next day it is done and says 'removed'. No need to do anything else. (sounds to me like you forgot to unpublish the page first, as otherwise how would Google be able to check if you had changed words or not?)
  
  PS. I have sent you a series of photos and instructions that explain step by step how to do this (really simple, takes about 30 seconds per URL to submit, and no editing of anything required). If you still have problems I will need more info to see why you are having issues that are far from normal.
  
  Edit: If anyone else needs the instructions please private message me and I will email them to you if you are having problems. Just remember to make sure you unpublish articles before trying to de-index them or the tool won't work.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Cindy, thank you! I was not unpublishing because I assumed that the removal tool would be doing that.
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Sue Adamsposted 11 years ago
That is the terrible nature of Google.

There is an old Dutch saying that goes:
"Wat de boer niet kent, dat lust-ie niet."
In English:
"What the peasant doesn't know, he doesn't like."

The saying is used to depict simpletons. Google is turning the whole world into simpletons.
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1. 79
  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That would be in line with the theories about how world populations are being "dumbed down." It is not just conspiracy theorists that talk about that idea either because I came across it in my university studies.
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  pinkdaisyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  What if we all bought our own domains names and linked to each other? Build a network?
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That sounds a good idea!
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  pinkdaisyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I bought my own domain names a couple of years ago - it's the only way I have been able to make any money.
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  Lady Wordsmithposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have one - what on earth do you do with it?!
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think the idea is to use it to have control over your own website and not have to share any of the income coming in from ads you have showing on it. Many people do this successfully though I am not one of them yet. Basically it comes back to traffic again. It doesn't make any difference if you own the domain or if what you wrote was a work of genius if hardly anyone sees your site.
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postsposted 11 years ago
Well, as many frens mentioned earlier, this is total business and this recent change is another policy of hubpages to make the hubs or articles updated. This is definitely good for them as the "Zzz" marked hubs are generally focused by hubbers and at least try to modify them or retouch them. As like other companies, hubpages also survive by advertisements and moreover they need relevant and targeted traffic (especially from organic search results-- generally it has been found that, people searching a term from search results are the one who show, call to action and are the potential buyers, subscribers etc)
Its a simple theory, advertisers need targeted visitors and hubpages gives preferences to hubs which bring these kind of visitors. So, i always suggest a basic keywords research, competition analysis, and ads relevancy (if your targeted term got advertisers or not) before creating content and hitting the publish button!!!
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Sarra Garrettposted 11 years ago
Please don't give up!
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MAGICFIVEposted 11 years ago
So in other words, if you want to write about a topic that may not be widly popular, you just shouldn't bother doing it? And what about holiday hubs...should those be forgotten about as well, because after all, who searches for "Christmas crafts" in May?
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Some topics and keywords are seasonal like Olympic London, Valentines Day, Fifa world cup etc. So, its better to target these keywords before some months of their arrival time. Your hub will be ranked highly in search results and if you be lucky, you will see a significant high spike of seasonal traffic. But, after the period is over, that hub or article will be dead.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, that just about sums it up I think! If you don't write about something popular, trendy and in the news now, you can expect to end up in the idle bin, especially if you write about something seasonal or an event that has been and gone! How sad is that?
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  Lady Wordsmithposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  None of my hubs are seasonal, and I have about thirty Idle hubs. Some of them are my best work, and they've just not been viewed for a while. They'll never be seen again unless I put some keywords into them. To me that kind of feels like I'm tattooing one of my own children with an advertisement for a well-known brand of cola!
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MAGICFIVEposted 11 years ago
This certainly makes you think twice about any idea you get to write about, that's for sure. Like...is this worth it? Or should I not even bother? It makes you feel forced to write about what's "in style," even though that might not be so interesting to you, or there are already a million articles on the Internet already about that subject.
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This is the reason, why basic keywords research is the must. Its stupid act to target a keyword which is not searched by people and creating hubs or articles on the basis of such keyword will only increase the number of hubs published, but of no worth. So, i always target evergreen topics which will be discussed and have an impact for a long period of time. But, we still can't ignore seasonal keywords, for example; millions of people searched for London Olympics from its starting to end, and we can't imagine how much traffic the top 10 sites would have got over a short period of time. This kind of seasonal traffic is huge, when i got the same kind of traffic for Fifa world cup, my server went down due to bandwidth restriction and i needed to upgrade it immediately.
  Another thing, there is always the discussion going in the whole web about if we go for passion or profit. I say combine both of 'em and create a hybrid technique which you are capable of and can continue writing for years to come.
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  pinkdaisyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  May I ask where you do your keyword research? Where are the best places to look?
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yesterday i had created a hub relating to this. You can check it out. Or, simply for proper keywords research , you can use Google adwords keyword tool. As Google covers almost 80% share of search traffic, their tool are more reliable. Additionally, you can use SEMRUSH, SPYFU and KEYWORDSPY to analyze if that keyword will generate profit for you in coming days or not. And do not forget to see the trend in Google insights for search, it even forecasts that keyword's impact in future calculating the history of its flow from past. If you have any questions, feel free to ask...Regards!!
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  Lady Wordsmithposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm going to check this out - thanks. But does this not take the fun out of writing? There are an awful lot of people who write on here for the love of writing, who explore their creative writing talents and just enjoy having their work read and commented on - I guess HP doesn't want to be used in this way any longer, do you think? It's a shame, as it was a nice community for creative writers.
  
  But we get nothing in life for free I suppose. Creative writers don't make money for HP, so I can understand in a way. I feel sorry for all the poets though! Not much you can do to force-fit keywords into your beautiful poems, without making them look like product placement!
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You are correct in one sense.. This is the reason why i mentioned this as a business model too. Anyway, i will try to clear this query. Firstly, i don't accept to use "keywords research" as "keywords forcing". Keywords Research is a basics or foundation for every article. And as far as writing freely is concerned, you will not only get more brainstorming space but also know related keywords which like minded people are searching over the net relating your theme as every article or hub is based at least on one theme ( if not say, a keyword). And i guess this will boost the creative thinking and you can write more. The only drawback of this techniques is, if we focus more for search engine spiders(by keywords stuffing and content farming) rather human beings who will be searching for what we are delivering. I guess, keywords research should not only be taken for making money out of your article or hubs, it can be taken as a way for you to reach vast majority of people to whom you will be sharing your thoughts.
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  Uninvited Writerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It depends whether or not you want to make money or not. If you don't want to earn then you don't use popular keywords. If you can't earn online maybe sticking to traditional offline sources is best.
  
  I don't do a lot of keyword research myself and I sometimes write on unpopular subjects. But, they all get traffic at one time or another. I only search for keywords on topics I am personally interested in. When I work for a client I write what they want, on Hubpages I write about what I want to write about. I never do as well when I try to force SEO.
  
  I get traffic from some of my Christmas hubs all year long.
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Although, you don't target particular keyword and write on the whole article on its basis, you will get some bunch of traffic for sure. This is due to "long tailed broad matched keywords". For example, you mentioned that you are getting consistent traffic in your Christmas hubs all year. This is because, people search for long tailed Christmas keywords whole year but the spike in traffic for these keywords will be in December, this is the trend.
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Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago
My main reaction is that I find this very disappointing! I can understand it and go along with it but this is not the HubPages I fell in love with four years ago!
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Everything is changeable; and we must move on according to it. Everything is not the same so its always profitable to adjust and modify us according to the flow!!!
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  Lady Wordsmithposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Moving on might mean going somewhere else to write?
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Lady Wordsmithposted 11 years ago
I've never made any money on HubPages - I had no idea when I first discovered HP that it had anything to do with earning money. I just found it in a search for somewhere nice to write. I've been here for two years now, though for the past couple of months I haven't posted any new hubs - I've been answering quite a lot of questions though, just to keep my hand in. But I've been busy - real life takes over sometimes.

And lo! when I come back I find that I have tons of Idle hubs. It's pretty annoying, because now those hubs can't be found in a search - I have to question the logic of that, it seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy! 'Your hubs are not being viewed, therefore we will make them invisible so that they REALLY can't be viewed' - hmm, what a great help!

But after reading a little about what other people have to say about this I've decided that I'm going to give myself and HubPages a chance - we've had a good relationship until now and they've never unpublished any of my hubs; it's like a marriage, right? Got to be worked at before it can be given up on. So I'm going to try to work some keywords into my Idle hubs, maybe rethink the titles of some of them - I'm not comfortable with it, not comfortable at all, because my quirky titles reveal the style of my writing, which I am loathe to compromise. However, I'm going to try it, and see if I can de-Idle any of them. It might all work out for the best. I'm certainly not going to rewrite any of the Idle hubs, because some of them are pretty perfect in terms of writing quality! I love them, and it would be playing them false to change them.

And if it doesn't work out, I'll go somewhere else - I'll go to WordPress and change my hubs into blog entries, or something like that. I'm not in it to make money (which is good, because I never will make internet-money with any of my work), I'm just in it to have my work read and commented on a little bit.

Let's just see how it goes before jumping ship.

LW.
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I respect you love for writing for people instead of money. But, i recommend why don't your back-up your hubs after publishing and if something bad goes in future, you can publish it somewhere other where you have full control over your creations. Actually, i am also running a network of blogs simultaneously with hubpages!!
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WriteAngledposted 11 years ago
I used the removal tool at Google without having to make any changes.

If you unpublish a lot a once, and use the Google tool as and when you want, you will find that in time the rest will become deindexed on their own anyway.
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  Tenerife Islanderposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  As soon as I put the url I wanted removed I was asked if I want it removed from the cache which I assume is needed and then it says to type a word into the box that shows a change. I tried just submitting the link and no proof and it swiftly rejected this. So I had to open the hub in edit mode and make a change. I thought, well, I might as well have stayed here and tweaked this and submitted again to HP.
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wabondposted 11 years ago
If you do move your articles to a blog, as some people have suggested, you won't have to worry about duplication, you can publish what you like. Though I wouldn't recommend Google blogs as mine have been hit badly since the panda update. I don't know if that would be better, as I am just as much in the dark about this as anyone else.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  William, as far as I know Google don't like duplicate content either and that is why all this started. So if it isn't removed properly I may be able to post it but perhaps Google will then frown on my blog because of this! It is all so insanely complex I sometimes wonder what I am doing trying to do! I am a writer and a thinker not a juggler of complexities made by Internet companies!
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  wabondposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yea, I know how you feel, Bard, It not easy if you are not a computer geek. I'm thinking about making changes to my blogs and hubs but have no idea if any change I make would be a help.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Google don't mind duplicate content, so long as it isn't on the same site. If you published the same article twice on your own site (for example) Google would frown upon it and penalise you, but if you published it on two different sites they will ignore it and are fine with it.
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  postsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I guess, Google hates duplicate content which is why they have penalized so many sites roughly having exact contents plagiarized . And duplicate contents in your own blog, will have negative effect like sharing link juice, sharing Page rank for same article like in Wordpress. In default, wordpress have taxonomies like tags, categories which is indexed by search engine and Google behaves them as different page ; For example, if "hubPages" is a tags or category in the following URLs pointing the same content, Google sees them as two different page with duplicate content in same domain.
  hxxp://example.com/example.html, hxxp://example.com/hubpages/example.html. So, its always best to restrict categories and tags with robots.txt modification. The release of Panda or Penguin update is for the removal of cheap sites (including copy cat) reigning in top of SERps due to blackhat and False Seo practices.
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Lady Wordsmithposted 11 years ago
Don't you just feel like 'just let me write! All I want to do is write!'? Maybe I will give up on this after all, and just go and concentrate on that novel!
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  mav04posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes! That is the problem I've been encountering over and over again. I'm the writer, they are the editor, they are the copywriter, and they are the publisher. Now why is it that I have to do their job? And, they try to do mine? Furiating. I'm trying to meditate lol and, have more patience for the circus that surrounds us. Good to have you guys who understand-thank you.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  YES! That is how I often feel!
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
Lady Wordsmith: A+++. I've felt this way for months!
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