Marketing HubPages
58Getting the Word Out
After 10 months since the launch of HubPages, I thought I'd share a bit about our experience of launching and growing a site.
First, metrics. We had goals for number of Hubs created, and monthly pageviews. Our goal is to get as many people publishing on HubPages and then have that content drive traffic from search engines.
Grow the Pot
Grow the pot was a contest idea I came up with. We put $2 dollars in the pot for each Hub with a HubScore over 50 that was created from the Idea Bank. The results were mixed.
I hoped for large pots and word of mouth to kick in quickly. However, it didn't spread very quickly and it usually had a few people participate. Perhaps we didn't give it enough time. In the end we stopped it.
Work from Home
We used a few SEM firms to promote HubPages on Yahoo, Google, MSN and other search engines. However, the cost to get someone to signup was too high. We tried for several months to tune the campaigns, but we couldn't get the kind of breadth and conversions. So we pulled way back and now run a few very targeted campaigns with mixed results.
Newsletter
Invite Your Friends
Invite your friends is an easy way to tell others about HubPages. Its a feature to encourage people to spread the word. It's low cost, takes minimal support, and has been somewhat useful. I think this would work better on sites like MySpace and Facebook, but I think it's still worth having.
Affiliate Program
PR
HubPages is a technology company, so there are quite a few tech bloggers out there. A few have covered us. They are a great way to get a boost, but it's hard to get regular coverage. Most PR coverage comes around major announcements. So it's good when you get it, but just not regular enough.
Fortune Cookies
Today we passed out 80ish fortune cookies with a message that says "HubPages brings you good fortune". On the back it has the URL. It's different. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. But I learned a bit about passing cookies out. If you stand outside of BART and say "Fortune Cookie", nobody will take one. If you walk around where everyone is eating, most people will take one. And some will even say "Thank you".
Word of Mouth
There is nothing better and stronger than word of mouth. With a new service, this is hard, but as the product becomes stronger it grows. Most of the people on HubPages have been told about it by someone.
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How did you find HubPages
Hubpages is getting stronger and better every day. Keep up the great work!
NUMBER ONE IN THE WORLD! PERIOD!
it is definately growing and i love the new face lift the new look is kool
This is definitely the best and most user friendly site Ive come across that's why I'm here;)
I got here by word of mouth, that's true. Good luck to HP.
Were the fortune cookies indiviaually wrapped?
A nice mixed bag of marketing tactics, I have watched Hubpages grow at a fantastic rate, you must be doing something right!, the way hubpages is growing, i can see it becoming one of the most popular sites on the net within the next year, I notice in this hub that you mention hubpages being ten months old, but your profile says different Paul, you have been a member for 51 weeks,in my book that tells me that sometime next week is hubpages first birthday,do you have any plans to celebrate? I wish hubpages success for the future and happy 1st birthday when it comes!.....jimmy
p.s any marketing tips for a newbie with very little cash to spare lol
8/5/2006 is the day we opened to the public, but mine should say September 2005:)
One thing I'd do differently, is spend time with the site open to the public, but not try and market it early on. New sites have lots of kinks - it's most likely better that people will have a good experience if they try it later on. As HubPages becomes more useful, people find it through most low cost ways. But trying to find ways to tell people about a new site is really hard, and you run the risk of under delivering/over promising.
For new features, we are using low cost marketing (newsletter). And hopefully making a great product that people will tell others about. In a few weeks we'll have a new feature hit. It's going to be interesting to see how useful it is:)
for a moment there i thought i had missed the celebrations lol, then i realised that you Americans write the date different from us we put day month year and you guys put month day year.
thanks for the advice Paul, i am going to be handing flyers out on Sunday at the Scottish freestyle championships, hopefully from that we will get alot of visitors and some through word of mouth from those who do visit will be interesting to see.
thanks again .....jimmy
Flyers are a great idea for marketing a site. Especially if you can hit your target market. Good luck with the site.
THANKS AGAIN PAUL
Not sure how I go about making at least a part-time income using Hub Pages - tell me now.
I went over to Squidoo and told folks who are grousing about piddling AdSense over there to come give HubPages a try. The proof is in the earnings, I say, and it only took me a little bit to see that myself.
Hi Relache, I'm glad it's working for you. I could tell from your first Hubs that you understood what we were trying to do with HubPages. It's also nice to see you be successful with interesting topical content.
working
tshirtscene says:
14 months ago
thanks for the update and the info. I first learned about hubpages at mylot, it was a discussion comparing information as value.
Keep going with the newsletters and keep contact with hubbers, forum, and emails are answered timely (form my experience) it does make a difference, knowing that you actually care enough about your company to inform and answer users makes a world of difference.