ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

My Experiments with HubPages

Updated on May 31, 2011

Experimentation: A test under controlled conditions that is made to demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy of something previously untried.

I have been a part of HubPages for 2 months now (as of 26 May 2009) and it has been one hell of an experience. It is a shame I cannot recollect how I found HubPages, but I am happy none the less. I haven't made a dime out of HubPages yet, so if you think this is another one of those "How-To-Become-A-Millionaire-Though-HubPages", please browse to something else from the nicely aggregated group of articles on the right bar. These are little things that I am trying to find out how I can become more successful Hubber and if my decision to write in HubPages is justified (Why not choose the other writing platforms out there???). For some it might be a waste-of-time reasearch, but gives me a lot of insight into so many things.

If you are pissed off and thinking what a waste of time it is, (may be it is, since you might know all this already) and saying get to the point. Here it is, I am a very ANALYTICAL person - I love to look at statistics and ponder on them for ever. In this article I point out some of the most interesting things I noticed here at the HubPages. Read on to know more.Here is what I did,

I got a medal! I got a medal! Nah Na Nah Na Nah...
I got a medal! I got a medal! Nah Na Nah Na Nah...
I got another medal! Nah Na Nah Na Nah...
I got another medal! Nah Na Nah Na Nah...

EXPERIMENT 1

Objective: To prove it is better to publish stuff in HubPages rather than your own blog, if you are a newbie and do not have a proven track record as a smash-hit blogger or are the official writer on Britney Spears official website.

What did I do: Several hubbers have spoken about writting on topics that are red-hot right now that generate huge traffic volumes in Google. Like for example the American Idol winner (this was 2 days after the 2009 finale) or Farrah Fawcett (who had her video journal about cancer suffering published last week).

Tip: If you are asking how to find these topics, try Google Insights. If you select United States from the drop down and say last 7 days in another drop down, but leave the search field empty and hit Enter. The search results give you a list of all red-hot keywords searched on Google in the last 7 days.

Beware: These are topics that have a huge search volume for a short duration of time only(a week, few days, or couple of weeks)

I published the article on a hot topic, on my web-site. The topic was on Olivia Wilde, Remy Hadley - the chick from House TV Series (called 13 by House). She was a hot topic in Google since she was #1 on Maxim Hot 100 for 2009 a couple of weeks ago.
Here are the results,

I got a whopping 2 hits
I got a whopping 2 hits

The images above from Google Analytics show I had an awesome 2 hits. One was when I viewed the page from my office and another was when I went home and showed it to my wife. Google did not even find it (May be it listed it as the 3,700,000 out of 3,720,000 pages listed).I can guarantee you if I had uploaded it to HubPages I would have gotten more hits and may be Google would have listed it some where higher on the ranking list. That is primarily because my website has a page rank of 0 and HubPages has a page rank of 6.

Conclusion: Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner by KO - HUBPAGES

There are a few cribing about HubPages eating away 40% of your AdSense revenue. For newbies, it is a far less price to pay for the amount of exposure (traffic) you get. HubPages is (one of) Google's secret mistress and is indexed quiet frequently. Some of them in the forums claim their hubs/forum threads were indexed by Google in as less as 45 minutes! Try doing that with your blog/website.

EXPERIMENT 2

Objective: To prove content is king, and good content always brings in good traffic.

What did I do: I took the advice of Maddie Ruud's and selected a topic on the 3 questions she asked me to answer before choosing a topic,

  1. Is it interesting to me?
  2. Is it interesting to people who don't know me?
  3. Will it continue to be interesting for a long time to come?

and wrote about Gestational Diabetes and Indian diet. My wife had Gestational Diabetes and she struggled a lot being a vegetarian. We had hands on experience of how we delt with this problem. A little research on Google convinced me to write an article. I added a lot of informational text, images and videos from youtube as Mark Knowles had suggested. I did a little bit of promotion on forums and sites like Digg.

On the other hand I wrote some Hubs that were done not with a lot of research, little bit of text and a lot of images I took.

The results are here to see,

Conclusion: Content is King, be it HubPages or anywhere on the internet.

EXPERIMENT 3

Experiment 3

Objective: To prove HubPages is one of the best, if not the best writing platforms.

What did I do: I researched several aspects, like traffic, features, community and financial benefits after I came to HubPages. I saw several other web sites like Triod, Helium, and those Ezine-thingy. Here are the results of my research,

TRAFFIC - From Alexa.com I found out HubPages is just behind EzineArticles in traffic and it is growing steadily against other writing platforms. Also see the traffic ranks of HubPages in India, US, Bangladesh, Europe, ... seems people are growing fond of HubPages in these regions. A 100% traffic spike in a year is impressive for any website and this might just be the beginning of the surge of popularity for HubPages.

HubPage Traffic 100% traffic spike in a year.
HubPage Traffic 100% traffic spike in a year.
Ranked pretty high in several countries.
Ranked pretty high in several countries.

FEATURES - This is some thing where HubPages beats Mr.Eziney in round one. The feature set here is amazing and how easy it is to use them is even more amazing. Another annoying thing is Eziney's Team take 7 days to approve an article, and every time you make a change (even correct a typo), you have to resubmit it and they will take another 7 days to re-approve it. I still use Mr.Eziney to drive traffic to my Hubs (Ya I am a hypocrite).

COMMUNITY - I cannot tell this enough, the community is amazing. Senior Hubbies are eager to help (so much I am starting to think they are having a evil plan to destroy earth) and give you invaluable advice that you can use else where on your own blog or website (if you still have plans to have one).

Comparing Top 3
Comparing Top 3

Another writing platform is Squidoo. It is also matches HubPages in features and even has a page rank (7) more than HubPages and Mr.Eziney. But there is some thing about it off late that has a lot of Squidoo users leaving or the interest for new users waning (See data above). The monthly change in April 09 alone is more than 20%, while our HubPages has been gaining 1.26 % monthly and an awesome 139% last year.

FINANCIAL BENEFIT - You might be writing just out of a "passion-for-writing" (I am Laughing-Out-Loud) but hey as you write more you might earn some money (for the mere materialistic mortals).

Conclusion: HubPages have relatively lesser traffic considering Mr.Ezine, but you have a motivation to write more since there is a financial benefit in HubPages.

Summary

If you are new to writing on the Internet and are hoping you would make some money (as a side income) from it, HubPages is a great way to start. The community will help you out launch your writing career/hobby which ever way you see it.

If you haven't joined yet, what are you waiting for? Sign up its free!

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)