Has HubPages Lost Writers Over The Past Year?

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   Rock_njposted 11 years ago

   Has HubPages Lost Writers Over The Past Year?
   
   I searched for stats regarding how many active Hubbers there are, and I was surprised to see that someone posted 13 months ago that there were about 97,000 more Hubbers than HubPages stats list today.  I have notices some Hubbers have left for various reasons, but I didn't realize so many left over the past year.  Did I get something wrong?

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   nanderson500posted 11 years ago

   I've also heard that Hubpages has lost many writers. Part of it is all the google updates that have caused traffic to slow down.

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      Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Writers are getting discouraged.  There are plenty of other places to write.

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   ChristinSposted 11 years ago

   No that is correct.  Many hubbers left after the series of Google updates that kept hammering the traffic here.  Also, HP itself kept making changes that did not go over well with many hubbers.  The constant changes and drops in traffic discouraged many.

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      Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I have to say that I am still quite irked about the Hub Idle policy that they have tried to rebrand as "Featured" Hubs.  Some of my best written most informative Hubs are unfeatured (aka idled) from time to time.  Does not make sense.

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      ChristinSposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I agree on that point - I know they were doing it to appease the Google gods but it still is aggravating.  I've only had it hit a couple of my hubs - ironically "featured titles" that HP picked in the first place! LOL

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      Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I still don't get what causes a Hub to be unfeatured (idled)?  I understand HP's concerns about keeping quality content on their site listed in Google, but it seems as if popularity is the real measure that they use rather than writing quality.

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   austinhealyposted 11 years ago

   It seems to me that Hubpages is slowly shifting from its image of a writer's place to the one of yet another social network. Just a regular look at the "Hub of the day" seems to indicate that what Hubpages favors these days is cooking recipes and "how to" hubs, which many, right of wrong, do not consider as real writing. So, no wonder writers are leaving in large numbers. I have been part of Hubpages only for a few months and I really like it, probably because I have not set myself to make any money out of it (So I don't get the frustrations experienced by so many Hubbers, that I can witness through the questions and forums). I think the site, like many other corporations these days, is guided more by instant gratification than by long term thinking and planning. There is nothing wrong with that, but the risk in the long term might be that Hubpages will become no more than a massive cookbook. Move over, Julia Child...

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      Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Good points!  A great deal of one's satisfication at HP has to do with their goals.  I like to make money, but my primary purpose to learn about and write about topics that I am interested in.  The problem is that many of those are not popular and...

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5. 59

   Goody5posted 11 years ago

   That's a big yes to this question. There are hubbers leaving each and every single day now. I've been keeping stats since September of last year, and so far there hasn't been one single day where we haven't had to say goodbye to a fellow hubber. You are more than welcome to do the numbers yourself - http://goody5.hubpages.com/hub/Google-vs-the-Hub-Pages Things have really slowed down here at the hub pages, especially since New Years.

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      Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks fort the confirmation Goody.  I will check out your Hub.  I wonder if HP management is having second thoughts about some of the changes they've made over the past year?

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      Goody5posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Rock_nj, Today we actually gained 4 fellow hubbers. We will see if that's because of the warning issued earlier today with  issues with the traffic data collection over the last 10-12 hours, causing the hub traffic statistics to be under reported.

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