Hub pages takes 40% of you impressions do you think its justified?

1. 89

   alikhan3posted 11 years ago

   Recently came to know of HP's policy of taking 40% of our impressions.......means or probably implies that for every $100 you earn HP might earn $40 or even more.........do you think its justified I mean they host our articles and do albeit some SEO for it but for that are you prepared to pay that much for HP?
   one can have a top level domain in less then $40 .........

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   1. 88

      Blake Flanneryposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I've tried top level domains, and have had much more luck here.  Why not both?  Hubpages provides the liberty to publish on a variety of topics, and a TLD provides niche specificity.  I earn a lot more from HP per CPM.

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   2. 84

      Millionaire Tipsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      If we weren't happy with giving 40%, we wouldn't be publishing here.  Besides the SEO, we also get:
      
      1.  The Learning Center which provides lots of guidance on how to write hubs that get traffic.
      2.  The Apprentice Program
      3.  A team which keeps up with the changes of Google algorithms
      4. A support team that deals with glitches and technicalities
      5.  A setup which encourages us to interact with each other.
      6. A community which supports and encourages each other
      7. A place of camaraderie and commiseration - you can find out about the latest happenings and what to do about them.
      8. A site that already gets traffic.  It is a steep curve to start a new website and get traffic to it.
      
      The site does not require you to publish here at all, or solely, so you can start here, and also publish on your own site, and see how you do. With the things you learn here, you may be able to leverage the knowledge on your own site. Plus, publishing at both places, you will be hopefully be able to spread the risk of online writing.

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      1. 89

         alikhan3posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         HPs community is no doubt awesome

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   3. 86

      viryaboposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes. I think it is justified. What HP offers me is worth giving up 40% for.

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   4. 68

      relacheposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      HubPages splits impression TIME with users, not earnings.  Your interpreted meanings and implications are inaccurate.
      
      How come you didn't read the terms of service before you joined the site?  Is there some strategy of yours to only doing so after nearly a year of service use?

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   5. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      If you think you can do better with your own site, go for it.  It's a choice.  Many people aren't ready to dive into the complexities of hosting, FTP, domain names, etc etc and are willing to share their earnings to avoid all that stress. 
      
      Also everyone knows that these days, a blog MUST be focussed on a single subject to have any hope of making money.   Many of the writers here don't specialise, and want to write on a variety of topics.  For that to work, you need to write on an existing large site and that means a site like HubPages - and all of them take a similar share.

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   6. 89

      alikhan3posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Well reading most of your opinions the conclusion: No other alternative available for people of low caliber like me
      Thanks for answering

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2. 64

   chicagoguyposted 11 years ago

   what are the options ???
   if you look around .....do you find one ......at present may be not !!
   but i am sure this is age of competition , surely something big will hit the market or
   hubpages will improve the earnings !!
   Good luck in the mean time !!

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3. 67

   2uesdayposted 11 years ago

   It may be a 60% to 40% split but you cannot calculate it as $100 dollars =  $60 to $40 dollars share as the way it works is on a time split not money/earnings split.
   
   So they or you may earn more than or less than expected in the percentage of time that is yours or theirs.  You can discover more about this in the Learning Center.
   
   The way I see it if I do not like the terms they offer on a website I do not sign up or leave when I discover they do not suit me. BTW Other places offer similar terms. A blog is yours but then it may or may not earn and you have to drive your own traffic by your posts and maybe other ways. Domains, having your own requires work to establish, but can be a good idea.The best option might be to 'spread your bets' by trying a mix of the alternatives to see which suits you best.
   
   I found HubPages a good place to write online, as I could work out what suited my style of writing by having more than one topic. Blogs tend to need to be focused on one subject, at least that is the usual approach.

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4. 78

   psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

   You thought they provided all this infrastructure for free?
   I read the TOS before agreeing to them, and I thought they were quite reasonable.

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5. 90

   wildernessposted 11 years ago

   You've been here a year and have just now learned the price for using HP's work and efforts in providing a place to write?
   
   I'd have to say they would be "justified" in taking 100% in return for teaching you a most invaluable life lesson; read and understand what you are agreeing to before signing on the dotted line.
   
   For the rest, that knew the "terms" of the "contract" before signing, 40% seems reasonable for the reasons others have pointed out.

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   1. 89

      alikhan3posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      you got that right

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6. 85

   Len Cannonposted 11 years ago

   Given the hosting, the propriety page building software, and the other tools included in the deal, I'd say it is quite reasonable. In fact, most quality hosts offer far less. Of course, blogger can give 100% of the Adsense revenue away because they're owned by Google, bust most sites will take 50% or more of the impressions or force you into some weird tiered system that feels designed to game you out of your time and money.

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7. 59

   tussinposted 11 years ago

   Whether or not it's too much really depends on how much you are making from your hubs.  If you make only pennies on HP, you probably won't make much more that that with the articles posted on your own domain.  In that case, the price of domain name registration and hosting wouldn't be worth it.
   
   Of course if you do hit upon a wildly popular topic and your hubs bring in the big $$$, it would be foolish to keep giving away 40% of that.  You could build a site with similar articles, interlink between it and your hubpages account, and then slowly migrate your popular hubs to your own site. 
   
   
   
   And then there's always the option of dramatically flouncing from Hubpages, declaring that you're moving all your hubs to Wizzley --- where they take 50%.

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8. 60

   paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago

   I must say..., not too thrilled with the CPM lately... I hope it's just temporary.

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   1. 83

      daisydayzposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Oh paradigmsearch - I noticed the end of December was terrible compared to the start mine dropped around $2 a day, from $5 off to $3 odd, not good! With the number of views I had around xmas I could have done a lot better if the CPM had been the same as the first 5 days in december

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9. 77

   Greekgeekposted 11 years ago

   Every third party publishing site makes some money from its users, through ads, comissions, donations, and/or subscription fees, or even by selling the content you place on the site to third parties. It's a business, and they have to make money somehow, or at least make enough money to pay staff and cover the cost of the servers and software.
   
   Whenever you join a site, from Hubpages to Facebook, learn how they're making money off you. Is the tradeoff between what they're taking and giving you worth it?
   
   Then compare how you make money on each site where you publish. Think carefully about what content to place where based on ROI.
   
   For example, on Hubpages, I can get 40% of ad impressions even for pages that get less than 200 visits a week. On Squidoo, I need more like 200-500 visits a week to guarantee the page will make good advertising payouts, because of its tiered revenue system which pays the lion's share to more effective pages. This means it makes sense to put my more informational content on HP, where impressions have a chance of earning something as long as I'm attracting at least some traffic.
   
   However, on Hubpages, Amazon clicks are only credited to me 40% of the time, whereas on Squidoo, if I embed my own associate links, I get 100% of my Amazon sales.  So it makes sense to put my more sales-converting content on Squidoo.
   
   On the third hand, blogs and websites can earn revenue, but it takes more time, effort and good content to establish a site so that it gets traffic, since you're starting from zero instead of the built-in traffic and clout you get from publishing on a well-known, search-engine-favored site like HP. On your own site, in order to attract regulars and establish searcb engine clout, you have to post new content a few times a week, whereas on HP, there's plenty of people publishing every day, plus there's an established following for the site already.  So for blogs and your own websites, you need a niche where you can write a LOT of good stuff. In other words, that requires a specialty, a passion, and a lot of unique material that you can keep churning out on a regular basis.
   
   If you can't do that, or if you like to write on lots of differrent subjects, a site like HP provides a ready-made outlet.

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   1. 90

      wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Good thoughts as usual, GG, but you've reversed the % of impressions; we get 60% and HP 40%, not the other way around.  I just mention that for Newbies that might be confused.
      
      That's one reason I haven't branched out to my own site; I don't want to maintain it daily.  My original goal here was for evergreen content I could write and drop - OK, I can't do that anymore, but it does seem to require much less maintenance that any site I could create.

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      1. 86

         Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I'd love to know where this idea came from , that you have to maintain a blog daily.
         
         None of my blogs are going to make my fortune, but they all make a small, steady income.  One of them - my flamenco site - hasn't been updated for over a year. On all my other sites, I publish a new article once a week at best.   Every now and then I write a whole bunch of posts, then schedule them to publish once a week or so over the next several months.
         
         Google has said that for "evergreen" topics, freshness isn't that important (there's a link somewhere on another thread), and my experience with my sites bears that out.  And even for topical sites, it's not necessary to post every day to impress Google.
         
         One thing I do is remove all dates from my blog posts, so visitors aren't aware that some posts were created long ago.

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         1. 90

            wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Don't know.  I obviously have zero experience there, so can only consider what others say.
            
            What you're saying makes perfect sense, though.  There would be no reason for G to down check evergreen blogs that aren't updated.  One could reasonably argue the opposite in fact; an evergreen article that is constantly being updated and changed obviously wasn't complete in the first place!

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10. 83

    mattforteposted 11 years ago

    Of course it is justified. For everything they provide, it's a damn good deal. I promise you wouldn't be getting a fraction of the traffic on your own website as you do on HP, with even a remotely similar amount of work on your part.

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11. 0

    Anonymous00posted 11 years ago

    My personal opinion. Self hosting is preferred. However, this does require ALOT of work. If this work can be completed and maintained,  I believe the benefits are far greater in your favor. The best way to approach this is not thinking specifically which is best over the other. Rather how to make each work in tandem and in conjunction with one other. Aiming to produce self sufficient and  noticeable results.

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12. 77

    Greekgeekposted 11 years ago

    Drat, sorry about the confusion. (Wish I could go back and edit, but it's been too long.)
    
    Marissa, I've got blogs and old web 1.0 sites with some adsense on them, but they've never monetized that well and don't get huge gobs of traffic. The content is good, thoughtful and unique, but very sporadic. My impression is that I need to update more often to get steady readers. But perhaps I just need to work on SEO on those older sites.

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    1. 86

       Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Blogs don't monetize well with Adsense IMO.   Ads in the sidebar and banners across the bottom of posts aren't prominent enough - the reader's eyes are on the post, not the periphery.   I make money by having ads in posts:  if I write an article on flamenco shawls, my images of flamenco shawls will all be links to Flamencista or eBay.  I also have product pages like this:
       <link snipped>
       
       That's created using an excellent package called phpBay, but if your merchant is with ShareASale, they offer a similar page.  Pre-Panda, my product pages were just a bald display of the products - these days that gets slapped by Google as insufficient content, so I now add a couple of paragraphs of text on each page.
       
       The other point worth making is that you don't need "steady readers" on a blog to make money.  In fact, just like HubPages, you don't want them.  I was very struck by the experience of a travel writer friend of Lissie's (I wish I could remember her name).  She had a hugely successful travel blog with legions of loyal fans.  She wasn't making money.  Eventually it dawned on her that once a reader becomes a regular reader, they stop clicking on ads.  Sure, she had an impressive subscriber list, but that's only useful if you have a product to sell to them, and she didn't.  She gave up blogging.

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13. 73

    twentyfiveposted 11 years ago

    Hubpages is awesome. You don't need to pay a hosting, a backup plugin, domain name and you dont need to know HTML and other complicated stuff. It's fair for me.

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14. 90

    Turtlewomanposted 11 years ago

    I think it's fair. I'm making money and I'm a somewhat lazy "online writer." :-)

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15. 81

    ProCWposted 11 years ago

    Something else you may want to think about with the 60/40 split...
    
    Some Hubbers choose to promote other Hubbers' hubs. Those Hubbers get a percentage of HubPages' percentage; while the Hubber whose hub is being promoted still gets the 60% impression share.

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    1. 90

       mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

       You don't get any percentage from promoting other hubber's hubs, you only get a percentage if someone signs up for Hubpages under your affiliate link, and then it comes out of HP's 40%. I think you may have been thinking of the 'suggest links' feature, but I found out a good while back that there was no benefit to utilising this because it is stated that you won't earn any extra income if someone goes from your hub to someone else's via a link you added to your own hub. All you succeed in doing is taking readers away from your hub/hubs, which is obviously the last thing you want to do if you are aiming to make money here.
       
       edit: I see from Sunforged's comment below I am not 100% correct in my assumption. If you insert a referral tracker into your link to another hub it sounds as if you can make between 9-12% within the first 120 mins after that person has clicked on your link. However, using the 'suggest links' would not have earned any extra money for you as I stated.

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       1. 76

          sunforgedposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          At the bottom of this page is a "link to this page" link
          
          on the modal that pops up when you click it you would find a link that says "more about trackers"
          
          unfortunately, the link is broken - if it worked, it might bring you to some HP content on the subject but it doesnt work so here is Darkside's hub on the subject instead
          
          http://darkside.hubpages.com/hub/tracking
          
          It is possible something has changed since this was published - but a "referral" tracker has more purpose (or did) than just hoping for sign-ups
          (this is probably where they intend that broken link to lead)
          http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/referral-program

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          1. 90

             wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

             As far as I know sticking your tracker into a link to any hub still gets you an additional 10% of the impressions beyond what you would have gotten without it.

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          2. 90

             mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

             Thanks Josh, I never knew about the second way of using trackers. I see it only applies for 120 mins though, but I suppose most people would have read and finished the hub within 120 mins, so the 9%-12% of clicks/impressions should be established by then.

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          3. 76

             sunforgedposted 11 years agoin reply to this

             edit: the link works fine

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16. 78

    psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

    Blogs are tricky to monetise.  If you get a lot of search traffic adsense can work.  But for a smaller niche audience you need to hook up with a custom advertiser--someone your readers will retain interest in as they roll out new products.

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17. 69

    jhendorposted 11 years ago

    Well its up to you. They give you almost everything except the article. Remember you have a good traffic through them. I think its not bad. Squidoo does 50-50.

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18. 76

    sunforgedposted 11 years ago

    100% shetoldme.com
    
    90% xobba.com
    
    80% snipsly.com
    
    75% InfoBarrel.com
    
    70% seekyt.com
    
    60% Thisisfreelance.com
    
    50% Squidoo.com
            Wizzley.com
    
    
    Your best bet is not to guess - and simply go start a free blog, go buy a domain and try your hand at your own branded business, get a account at all of the above (that will have you) spread content around and see where your content does well or even what sites do best for what content.
    
    If you do this long enough you will find yourself with a great collection of web properties that can later be used to leverage new web properties.
    
    variety is the spice of life and all that jazz

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    1. 71

       rasta1posted 11 years agoin reply to this

       You are correct and I have learnt this the hard way

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       Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Exactly.

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