What is the difference between a blog and HubPages?

1. 63

   tlcsposted 9 years ago

   Please tell me what the difference is between writing a blog and writing a HubPage? If any?

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   1. 82

      peachpurpleposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I have a blog, where I wrote anything I wanted to write freely, like a diary. I can write short articles and add links from Hubpages.
      At hubpages, my articles have to be 700 words and go thru the test quality period. Earns money but slow

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   2. 88

      Cardisaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Blogs are a series of logs (meaning web logs). These are known as posts and get stored in a archive, which gets automatically connected to each other by post date. Hubpages are stand alone pages or static pages which can be compared to a magazine. These are independent pages and only get connected to each other if you link them.
      
      The different between writing for Hubpages and posting on a blog is the difference between what a blog represents and what a hub page is.
      
      BTW, because of the way blogs were designed their content usually get's hidden because its recommended to update you log daily for fresh content. It was expected that a blog's content would get outdated and required frequency in update. A hub page on the other hand should contain evergreen content that does not become outdated. People are currently using blogs like a website to basically whatever you post here you can post on your blog.

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   3. 61

      The Examiner-1posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      tlcs,
      Look at the blog on here and think of a Hub while look at the blog. First, you will see the recent post displayed while the rest are hidden in the archives. See what else you notice to compare between the two while looking at the blog.

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   4. 87

      Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      A blog is a whole website.  A Hub is just a webpage.
      
      A blog contains lots of "posts" - each post is a webpage.  A post on a blog could look exactly like a Hub, if the blogger wanted it to, but usually blog posts are a bit shorter.
      
      When blogs were first invented, they were meant for people to use like a journal or diary, which is why posts are dated with the most recent ones at the top.  These days, you can do lots of other things with a blog - many people hide the dates, and arrange their posts in categories (instead of in date order) - just like HubPages.
      
      The difference between HubPages and a blog is that here, your articles are part of a big site, even though they're on your account.  Take a look at any blog on Blogger, for instance, and you won't see links to anyone else's blog, only to other posts on your OWN blog.  Whereas on HubPages there are lots of links to other people's Hubs. That makes it much less likely that people will follow your writing from one Hub to the next. 
      
      Also when blogs started, you could write about your life or anything you felt like.  You can still do that, but probably no one will read it.  For a blog to be successful today, you MUST choose a topic to specialise in, and stick to it.

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      1. 69

         makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Very good analysis Marisa.
         
         I would also add that if you are writing an informative blog you should never underestimate the value of your assets - which are your archives. I get loads of visits to my blog for posts I wrote several years ago.
         
         This week, my main (9 year old) blog notched up 6.7 million pageviews
         
         There again I've always been very careful with how I title my blog posts, the first sentence of each post and attaching labels to them as signals about what the post if about.
         
         With Blogger you can have up to 20 pages as static data - as opposed to the dynamic feed-oriented data of a blog post - of which you can have an infinite number.
         
         Also bear in mind that you can have AdSense on blogs as well - Blogger has a module for an easy set-up

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         1. 87

            Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            I agree - in fact unless a blog is about current affairs, I don't think bloggers should even bother offering date-based archives any more.   NO ONE is interested in trawling back to see what someone wrote in October two years ago - what they want is to find posts that interest them.   So I always use categories and tags to classify my posts instead.

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            1. 69

               makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               I do both - but that's because I sometimes want to check about things I write on an annual basis. The calendar archive is merely there for my convenience!

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               1. 69

                  makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  The other nice thing about Blogger is you can have a frequency cloud for your labels which means people can clearly see what your blog is most focused on. You can also edit which labels get included in the cloud. I have a rule of thumb that nothing gets into the public label cloud unless it has at least five blog posts on that topic!
                  
                  I do change my mind at times about where the label cloud is best located!

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   5. 81

      jackclee lmposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I have found from personal experience that a personal blog and hubpages have common features. The big difference is how google treat the two sites. A hubpages hub, if featured, will get higher google page ranking than a personal blog site.

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      1. 74

         WriteAngledposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Totally untrue.
         
         Six of my hubs that Hubpages idled for lack of traffic are now sitting on their own site. I haven't done anything to them for a year or more. They are bringing in 10x as much in Adsense earnings alone as my 20 remaining hubs receive in HP Ads and Adsense earnings and in addition generate Amazon sales now and then.

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         1. 81

            jackclee lmposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            I was not commenting about making money but merely google page ranking. From my limited experience,  a few years ago, i did a simple experiment and created a web page blog and a hub, actually a lens ( on squidoo before the merge). In a week, I monitored the google page rank and the squidoo lens rank in the top 30 of google SERP and the blog not even close. I even created a lens to publicize the results.

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            1. 87

               Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               If you did that experiment a few years ago, you would have found the Hub outranking the blog, I agree.
               
               That was a few years ago, and things change quickly on the internet!  Nowadays, PROVIDED  the blog specialises in that topic, the blog post will outrank the Hub. 
               
               If it's a generalist blog with a random mix of subjects, then I agree the Hub will outrank the post - generalist blogs do not rank well on Google.

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2. 63

   tlcsposted 9 years ago

   Thank you Peachpurple and Cardisa,  now I know what a blog page can be used for.

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3. 63

   tlcsposted 9 years ago

   Examiner-1 my friend, Not quite sure what you mean, can you word what you mean again for me please? I presume you mean that this discussion is a blog or is there a blog page on hubpages that I am not aware of and if so where is it?

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   1. 91

      Christy Kirwanposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Hi tlcs,
      
      I believe Examiner may have been referring to the official HubPages Blog.

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      1. 61

         The Examiner-1posted 9 years agoin reply to this

         That is the one that I was referring to. Thank you Christy.

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      2. 71

         Tammie Jacksonposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         How did you add a link to those words in your reply? I am trying to learn how to do that, so I can direct people from one of my Hubs to another.

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4. 61

   LindaSmith1posted 9 years ago

   There is not a blog page on HP.  Examiner was referring to a post to this thread where somebody spammed it by posting a blog link to their blog.

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   1. 61

      The Examiner-1posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Yes there is an HP blog Linda. Go to the bottom of this page until you see a gray section and starting at the left, listed in black the third one over is blog.

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5. 61

   LindaSmith1posted 9 years ago

   I meant we don't have a way to set up blogs ourselves.
   I was also referring to someone who was spamming forum with their blog post.
   Weebly allows people to create a blog there, or to create their own websites with blogs.  However, it is not a revenue sharing site like HP or other content sites.

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   1. 61

      The Examiner-1posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Are you talking about not setting up blogs in HP?? Of course not, but that was not her original question.

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6. 69

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   Let's stick to the topic!

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7. 63

   tlcsposted 9 years ago

   Thanks Examiner-1, I do think I need to open my eyes a bit more, slightly blinkered at the moment! Going to  click on the link and see what the difference is between a blog and hubpages, this is going to be interesting, watch this space!

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8. 69

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   Interestingly I've just come across this page on the HubPages domain http://hubpages.com/success/
   
   It's title is "Start a free blog for original, in-depth, useful, media-rich pages on HubPages"
   
   In the UK we would call that misleading advertising i.e. nobody is writing a blog in the accepted sense of the word on Hubpages except the HQ Team.
   
   I'm actually now quite worried that anybody would think they could describe an individual HubPages account as a blog!

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   1. 87

      Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      That advertising has been in place for years, and Hubbers have been complaining about it forever.   HubPages argues that it's a way of attracting people who want to write, but as far as I can see, all it does is attract people who want to write the stuff HubPages doesn't want.  Then people like me spend time on the forums explaining why their Hubs aren't doing well...

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9. 70

   suraj punjabiposted 8 years ago

   When you have your own blog it is much harder as you are on your own, you need to find a way to get more traffic, etc. You need to find a community, you need to market it yourself.
   In Hubpages all you need to do is write well, it won't hurt to know a bit of SEO, the community is there for you to interact and contribute. That being said the reward of having your own successful blog is much greater but it is much harder. In hubpages most of the work is already done for you and all you need to do is write well, contribute and be active. The rewards are obviously based on a share system here on Hubpages you can read more about that in their FAQ page.

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10. 80

    Dale Hydeposted 8 years ago

    My quick response is what HubPages has unfeatured, for whatever five thousand reasons, I unpublish here and put it on my blog.  Same earnings for me.
    
    It takes a while and of course you need to go to Google Webmasters and unpublished he HP link, but once done, you blog link will come up in searches.

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