It's All Moving In Slow Motion Now
Congratulations for your coming four years of writing here, I have enjoyed your company here in the forum.
I hope HubPages don't close down, I wrote for Squidoo for over three years, have now been here since the transfer, September 2014.
Most of the squids which transferred here have moved on, I'm like you if something happens here it will be the end of my writing too.
I certainly will miss all the new found friends I have made here, HubPages is a wonderful community, very caring and helpful.
Hi Elsie
I was writing on HubPages as well as Squidoo and there were aspects I loved about each of them. I admit to being upset about the transfer. I was doing very well on Squidoo and I loved Squidoo for what it was - and then my lenses did not transfer well and I did not like that I could not put the content on here in the same manner. I guess you could say I threw a fit. Well, I DID throw a fit. My husband could tell you all about that. I then lost interest in the writing I had already done here.
I unpublished the lens/hubs that were under a different name and did not come back for a while.
I hope HubPages does not go under. I have enjoyed being back and have a few new hubs I am working on right now. I enjoy the community, too.
I hear you! I'm a constant on again/off again hubpages writer. When I started traffic was slowly picking up and at one point I even got several payouts a few months in a row.... That hasn't happened in YEARS. My writing has stalled, working full-time and having a two year old will do that to you.
I come on and edit some articles and fine tune things, eventually I hope to start publishing again. For now I'll cope with the 12 cents a month I current earn.Yes, and I am working quite hard on that even now
I want to be your friend.
Yes, that part you're reading correctly, every time Robin has come to the forum to clarify HubPro Basic she has said they will remove what they think are "spammy elements" and that adding them back in might cause your hub to get de-featured. She's never said it was a certainty though. And they will take out badly pixelated and watermarked photos.
For people who don't use many products or bad images (in the sense of being pixelated or watermarked) it's nothing more than light, reversible proofreading. So you don't need to scare poor lionrhod about it.
EditBot is the one that sucks. I had to undo a lot more "edits" when they applied that one.
TT2, I'm guessing (assuming this is your only account) the timing of when you first signed up here may have colored your view. You probably know that the first big Panda hit in February of 2011. I don't know how many months-plus-or-minus you were on here when you signed up, but it's standard for people to take some months before they even start seeing much in terms of traffic/earnings. So you (and anyone who signed up around then) were either pretty new when the big Panda upheaval happened, or else you signed up after it happened).
(I've written this long post more by way of trying to contribute some discussion to the forums and not so much to specifically address you, TT2 - because I suspect many people signed up when all the talk was about improving quality on here, which, I'd think, would encourage a particular kind of enthusiasm in those who signed up at the time.)
These days I don't even bother trying to figure out how well the site is/isn't doing, and paying a whole lot of attention to things like Quantcast data (etc. etc.) has never been my thing anyway. There was a time when I paid more attention and don't now, but that's for personal reasons (among them, the fact that I decided to de-emphasize my pen-name - which has nothing to do with how well the site is or isn't doing.
I confess to not going to look to see what kind of Hubs you write, but (without a whole lot of history of pre-Panda/post-Panda, updates, Penguin, and some (maybe) mis-steps with regard to addressing/accommodating the ongoing attempt to zero in on providing something worthwhile to the person searching for it), I tend to guess that your four-year time on here may largely contribute to your outlook. And if that's not the case with you, I imagine there's the chance it could be he case with others who signed up shortly before or after that first big Panda started to set all kinds of things/changes into motion. I end to think newer people or at least people who just go with the latest standards on here (while also aiming to write stuff that a searcher may be happy to find) may be less likely to be disenchanted. (Nobody could tell by looking at my hacked up profile these days, but I had a few hundred Hubs go through this account, and they were big enough mix of stuff that I got a pretty good idea of the kind of stuff that is likely to get at least a little traffic.)
As I said, I have no idea what the state of things is with this site etc., but the reason I signed up (and stayed) with this site was that it was straightforward: If you write enough Hubs some of them get more traffic than others, but even low-traffic Hubs can add up (you just need more of them). And, you get paid on time if/when you reach the minimum for getting paid. I know a lot of people did really well on Squidoo, but I never bothered doing anything on there (except for, I think, one thing) because they had that whole "weird" payment thing. To me, it's always just been up to the Hubber to figure out what Hubs may get traffic and which don't. Again, it's straightforward and you get paid (on here) for what your Hub essentially earns. Even though my online writing has always been a free-time, more casual, thing; I just saw Squidoo as something that n (at least sort-of ) serious writer had to be bothered with.
Personally, I think there are a few tweaks in standards that could be made on HP (and some of them may be being made or in the works anyway), but I generally think HP is on the right track IF they keep and attract enough solid writers who can come up with either a few things get a lot of traffic or a big bunch of things that get more modest, but reasonably consistent traffic. The good thing on here is that we can always delete stuff that doesn't do well.
My "thing" is that I haven't ruled out writing on this site (if I want to write something that I care about as far as getting any readers goes, because I pretty much don't want readers on any number of my blogs
anyway). I'm not going to post any old thing on here now, though. I need to know whatever it is a) stands a chance of being found through search, and b) is something that doesn't deserve its own blog and/or require a whole lot of time/research on my part. I don't know.... The world is full of decent writers who would be more encouraged than discouraged by the most recent set of changes that have been happening on here. Maybe HP needs a whole new flock of writers. Maybe it needs more of the old ones to come back (often under new names) with a new approach. For now, the site is still up. I think that's because they DIDN'T do what so many other "write-whatever-you want" sites did and/or what so many "write-nothing-but-a-certain-type-of-Internet-article" sites did.
My real point (to ANYONE who started writing around/shortly after the first big Panda) is that I think it was a time when "everyone" had all kinds of hope that improving quality (according to Panda and according to what HP was emphasizing after subdomains (June/July 2012) and as Panda's and Penguins (etc.) were rolled out every so often) meant (in a nushell) "that was all there was to it". It's taken some time for so many people to start to notice that that wasn't all there was to it, in terms of quality and writing for the user (and be unique and offer something that "everyone else" isn't offering) BUT with the search engines in mind as well.
The whole online-writing thing has been an evolution. I first got involved around ten years ago when "everyone" said "nobody cares about English grammar" and "nobody reads any more", "end of story". People have a way of thinking that whatever they're seeing at the moment is "end of story"; so they stop reading the "book" and make choices/judgments based on not ever actually seeing where the "story" eventually goes. Things get messy when people do that (online or off); and I think online writers are looking at the mess that has gone on as a result. Self-fulfilling prophecies often happen when people do that too. I don't know what will happen with HP. For all I know, I could sign on tomorrow and discover they're "done a Bubblews" (or at least "a Helium"). My main point with all this is that I do think that anyone who signed up in the time-frame I mentioned is very likely to be at higher risk for feeling discouraged, mainly because they don't have the benefit of "the beginning of the story" and are forming judgments/choices based on not yet reaching the "end of the book". The particular "book-in-question" is HP's book, not mine. We all have our own "book" to worry about, but as a "reader" of the HP "book" I just hope that people who happened to start writing at the beginning of a major upheaval on here don't allow "plot twists" to create an unnecessary self-fulfilling prophecy (for individual writers and/or for HP).. (I have to say that I agree that things in the forums do look pretty "slim" these days. Then again, people who are happy enough with their traffic often don't come to the forums to re-hash the matter of traffic.
Who knows..... ). I just know I haven't ruled out writing on here. I just plan to be more selective about what I do post and about my approach to it. "Selective" wasn't a thing when I first signed up on here. These days it is. Either way, and even so, I still have no plans of writing "a certain type of Internet-article", which means it's a little trickier to think up a subject and present it in a way that fits well with what I think is wanted on the site these days.TT has a right to express her opinion. The end of year is a good time to take stock.
Here is a graphic. It is or was my best performing page.
A combination of plagiarism, Google changes and the web moving on have taken those few cents away. I don't care about that any more.
HubPages was a fantastic learning experience for me. It is a still a great place to write pieces if you want to write them. Some people still make some money. Long may that continue.
I want to make money. An addiction to ego writing meant I carried on for longer than I should. 'My' stuff does not make money. I don't want to or can't do the other stuff - and for the most part that does not make money either.
Web changes such as mobile/apps, competition for eyes on page, growing pool of writers, advertising chasing the crowd - mean it is a very few who make significant income.
I am changing too. With huge thanks to HubPages and feedback from Hubbers - I discovered a love and small ability for drawing. Those drawings are my next attempt to make some proper money.
On to 2016!
This post was made in the hopes of averting what appears to be another, impending HvS war.
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