Amazon and E-Bay Sales have never been better so why the snipping?

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   sallybeaposted 7 years ago

   Do sales increase at this time of the year?  Are you experiencing and improvement in Sales from Ads.  Sales benefit all of us, Hubpages as well, especially when CPM is so low and one thing is for sure, we need some incentive to keep writing here.

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      Solarasposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      No Sh!t - I am currently experiencing ham handed overly promotional warnings and unfeatured for quality on hubs that have been sitting untouched for years, receiving views steadily and making sales. Their quality was fine until staff gave narrow guidelines to people  apparently lacking common sense.
      
      You are destroying this site. I can't see why any writers will not take their unfeatured articles and go.

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         TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I just posted on the forums about this issue, but what I said does not exactly to relate to your own comments.
         
         They're snipping me, also, but I can see why.  I did not present the products with enough detail, although each clearly relates to what I'm talking about.
         
         Nobody likes having their income cut, but we may find that in the long run we will get more views, which will make up for the snipping that is going on now.
         
         For far too long people here have been abusing the use of ads, and unfortunately those of us who try to do the right thing are getting caught up in the correction process.
         
         Save yourselves some problems.  Go back, reduce the number of ads, make sure each is positioned near a 300 word capsule and relates to what that capsule says.  Keep your best sellers and dump the rest.  In short, beat them to the punch!
         
         I do tend to think that all of this sudden snipping action may be that the team is prepping articles to be moved to the niches, so don't panic.  I really think all of this will work out in the long run, but there is going to be some pain along the way.

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            lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            TT2, your hubs need your products. Like you said on the other thread you didn't really place them well. I've not gone through them to see what you mean, but if you think they aren't done well, that says a lot. Make them better. Probably when you explain the product you're going to get more words on your hub which will not just help the readers but also help with your rankings to some extent.
            
            Also I hope you're interlinking you content via text based anchors? You do have a great collection of RV hubs. If they do get moved to a niche site. Those anchors are going to help your articles rank well.

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               TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

               My hubs have plenty of wordage and I do interlink where possible. I also place my ads properly. My problem is that the rules changed, and what I was doing before became unacceptable.  Thus the snipping.
               
               I need to know from the team if going back and putting corrected ads back in will be cause for unfeaturing.  If not, I'll do it.  If so, it will be what it is.
               
               Most of my hubs have zero ads, but I would like to keep the ones I already have, if possible.  I'll see what the team has to say about this.

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                  lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Cool

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            Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            No, that's not the reason.   My Hubs have been snipped too and it is, purely and simply, that they have set a very low threshold for Amazon capsules on the new niche sites.  They're not revealing what it is, but it seems to be one or two ads per Hub regardless of length.
            
            It would be nice if they would publish the new guideline.
            
            I was told that if I put the ads back, my Hubs would not be moved to the new site.

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               TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

               These hubs had no more than 2 ads per article, and each hub was at least 1000 words.  I know it was the placement, not the number of ads.

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                  sallybeaposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  I only use one e-Bay ad and one Amazon Ad on a hub regardless of how long it is.

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                  Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  I don't agree with you.  From what I have observed - from my own Hubs and the experience of others - is that the new niche sites have a much lower ratio.  it doesn't seem to matter how relevant the product are and how carefully you place them, describe them, etc etc - the new sites allow only one or two products on a Hub no matter how long it is.

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                     wildernessposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     They snipped two of my capsules - both on a 1072 word hub about how to install what was being advertised.
                     
                     Another hub of 1600 words had 3 of them snipped, all next to a good sized paragraph on that particular style in the section on how to choose between available styles, in a hub titled "How to choose and install..."
                     
                     On the other hand, an ad that has produced over $700 in sales (to me - HP will add to that) survived.  Are they cutting only ads that don't produce?

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                        TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                        I think you're on to something there.  That may be exactly what they are doing, and in fact, I remember the team suggesting awhile back that we do that ourselves.

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                           wildernessposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                           Maybe.  I don't have any way to KNOW where a sale came from, and can only (sometimes) deduce that if it came from my ad then it must be THIS one.  But HP may have better information than we do.

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                              sallybeaposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                              That is the beauty about E-Bay Ads, they do tell you which Hub which resulted in a sale.

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      Maina Ndunguposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I'm also furious because one of my hubs was snipped and then moved to one of the new sites. But I appreciate what Hubpages is doing to improve the site (or what is it now; a group of sites?).
      
      Concerning Amazon sales, I've seen that there slightly more sales even on my blog.
      
      About the CPM rates, mine are about 50% less than what they used to be.

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   lobobrandonposted 7 years ago

   I really don't understand this problem with removing ads. I had one hub which was around 2.7k words and had 20 products. Yes 20 products. It never faced any problems with the HP team. Because they were presented well and were related to what I was talking about. It was edited as part of the hubpro as well. Nothing got snipped other than one video which I agreed had to go.
   
   I say had, because I unpublished 5 days ago to move it to my own site, only because I have a 4 year old site focusing on that topic and I felt it would do even better on my own site. I should mention that this hub was receiving near 100 - 200 visits a day at one point of time and was only getting 20 or so the past few months here and that was the motivator for me to move it.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Do you think your views dropped due to the editing?

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         lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         The editing was done very recently - a year ago I think? But my traffic started declining slowly losing maybe 10 views on average every month. Just a ball park figure here. It was a very slow decline nothing sudden.

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   Will Apseposted 7 years ago

   I suspect they need to save their own bacon before thinking about anyone else's. It will not do any of us any good if the whole enterprise sinks, that is for sure.
   
   Tough times.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      +1

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      sallybeaposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      None of us want to see the site fail, communication and clear guidelines about the direction the site is taking are always helpful.

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   Rochelle Frankposted 7 years ago

   In the past 18 months Amazon had given me half to 3/4 of my total income from HP each month. Now that most of them have been snipped, I'm getting almost nothing from Amazon. It is a significant change.

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      sallybeaposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Rochelle Frank
      This mirrors my own experience, Amazon and E-Bay amount to more than half of my income here, without this t income I think I would have given up on HubPages. CPM is half what it was a year ago and even with more hubs and more traffic I am earning less from the HubPages Program.  If we earn less from ads surely Hubpages will suffer too.

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         Solarasposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         +1,000,000,000,000

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   Will Apseposted 7 years ago

   I was slightly upset that some of my more important pages have not been been moved. Now, I am grateful. Those pages still make money but only if they keep their Amazon ads.
   
   I reckon the problem for HP is that the niches really do need to get traffic and I don't blame them for erring on the side of caution when it comes to potentially dangerous page elements.
   
   Thin content= risk of Panda
   Links = risk of Penguin
   Affiliate ads= risk of Google spam filters and Panda
   
   If it was me, I would get the niches to a robust, high authority status first them carefully add Amazon links later. Make sure the cow is healthy before starting to milk it.
   
   In a years time, I would be sending out a few of these emails:
   
   Congratulations!
   
   Your hub has been selected to host Amazon ads. Chose carefully and earn well my little money grubber!
   
   I can understand why everyone hates me for saying this. We all need money now.

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