How are HubPages promoting the new Niche sites?

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  1. Adam Harkus profile image60
    Adam Harkusposted 8 years ago

    Are HP merely just creating new niche sites and hoping Google will pick them up? or are they actively promoting the sites in the wider world of the niche the site is based on?

    1. makingamark profile image70
      makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Precisely the question I asked in another thread http://hubpages.com/community/forum/136 … ost2809714

      Have you seen any mention of them by other sites on Google?

      I looked for Feltmagnet - and just kept coming across a lot of sites which are referencing magnets with felt on for the fridge! It doesn't even make the first two pages of Google.

      1. Adam Harkus profile image60
        Adam Harkusposted 8 years agoin reply to this

        So basically this is just an exercise in SEO then?

        1. makingamark profile image70
          makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          Goodness no!

          If this was an exercise in SEO then we'd see an awful lot more than just creating new sites and moving content to them!  That was my point in the other  thread/comment

    2. relache profile image66
      relacheposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      As I said in the other thread, Admin appears to be doing exactly what they did almost ten years ago when HubPages first launched.

      To the best of my knowledge, this company has never advertised itself in the past ten years, so it doesn't seem that odd that they are not doing that now.

      How would a struggling content site who never had a clear focus or direction in all that time, whose CPMs have fallen 90% in the last five years, get an advertising budget anyway?

  2. Marisa Wright profile image88
    Marisa Wrightposted 8 years ago

    Officially, HubPages' line has always been that it's up to the individual writers to promote their own work.  HubPages has always promoted itself to writers, but not to readers.  I did meet someone once who claimed they were paid by HubPages to do Facebook Likes, Tweeting etc for Hubs but I'm not convinced it was true.

    1. makingamark profile image70
      makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Well if they want to increase traffic but continue to rely for marketing on the same writers this must mean they assume that  just putting "the best writers" and "the best content" on a category site (they're not niche sites) is all they need to do.

      Which means any difference in traffic (between HubPages and new site) is down to the individual author?

      Hmmm - we'll see what difference it makes.

      1. Adam Harkus profile image60
        Adam Harkusposted 8 years agoin reply to this

        So basically HP is just free content hosting with monetising tools?

        It really could be so much more

        1. Marisa Wright profile image88
          Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          If you think about it Adam, there was a good reason for HubPages' policy.  How do you effectively promote a site that covers hundreds of different topics?

          Sharing on social networks is futile unless you're able to build a big following, and for that you need to offer something special - expert knowledge on a particular topic, or fast access to news for instance.  Who would want to sign up for a Twitterfeed to HubPages - it would mean being bombarded with random articles all day every day most of which you wouldn't be interested in.  And if HP were going to create separate social accounts for every topic instead, they'd need an army of staff and they could never have afforded it!

          For the first few years of HP's existence, the site was so successful that it wasn't an issue.  But it's one of the reasons why generalist sites find it so hard to survive now - it's a big problem for all of them.

          It's also still a problem for the so-called niche sites, which (as MakingaMark rightly points out) aren't really niche sites - they're not specialist enough.  Even if they decided to try social marketing, no one is going to want to sign up to follow them. People who do craft don't want to see posts about photography and vice versa, so they would soon get tired of following FeltMagnet.  RV'ers will give up on AxleAddict because they'll see too many posts about cars.  And so on.

          1. makingamark profile image70
            makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Meanwhile those of us that do know a thing or two about niche topics and who set up our own sites and are also prepared to make an investment in the social media marketing required can see a major increase of very targeted traffic. I've been amazed at how much traffic I get for one of my niche sites which isn't even recognised as a sub-niche within the HP set-up.  Nor is it likely to be!

            1. sallybea profile image81
              sallybeaposted 8 years agoin reply to this

              If I search for a 'Cat Cave' for instance, I come up with my felting tutorials on the first page.  If I search for feltmagnet I get exactly what you got, magnets or every description.  I think the site name makes little difference, but searching for the subject matter does  I promote my writing here as much as is possible with google +, Pinterest and Twitter and less often Facebook.  I don't want to spam my friends.   I do however think it is up to us to promote our writing.

              1. LuisEGonzalez profile image79
                LuisEGonzalezposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                To reach this FeltMagnet thing...you need to spell it exactly as they posted it here; FeltMagnet (even reading it hurts my eyes!) Make sure that the search results keep both words together.

                Anyway, I have begun copying my over 755 hubs to a word doc to use in an ebook. Once that is done I shall part into the Sunset.

                1. Solaras profile image82
                  Solarasposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  You can have an ebook and the same articles online.  You are not required to remove the hubs.

                2. sallybea profile image81
                  sallybeaposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  That is a shame.  Would I be correct to say that you could put them into an e-book and they would not be considered as duplicate content?  From what I can gather this is what many people do!   Why not leave them to earn here as well? 
                  It does not seem to matter how you spell the FeltMagnet thing you still get fridge magnets and a lot besides:)

                  1. LuisEGonzalez profile image79
                    LuisEGonzalezposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                    Content on an ebook does not count as duplicate but I am so disappointed that right now it does not make much sense to keep anything here plus I have lost the joy of posting anything here anymore.

                3. Marisa Wright profile image88
                  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  Luis, why don't you use them to create a website of your own?   755 Hubs is more than enough content to create a good-sized authority website.

                  1. Adam Harkus profile image60
                    Adam Harkusposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                    You'll need to be generating quite a lot of income to cover the costs of your own site though. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

                4. makingamark profile image70
                  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  @ LuisEGonzalez - Do NOT copy to Word. Not unless you copy somewhere else as well. Word loads your content with lots of unnecessary code - which other html sites won't like.

                  My personal favourite for fast saves is Evernote. Try it and you'll see why.

                  1. Sam Montana profile image76
                    Sam Montanaposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                    Here is a good hub about how to copy your Hubpage articles without all of the embedded stuff.

                    http://hubpages.com/literature/How-Writ … e-Articles

                  2. LuisEGonzalez profile image79
                    LuisEGonzalezposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                    Thanks. Had not thought of that

    2. eugbug profile image95
      eugbugposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      What about the HubPages Twitter and Pinterest accounts, don't they promote hubs?

      1. relache profile image66
        relacheposted 8 years agoin reply to this

        HubPages has approximately 14k followers on Twitter.  Twitter has approximately 1.3 billion users, of which 65 million are US users.  If you take just US users, HubPages followers would potentially represent just .0215% of them.  That's not much reach.

        1. eugbug profile image95
          eugbugposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          ...which is why efficient use of hashtags would help spread tweets to a wider audience of non-followers. Personally however, I find very few people seem to click on links in tweets even though they may re-tweet or like. I've often had tweets with over 20, 000 impressions  without a link follow. Pinterest seems to be a better source of traffic.

          1. makingamark profile image70
            makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            As with everything people are more likely to retweet and click the link if it has an image attached

            1. eugbug profile image95
              eugbugposted 8 years agoin reply to this

              +1 on that. It's surprising how many Twitter accounts seem to broadcast a constant stream of boring text.

              1. Marisa Wright profile image88
                Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                There are thousands of useless Twitter accounts set up by bloggers purely to auto-tweet their posts.  Those bloggers may seem to have a decent following, because what they did when they joined Twitter was to look for members with the same interests, and follow them so they could get followed in return (there are even programs to help you do that).  But in reality, they never look at anyone else's feeds and may never log in to Twitter at all.

                I'll be honest, I have a couple of Twitter accounts like that, because that's what we were all advised to do years ago.   I should do something about it but can't remember my logins!  Twitter could easily clean up a lot of the dross by suspending accounts that haven't been logged into for a while.

                1. makingamark profile image70
                  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  I agree - Twitter only really works if you use it properly and that includes logging in  and e.g. writing tweets which don't have a link and retweeting other people's relevant tweets for your topic area

  3. Mark Ewbie profile image60
    Mark Ewbieposted 8 years ago

    What will I do if Weebly closes down?

    Oh heck, I don't know Marisa.  I have stopped hoping to make even a few hundred dollars a month from it - that was never my game and the last year of playing with Weebly has proven that.  So I would not lose much if they disappeared.

    What it has enabled me to do is experiment fairly easily with layouts, ideas, and attempts at sales and income.  And prove to myself that I can't do commercial.  Weebly is my hobby thing - an honest place for content which gradually becomes more visual and less written.

    If they closed down I suppose they might sell on the subscriptions and things would just carry on. Or maybe give some sort of warning so I could copy out anything worth keeping.  Maybe I'll do a back up sometime.

    If they increase their fees... well that is pretty much guaranteed.  No one reduces their costs.  At present I cover their costs plus a bit spare.  My guess is my income will rise sufficiently to cover any costs they think they can get away with throwing at me.  It is not an issue.

    To answer a question you didn't ask I think the content market is doomed.  If major media players cannot survive on the internet - such as Yahoo for goodness sakes and there are many others - then the monetary options for minor content providers, especially in the 'humour' or 'creative' areas are especially poor.  It seems to be a race to the bottom apart from a few stand out winners such as FaceBook (for now).

    So arguably - nowhere is safe.

    1. Marisa Wright profile image88
      Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      If it's just a hobby thing, then Weebly is absolutely fine.   In fact the reason I tried Weebly was that I used to recommend the free version of Weebly to all hobbyists, and eventually I was asked to set up a blog on Weebly for someone - which is when I realised the problem of transferability. 

      The other issue now is cost, since the free version is not indexed.  $8 a month is not much, but it's still more expensive than your own hosting.  If you're only earning pennies, then the difference between $50 a year and $96 a year becomes significant! 

      On Weebly you're paying extra for the ease of use.  If you can't cope with the extra learning curve of using Wordpress, then that's fine - but unless you are really really technophobic (which I know some creative people are), then it's not actually that hard.

      You're right, nowhere is safe,  That's why I like to be sure that I have full control of my content and can painlessly move it anywhere I like, any time I like.  The internet is a hobby for me too, now - if I had to muck about copying and pasting pages, I probably wouldn't even bother reconstructing my websites.

      1. makingamark profile image70
        makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

        I think you forgot the cost of buying a decent theme! smile

        Buying a domain name is of course identical for both.

        My point is that most people want to focus on their content and not on the technical side of things. For those who like things nice and simple and easy and above all FUNCTIONAL then I think the hosted webware option is one worth looking at.

        However if you don't mind being on your own and wasting a lot of time when things go wrong by all means look at those solutions which involve more independence........

        The bit I've never understood (especially given the fact that HubPages was set up by techie web people) is HP HQ don't offer the HubPages webware as a website with an option a pages within the website i.e. everybody is on a completely separate domain name and creating a genuinely independent niche site - and HP Q then gets its revenue streams from
        EITHER adverts on the sites of people who use the webware to create their own sites
        OR subscriptions to use advert free webware

      2. Mark Ewbie profile image60
        Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this

        Renewed this morning for $96 for TWO years including taxes.  My minimal Adsense will cover that.

        Re technophobe - well spotted!  I am in the process of finishing a career in IT which I have grown to hate.  As my creative side has emerged I find all IT things to be almost painful.  The absolute last thing I want to do is go anywhere near code, experts, gurus, consultants, systems, processes... I'll stop.

        All I need, and I appreciate it is different for some, is a basic navigation system (menu), title, text, image and spacer.  Especially as mobile takes over the world all the rest of the fripperies are simply time-consuming and annoying.

        I have a little point to make about niches.  There are hobbyists out there, some like me, who are not surrounding their content with adverts and all the other stuff.  They do it for fun, love, freedom.  The HP 'niches' will be competing with people who can outbid them in terms of content to advertising relationship.

        That's the race to the bottom.

        1. Marisa Wright profile image88
          Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          The HubPages niche site are not niches - as MakingaMark pointed out, they are categories.

          1. Mark Ewbie profile image60
            Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Oh OK.  Not sure why they bothered then.

            1. makingamark profile image70
              makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

              Likewise! smile

  4. Marisa Wright profile image88
    Marisa Wrightposted 8 years ago

    It worries me too. When they first announced the niche idea, I thought that's what they really meant. A niche site can cover a broad range of subtopics and that's fine, but they seem to be grouping topics that aren't that closely related. You'd think they'd be aware of the potential problems with that, considering their criteria for what's related in Amazon capsules.

    1. makingamark profile image70
      makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      All they're doing is breaking up the existing site into its categories and shaving off little bits and leaving out quite a lot of existing content.

      I'm at a loss as to why they think this is a bright idea - it's certainly NOT about introducing a number of niche sites in the sense that Google recognises and of the type that does well elsewhere

 
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