Worst earnings in years

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poppyrposted 6 years ago
It's disheartening to work so hard only to see your earnings drop to lowest than they've been in a long time. For the past two days, they've been about half what I was earning daily in 2017 and even lower than they were in January! Has this happened to anyone else and will it pick up soon?
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  promisemposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Google is pulling a great deal of money out of partner AdSense revenue to prop up its earnings and stock price.
  
  Many other sources also are reporting major declines in revenue.
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  eugbugposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  So do you think would it be a good idea for HubPages to abandon the two Adsense ads they display on pages and substitute ad partner ones?
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  promisemposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Good question. Unfortunately, I can't answer it because I don't know how much AdSense is part of the HP ad program.
  
  AdSense is the largest online ad network on the planet by far. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the HP ad program includes AdSense among its revenue sources.
  
  In other words, we may be getting AdSense revenue from two sources: our own AdSense accounts and the HP ad program.
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  chef-de-jourposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I'm happy with HP earnings at present. I write fresh articles each week and add to my pile. So far - I've been here 6+ years - things are working out. Overall, HP is doing well I think? As for AdSense, it seems to be a roller coaster ride, flying at peak sales times, struggling in between.
  
  I recommend you keep writing and bit by bit add to your already considerable stock, always with the idea that you can 'beat' most if not all of the competition!
  
  See what the next few weeks bring then take stock, evaluate, review, and keep asking questions.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I know how you feel because I have been there myself. What I have learned is that when this happens, it's time to start analyzing my articles and updating where necessary so that once views go up again, I'll do better than before. In August of 2014 I had an overnight drop of 90% on all articles. I never did find a reason for this, but I decided to get busy and start sorting, dumping and revamping. As a result, my rankings rose and to date I have more than 3 million views and am earning 4 figures monthly. It was a huge amount of work, but revamping was the only chance i had to save my articles. My views dropped in half early this weekend, but are coming back again today. It's the nature of the beast. The problem is the advertisers. If they don't spent, we don't earn. I've always felt that having hubs is like having a garden...they must be overseen, pruned and tended to in order to flourish. My first year here I earned a total of $189, and even less the second year, so I know how discouraging it can be. You just have to keep on cultivating your garden, and the flowers will eventually bloom. I'm living proof of that!
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  poppyrposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  This is incredibly inspiring. My life would definitely be changed if I managed to make four figures every month.
  
  Thank you, I’ll get to updating my articles right away. Would you recommend updating the ones with the most views first or working from the bottom (the ones with no or very few views)?
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I try to edit all of my articles so that they show the current year. (This was a suggestion from paradigmsearch and I have been doing so every year. Keeping the articles up to date seems to make Google happy.) I start from the top and work my way down since I have a lot to go through, as do you.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  The team has always recommended updating the best articles first. What I do, though, is check my stats to see which hubs are faltering and then try to figure out what the problem is. Sometimes it's a problem with the title. It can also be lack of focus in the article or content that does not match the title. There's also the issue of competition. If you are writing on a topic that is covered by a well known website, such as the Cancer Society, your hub will never gain traction. Also, some topics are just inundated by writers...subjects such as love, how to save money, etc.normally aren't worth your time unless you have something special to say about them. If you give the reader what he needs to have, you'll always get good views, but you have to do it better than the other guy does! If you want to email me and give me one article that is not doing well, I'll see if I can point out some problem areas for you and will respond to your email rather than on the forums with my results.
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  poppyrposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  That’s really kind of you. Thank you! I might take you up on it when I’ve got some time.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Whatever you like. Sometimes having another set of eyes lets me see things that made more sense than what I did!
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  Randy Godwinposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Ditto!
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  EsmeSanBonaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  TimeTraveler2--how many views do you consider traction? What are your considerations when dumping articles? Is it purely traffic or do you have other criteria?
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  EsmeSanBonaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I'm just wanting to tend my garden well...I know very little about pruning. :-)
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  If you want to do well here, you need to learn these things! Always ask why an article is not doing well...is it well organized, long enough, about a searchable topic, is the title enticing, how much competition is there, are there problems with grammar and sentence structure, what questions does it answer or what need does it serve, are there too many ads and are they all necessary, are ads properly placed and in "in text" form. are your articles evergreen....etc. I advise you to take your worst article and apply these questions to it, make changes, sit back and see what happens. You likely will be pleasantly surprised!
  
  I just took a look at your profile and see that almost every article you write is about dreams and all basically have the exact same title...thee all are boring titles! Also, you need to weed some of them out...how many people actually dream about frogs and want to know what that means? Now dreaming about blood...that's a popular one I would think. But instead of saying "What does it mean to dream about.........", why not write a title that says something like "Why Dreaming about Blood Shouldn't Frighten You"...or "Last night i Had a Horrible Dream about Blood"..remember, that the title is what entices people to read your article, if it doesn't, they don't read.
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  EsmeSanBonaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks! I appreciate the help!
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  weezyschannelposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I am just downright devastated myself. My traffic on 98% of my articles, as less than 10 a day.
  
  About 4 months ago, I was jumping out of my chair when I saw my earnings- (Okay, not really, but you get the idea).
  
  Now, it's not even worth checking my account at all. I don't have a slew of articles, but it's sufficient for me and I've never tried to make hundreds and hundreds of dollars here anyway. I was happy with making payout every month; if I made more, then that was even better.
  
  My denture article was the highest traffic article out of all of my articles and was the 3rd to 4th position in Google when doing a search (That was not in my personal results either). That article was hitting two to three hundred views a day, which was really good for me. I'm sure others have thousands on one article a day. I'm hovering around the 25 to 30 on that article now.
  
  As I mentioned in an earlier post, it was HP, then my articles got moved over to Heal Dove and then bounced over to patients Lounge. Ever since the switch to Patients Lounge, it's plummeted and does not even look like it's trying to recover.
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  Glenis Rixposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  My earnings have been low for the last three days , so out of curiosity I looked at my articles to find out what ads are there. There are no ads on my Owlcation pages, which receive a lot more visits than my pages on other niche sites, but ads are still appearing on my pages that are in other niches. I wonder what is going on? If advertisers aren’t interested in Owlcation then I won’t spend time writing for this niche - it’s too time consuming.
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  eugbugposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Did you accept tracking cookies on Owlcation? If you didn't and clicked on the button to allow necessary ones only and you live in the UK, you won't be tracked nor shown ads.
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  Glenis Rixposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, I live in the UK. I don’t know how to accept tracking cookies and it doesnt appear to be necessary on the other niche sites. Can you clarify, please? I am using my iPad at the moment. Perhaps it isn’t a problem in Windows but I’m too tired at the moment to boot up the laptop to check.
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  theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  In order to see the ads and YouTube vids, you have to 'accept all' when you are presented with the cookie options. You also have to have your own ad blocker disabled. It's the same on all the sites.
  
  For example, I use the browser, Opera. That has a built in ad blocker. If I want to turn it off, I have to go into settings/options to do it. Mostly I leave it on.
  
  It's an EU directive and is the GDPR in action.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_D … Regulation
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  eugbugposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  This is the consent dialogue tool. It only appears when visitors land on a niche site page for the first time. After that, you can access it from the "privacy policy" link at the bottom of a webpage and clicking on the link in the "consent" part of section 11 "GDPR Addendum for Impacted Users".
  
  https://owlcation.com/privacy-policy#gdpr
  
  Checking the "marketing" box allows ads to be shown to you.
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  theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  It happens to me all the time. I am logged off automatically every 24 hours, so I have to tick the box each time I access any network site for the first time in any day.
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  eugbugposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Really? Years ago I used to be logged out automatically after a couple of days. Now I never seem to be logged out. I think I have the "remember me" box checked somewhere, either on HubPages or in my browser settings.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Does HP have a "remember me" box? If so, where is it?
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  eugbugposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  It did have once upon a time.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I do not think I have seen it. My account needs to be logged in to every time I turn off my computer!
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  eugbugposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Just logged out and tried to login and it appears to be gone. You can optionally set your browser so that it remembers logins on a site per site basis and also start from where you left off with the same tabs open when you restart it. Alternatively it can flush everything including cookies when you shut it down.
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  theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I'm a cookie cleaner
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  eugbugposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I used to have my browser setup to do that on exit. Logging in again is such a pain though, having to remember all those passwords and trying to decipher the cryptic messages I've left for myself in a password reminder log.
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  paradigmsearchposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Ya made me look, ads are there.
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  OldRosesposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  My traffic is up 3x what it was last year but my earnings are down 50% of what they were last year. Very discouraging.
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  Solarasposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  That is frightening. My earnings are off 30% however views are fairly consistent.
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lobobrandonposted 6 years ago
Me.
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NateB11posted 6 years ago
Yeah, my earnings are pretty abysmal compared to what they were. But they dropped months ago and haven't really picked back up.
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ziyenaposted 6 years ago
I've noticed the ratio of CPM/Earnings has changed some … I'm still getting the same amount of daily traffic but the pay out each day has decreased a little bit in the last three months. Has there been a change to the HP AD program in the amount of compensation paid out to earnings?
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  EsmeSanBonaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I'm seeing this as well. I don't even begin to remotely understand impressions/cpm. I'm noticing my traffic and impressions are increasing, but my cpm are decreasing. This doesn't make sense to me at all, but I'm confused in general so I guess that no surprise. :-) It just seems that the cpm ought to increase with the increase in traffic and impressions, but that's not the case I guess.
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  Rock_njposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  That's just a seasonal thing. Ad earnings are much higher in the fall and early winter before the holidays because advertisers are trying to reach people looking to spend money for the holidays. We are now in the winter lull.
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  OldRosesposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I have to respectfully disagree. I write in the gardening niche. Earnings start to rise for me in March as spring and the new gardening season begins. Instead, this year, my earnings have plummetted. They were 50% less than last year in February and now in March 75% less, REPEAT 75% LESS than they were last year. Yet my traffic is 3 times higher than last year.
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eugbugposted 6 years ago
CPM for me is the same as this time last year. It seems to take between a month and a month and a half for it to recover after the start of a quarter. Hopefully it'll increase soon. It's still half of what it was at the end of last year. Traffic is higher than last year, but never returned to the high level it was at before the slump at the end of September last. I'm thinking some of this loss of traffic from educational articles could be because the topics were covered at the start of the year in the US math curriculum.
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SANJAY LAKHANPALposted 6 years ago
I am also facing the same problem.
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Lovelli Fuadposted 6 years ago
I haven't received any payout from ad programs yet, but compared to a month ago this time the earnings are lower and views are down.
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Good Guyposted 6 years ago
I used to have 2000 page views per day. Now?? It is down to less than 500! Earnings? Real miserably dismal. Less than a dollar per day. It is terribly disappointing. I am demoralized!
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  Eurofileposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I am more than demoralised, having read all this. I have been working away on my hubs quite diligently in the hope that eventually all the hard work will pay off. It feels like I am chasing a fast disappearing rainbow and that I arrived late at the party. This site is starting to give signs that it's best days are behind it.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  You need to keep in mind that most of the people that post on this thread are not happy about how things are going. That does not include everyone. Yes, I am making less than last December, before Christmas. I am also making about 20% more than in February of last year.
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  Eurofileposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  That helps to balance it out a little. Thanks. I won't throw in the towel just.yet.
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  Glenis Rixposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Liz, I see that you have very few articles. Also, you are writing articles that are for a niche audience that is probably quite small. It took quite a long time and a lot of hours for me to get a handle on things. I didn’t start to receive payments until I had more than thirty articles published and featured. If you are prepared to stick with it you will eventually get more visitors. Chin up!
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  Eurofileposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks very much for the encouragement, Glenys. It's not at all like Ciao on here! Hopefully I will get there in the end.
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  weezyschannelposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Consider yourself lucky! I'm at an all-time low; it's like I just started writing for HP. I just wish someone would let everyone know what or if, there is even a problem. Then I think a lot of us would stop posting in the Forum who's had the lowest traffic, earnings, etc.
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  ziyenaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I don't think 'most' of us are 'unhappy'… more or less simply wondering what the reasoning is for the low levels in traffic or earnings. I'm still forging away, not only here, but on my alter-ego as well … I think people want answers or some sort of resolve that makes sense to them. Whether or not we get it, now that's another forum post … … …
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  You are right, I should have said "some of the people are very unhappy". (Look at Good Guys post above.) I think HP has provided some answers, but they are not one that most of us want to hear. It is all about advertisers, and what they are willing to pay. They pay less, we need to have more traffic to earn more.
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  ziyenaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  The bottom line … grrr
  Thanks Doc
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  weezyschannelposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Well I understand it's if it's what the advertisers want to pay, but when you don't get the traffic for them to even make an offer what do you supposed to do? Decent traffic for 10 years and then poof!
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  gmwilliamsposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  +10000000000000000000
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Although writers in the past have said that this is "passive income", it is not. You need to stay active and update your articles and get them moved to niche sites. If you keep them on HP´s main site, well, they are not going to see much traffic.
  If the HP team is not moving your hubs to a niche site, you can manually submit one every fortnight. If it is not okay for a niche site, find out why. Change it if needed.
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  theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  This.
  
  Many of the people complaining either have few published articles, don't add new content, or don't have their hubs moved to a network site.
  
  Earnings have always, always fluctuated. This is a particularly low earning time of year. Mine are down a third from pre-Christmas levels but still up on last year.
  
  My strategy (because I hate updating) is to Just. Keep. Writing.
  
  Edit: And I'm not including Poppy -- she has a ton of articles on network sites and she works like a demon.
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  EricFarmer8xposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I agree. It takes a lot work and planning. This is one of the main things I have learned from HubPages. I also learned some writing ideas will not work as well as I thought I did. But I learned some that did.
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  poppyrposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Bev, thank you! I am blushing!
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  Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I finally have all my articles on niche sites. December of last year was so exceptionally good, I decided to begin writing again. Now I am making half of what I was a year ago. I've started deleting a few articles that get dismal traffic, as most traffic comes from a pretty large handful of articles. But I still think I should keep writing. I write evergreen, and it does take a new piece months or more to get noticed. Trying to stay positive.
  
  Sometimes all that's needed is a more exciting title or a summary change because they act as a teaser to get people to want to read it.
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  weezyschannelposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I agree to disagree with moving them to a niche site. That's when my traffic just dropped to below 10 a day. The constant bumping them to a different niche site I think as what dropped rankings, especially when they've been moved two to three times within 4 months.
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  weezyschannelposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Join the no traffic club
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  weezyschannelposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Well I just checked my views and for my 24 articles I've had 160 views! WTH?
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I just took a peek at your profile page. It seems like many of your articles are about health issues and recipes. This is a big problem and probably why views have dropped. HP has tightened up the requirements for writing health articles AND they are highly competitive, just as are recipes. Try some different topics to see if this helps. Competition is stiff these days so ranking well requires writing about less competitive topics or topics that you know a lot about or both.
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  theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  24 articles is a low number. You aren't going to make a lot of money unless you keep writing. You might strike lucky and land on a topic that a lot of people are searching for. However, if you want to make decent earnings then you have to be heading towards 100 articles, and beyond.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  If you or any of the other successful hubbers here had stopped at 24, what are the chances that you would have so many views? Not many. If you have ONE successful article with that many views you are doing well.
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Kenna McHughposted 6 years ago
Writing, in general, is a tricky trade because it is hard to earn a decent living. I do, it's well worth it for me because it gives me more freedom. Hearing "bad news" about HP payout is not good, and I understand it is frustrating. Frankly, writing for the Internet, in general, does not pay well. Job Boards postings ask for experience, professional writers, no mistakes, perfect grammar and so forth. The pay is .03 - .10 per word. It silly for a professional writer to take a job like that. HP payout is more than what is on Job Boards, and I write for other clients.
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EricFarmer8xposted 6 years ago
I was at the point where I was receiving an ad payment once every two months on HubPages. I looked at my top earning Hubs and that gave me an idea to start a blog. I moved them to my own website and my HubPages earning heavily dropped but my blog is doing OK for just starting it.

I plan on writing more content for HubPages but I am using a lot of what I learned here on my own website. I learned about a topic I know I can write about that did well so I am going with it. I guess I will see long term if this is worth it or not.
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  gerimcclymposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Sounds like a very smart plan!
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Kenna McHughposted 6 years ago
Writing for the Internet is like trying to catch mercury. It is constantly changing and trying to go with the flow is tough at times. Updating your content and writing new articles is part of going with the flow. It is hard to keep up at times but worth it.
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  CYong74posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Very true. Mercurial is the word to describe Google.
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psycheskinnerposted 6 years ago
I've been here for 8 years, some years were better than this and some were worse--a lot worse.
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bhattucposted 6 years ago
People are submitting more and more articles and in that scenario the distribution of earnings can change but one can address it by posting new articles as well as by updating the existing as suggested by other members also.

Keep going it is only a temporary phase.
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Kenna McHughposted 6 years ago
I regularly update articles and notice a rise in views within 24 hours.
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  jansharesposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  +1
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  theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  :sigh: I have given in and started updating
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  paradigmsearchposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Be forewarned. By updating an article, you are entering the editor/curator lottery game. For some people, that has gone extremely badly.
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  theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  It's all fine, PS
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  paradigmsearchposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I'd recommend starting with those articles that are not getting traffic anyway; that way, you are not jeopardizing your income-producing articles. If all goes well on that particular niche site, then you can start rolling the dice with your revenue-stream articles. May The Force be with you.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I have done this for several years per your earlier suggestion, but am wondering if there is a study or any kind of proof that this actually helps. (Anecdotally, I am sure that it does. Anecdotes are not enough for all of us though.)
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  paradigmsearchposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Your post caused me to do a Google search for "google fresh content". Even though I found contradictory results, I'm still a believer.
  
  1. Most of the search results said yes.
  2. The AxleAddict results indicated yes.
  3. My own website January-2019-update-blitz results indicate yes.
  
  Admittedly, items #2 and #3 must be called anecdotal. For all we know, the traffic might have gone up for other reasons. At any rate, I like messing around and updating my website and there's no risk doing it there.
  
  I do know that Google says the more often content is updated, the more often the crawler comes back. Presumably, the more often Google's attention is positively attracted; the hopefully the better.
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Susana Sposted 6 years ago
Traffic is down considerably on my hubs and consequently, so are the earnings. I need to do some editing of my top hubs to see if that helps.
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Kenna McHughposted 6 years ago
I have never had a problem editing my articles with niche sites or featured articles.
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  theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  And after all, HP suggest we update them regularly. I tend to avoid it because I am lazy and get bored with it.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Some of my better performers have been through the Hubpro premium editing twice. I cannot find a lot to edit. On an article like that, I will go in and make a minor change so that it will change the date of the last editing.
  (Not exactly honest, I know, but I cannot find any commas to change and I do not want to take out anything that may be helping me in ranking-I was thinking of writing a new article and looked up the keyword I was planning on using and found one of my articles was already the featured snippet. HP had added that keyword to the article during one of the edits.)
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Kenna McHughposted 6 years ago
I updated two articles yesterday. My per day income almost doubled.
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eugbugposted 6 years ago
Google are at it again with their algo. updates. It seems to be happening every other week.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, the situation is dynamic. But the fluctuations aren't dramatic like they were in years gone by. Like you said, there was a drop at the start of October 2018 and then January CPM's were slightly lower than last year, but I've not seen anything extreme. The Feb 18 algo update seems to have been positive, at least for me...
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  Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  How often is the Big G changing the algo now? I used to have many articles with 100 scores, and now have none. My traffic is awful, except on the usual articles, but they have been here for years. New people discover them.
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eugbugposted 6 years ago
Presumably just changing a word here or there in order to change the date of an article is hardly sufficient to keep the Big G happy? There's a limit to how much new stuff can be added to an article before it starts to become like an over pinned notice board.
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Kenna McHughposted 6 years ago
My updates, for the most part, are extensive. Rewriting so the article, hopefully, reads better, checking the latest SEO possibilities - influencing titles and subtitles, and adding more content.
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Elderberry Artsposted 6 years ago
For the last two months my earnings have taken a big drop too. I'm workign on improving and updating some of my older hubs and hoping this will help.
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Dolores Monetposted 6 years ago
Having been here for some time I must say my views and earning have bounced up and down over the years. It can be a drag when you see the low numbers but a thrill when your articles are doing well and earning some money. Stupidly, when things are not doing well, I step away and complain. Funny how when I start to pay attention to the helpful tips I see on the forums and begin to pay attention to what works, adding pertinent new information or whatever, things improve!

I like the titles that begin with "what does it mean when you dream about..." because I feel like that is what people will type into the search bar when they are wondering about it.
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  Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Exactly. You have to figure out what a person would type into the search bar if they were looking to read what you wrote. I usually look up a few on similar topics. Even if my subject has been covered, my article is often one of the first on the first Google page. Changing titles matters a lot too.
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Sherry Hewinsposted 6 years ago
In looking back over my earnings, I see that what I am getting now is pretty close to what I was getting this time last year. In fact, it is slightly more.

It's tempting to compare current earnings to what I was getting in June and July. Those were very good months for me. However, I think the high earnings were more the anomaly than these current earnings are.
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Susana Sposted 6 years ago
It's really good to hear that not everyone is suffering.

It depends where your content is. Some network sites are doing well and others not so well. My content on Wehavekids is struggling big time.

My income and earnings are half what they were last year. They're a tonne better than the years between panda in 2011 and when the network sites started doing well (2017?), but it's still frustrating.

Thankfully I have my income from my own site which has now overtaken my Hubpages earnings.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Susana, several years ago I started a site but it never gained much so I ended up abandoning it and just post here. Do you have any tips on monetizing a site that might help?
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  Susana Sposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  My strategy was to go hard on Pinterest to get to 25,000 sessions in a 30 day period then apply to mediavine ad network.
  
  The RPM (what we call CPM at Hubpages) on Mediavine is excellent. Between 10-20 times better than what I was earning with adsense.
  
  Trying out different affiliate offers to see what my visitors like is my other main monetization method.
  
  Is your site on animal care as well? I ask because that kind of content can do very well on Pinterest and there'd be plenty of opportunities to include affiliate links.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Yes I could definitely get that kind of traffic from Pinterest. I hardly go on there anymore but still get almost that much traffic on several of my HP articles.
  Marisa had helped me set up a site several years ago but it just did not seem worth the effort, unlike HP. I mostly published artilces on dogs and exotics that I did not want to publish here.
  I just pulled up the info on Mediavine. I had not heard of them. Thanks for that info.
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  Susana Sposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I used to feel that way as well - that it would too much time and effort. But as so many have said in the past, it's good not to have all your eggs in one basket.
  
  I think you could easily get that kind of traffic from Pinterest and with MV ads you would be making anywhere between $8-20 RPM. My average is around $10.
  
  Pinterest is awesome because you can get traffic right away while waiting for google rankings. The traffic is consistent as well. One of my early pins from last year brings around 300 visits per day. Many months I get 50k visits total from Pinterest. It's worth the effort in my mind.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I've used Pinterest for years and have never gotten views like that! I'm thinking that topic is the key there. These days I'm getting very few, which is discouraging. Is there some secret to increasing views there, or do you think topic is the key?
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  Susana Sposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Certain topics do do well on there but you can also do a lot to increase your views. I've spent the last 8 months learning Pinterest marketing and it's been quite a journey. I wouldn't say the techniques are secrets but I certainly wasn't aware of how much traffic it's possible to get from there. I wish I'd done it way back!
  
  I was always someone who didn't bother with chasing social media traffic, but when it has the potential to bring so many readers and a good amount of income, the effort it takes becomes worthwhile.
  
  I'm going to write a hub about it very soon and I'll start a thread for Pinterest questions as well.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  That would help a lot of people, I think. Looking forward to reading it. How did you go about doing your research? What tools did you use or did you just to Google searches. Sounds fascinating.
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  Susana Sposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I think so too. It would be awesome to see more hubbers making the most of Pinterest and increasing their traffic and earnings.
  
  Whenever I'm learning something new I seek out the experts so that's what I did for Pinterest. I bought a couple of ebooks, joined some Pinterest Facebook groups and then went at it.
  
  There was a bit of a learning curve to start with, and it doesn't help that Pinterest is pretty fickle (!), but just like Google it takes time to build trust.
  
  Consistency is what Pinterest likes best.
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  ziyenaposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  "Thankfully I have my income from my own site which has now overtaken my Hubpages earnings."
  
  Yes, to that
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eugbugposted 6 years ago
Same here, probably around 100 max per day although it was higher. That's after posting lots of made-for-Pinterest images with text on them. Topic probably does determine whether pins are re-pinned.
Does Pinterest ever shadow ban?
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I don't even get that many! What do you mean by shadow ban?
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  eugbugposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  It's when you post stuff that's considered self promotional, so the site owners prevent your content from being viewed, however you can see it yourself when you're logged in. So you keep posting and wondering why there are no views. This happened to me with Reddit a few years ago.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I don't self promote or spam...don't want the headaches these things can produce!
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  eugbugposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I don't spam either although I sometimes ask permission whether I can post a relevant backlink in a Facebook group. As I understand it, spam is non-relevant stuff.
  Do you post links to niche site articles on Pinterest? Is that not self-promotional, or does it only become so if there isn't a balance between posting your own content and adding pins to other similar content?
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  EricFarmer8xposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  You want to pin other related things as well.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I post other people's images on Pinterest as well as my own, and I do think there needs to be a balance between the two. I post one image for each hub that is MFP and that's it.
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  Susana Sposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  They can certainly throttle your reach if you trip their spam filters.
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paradigmsearchposted 6 years ago
Well, straight AdSense is not dazzling me with its performance. Am going to have to make a decision come March 1. How's the HP Ads Program doing, any improvement?
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  Bedbugabscondposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I have't seen improvement yet. One account is stable, the other two still lowest ive ever seen. Google recently released a PDF entitled How Google Fights Disinformation. There's a lot of interesting information in this document. My research leads me to believe that while there are many factors involved in the low cpm's across-the-board, advertisers have lost a lot of trust in online advertising and are deeply researching the value of advertising in an ever-changing online ecosystem. There's also a great deal of movement in the mobile indexing first project. And from what I've seen, the values between desktop and mobile are causing large adjustments across the board as well. However, from John Mueller and other Google employees Twitter accounts and blogs there is indication that this should not get very much lower, and by June or July advertising should be back to normal and stable levels. Or at least that's my opinion.
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  paradigmsearchposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks very much for that info. In fact, it motivated me to go check my balance history for last year. June and July were indeed banner months.
  
  Oddly, March was also very good, with April-May being back to average. I'll need to figure out if March was an outlier or not.
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  Bedbugabscondposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I see the same trend last year as you on my stable account, and I expect (or hope) to see that again. However, my other two accounts have not seen recovery even though I wrote more and increased traffic. I'm not sure I will see recovery there until closer to July.
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Kenna McHughposted 6 years ago
Susana, I agree - study and learn. Doing it right is very important.
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paradigmsearchposted 6 years ago
Just my rant for the day...

I have a nameless new article at a nameless location that is the best on the net according to my searches for that given topic. Now all I have to do is wait 2 years for Google to figure that out; the topic being over saturated doesn't help either. Tough town... Tough town... Meanwhile, all else is reasonably well.
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daniellepopovitsposted 6 years ago
There is a lot of great info in this thread. Thanks everyone for sharing such great tips!
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paradigmsearchposted 6 years ago
Hey, folks. I just checked my March 2018 daily earnings. We may have a shot this month (March).
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poppyrposted 6 years ago
Thank you, everyone, for your detailed replies. I appreciate you all taking the time to discuss this. For me, earnings are picking up a little bit. Hopefully, it'll get better. As others have said, it's all about writing more and updating existing articles.
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Susana Sposted 6 years ago
I just checked this February's monthly earnings vs last year and they're $500 down. That's a significant amount.
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  promisemposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I'm curious if you can reveal the decline as a percentage.
  
  Some sites are reporting 80 and 90% declines in year-over-year AdSense revenue.
  
  Even if AdSense isn't the direct cause of the HP ad revenue decline, Google, Facebook and Amazon are soaking up so much advertising from everywhere that they are leaving less and less for other ad networks.
  
  This is what happens when a few companies take over everything.
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  Susana Sposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  It's a 40% drop in earnings overall between the 2 months. CPM's are 20-50% lower but still pretty good (last February was a bumper month CPM-wise - no idea why).
  
  The earnings reduction is also traffic related. Two hubs are on wehavekids that have consistently done very well have seen a 50% traffic decline.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  My earnings are up on last year. I think it's dependent on which specific niche sites one's work appears on. Some niches have been hit, some haven't.
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  promisemposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Mine are up slightly on this site and one other. They are down a lot on another.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  My Owlcation articles have been hit, but thankfully I have written very little that's health orientated (plus I don't have kids). Dengarden, Turbofuture, Toughnickel all seem to have held up pretty well.
  
  After Robin's advice, I'm wondering about deleting some of my worst performing hubs and focusing more on the upkeep of the better performers. The problem is that some of my good performers were once poor performers, which make me reticent.
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  Susana Sposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I'm definitely going to get my thinking cap on and see if I can get some content on other sites. I do have one hub on Pinterest marketing in the works, plus a couple of others. We'll see. It doesn't help that I am such a slow writer.
  
  I don't like deleting hubs either, a few tweaks and a different title can make all the difference.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I can write very quickly if it's something easy and fun, say an opinion piece for Soapboxie. Trouble is that it's generally the drier topics that have the better earning potential and those hubs can take me several days or more to complete, mainly because of motivational issues and being distracted easily!
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  My earnings are also up about 30% compared to February of 2018. Down from November, of course, but there is no comparing those two months.
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  lobobrandonposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Just checked mine and it's funny. My HP Ad Program earnings for Feb 2019 are 7 cents less than Feb 2018. But Jan 2019 is like 10% higher than the previous Jan.
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  paradigmsearchposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I'm going to be watching March like a hawk. Decisions... Decisions...
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  Susana Sposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Yep. Maybe I need to diversify!
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Kenna McHughposted 6 years ago
My earnings are up. DenGarden is my best performer, though Bellatory and ToughNickle are respectively next.
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paradigmsearchposted 6 years ago
March Decides.
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paradigmsearchposted 6 years ago
I wish HP earnings would update. I want to decide whether HP Ad Program or Straight AdSense is the way to go for the month.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  The HP program performance for the last 3 days should not be the deciding factor in whether you want to change to Adsense.
  Unless you are just bored and want to change for something to do.
  You decide.
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  paradigmsearchposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I'm comparing last year versus this year. Last year says HP Ad Program.
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  weezyschannelposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Well if it helps any, it doesn't matter. Not getting AdSense earnings because I don't have enough views for even any clicks and not getting HP earnings because I don't have enough views. This has just gone downhill real quick for me
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paradigmsearchposted 6 years ago
Excuse the language, but what is the D holdup?
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I guess it is hard to blame you folks out in California, but the rest of the US is still having a terrible winter. Is the holdup because of the winter doldrums?
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  paradigmsearchposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  I saw your previous post. This is important to me.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  It is summer here, we are in the midst of drought, and wildfires are destroying my environment. The little animals of the jungle are losing their homes.
  
  (I took this on Friday. Many have died, but this one has a respiratory infection from all of the smoke. This is important to me, even if I cannot do anything about it!)
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  theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  It does put our minor worries into perspective. So sorry for your animals. Hope all goes well for this little one.
  
  Will you have to leave?
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  No, thankfully not. The land in front of my house burned off but about 15 people from the village helped me put it out before it reached my outbuildings. I lost most of my pasture, of course, but my horses and sheep are eating in another area in the meantime.
  My main worries are about the wild ones. I can treat the ones I can catch, but there are cats in the jungle and a lot of others I never see.
  Hubpages is paying for the antibiotics, even if they do not know it!
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  lobobrandonposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  If you really are in the position to help and if you need some funds, gofundme and stuff like that are really helpful. Some pictures of the area and the animals and you should be able to get some help if financing can help make things better.
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  DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks we have already looked into that. The problem I have found is that you have to be a registered NGO, We are in the process of going through that now, but with our system it wil take several months, at least.
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  lobobrandonposted 6 years agoin reply to this
  Damn. I know how bad bureaucracy can be. Thanks for the good work you're doing. I appreciate it
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paradigmsearchposted 6 years ago
This is worth a read: https://hubpages.com/@drmark1961

It occurred to me to do a rant about reality, but not in the mood. I wish you well.
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