Arena Platform

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   Madeleine Claysposted 2 years ago

   Hello to my fellow writers! I have been off of this writing platform for some time, as I was teaching full-time through the pandemic, but am now ready to return. I have lost track of where to go to see community updates, forum posts... I recall that Maven had bought out HubPages, and now it looks like The Arena Platform is the owner? I would appreciate basic guidance on where to go for updates. I see that I can still log into my HP accounts and it looks like I have the ability to "Start a New Article", but is this still the process for starting a new article? Any basic pointers are appreciated. If you have the contact number for The Arena Platform, that would also be greatly appreciated as I could not find it online. Thank you in advance.

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      Jodahposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Madeleine,
      You can start a new article by clicking on “Write” at the top right of the page when you are signed in. “Help” takes you to the Learning Centre. The three stripes top left will show a drop down menu..at the bottom of which you will see “forums.”
      Yes The Arena Group is now the owner but I am not sure how to contact them.

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      eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      You can contact The Arena Group through their social media channels, but they don't talk to us directly about Hubpages. When asked about something they replied:
      
      "Please direct your questions to the HubPages forums—they will be better equipped to answer them. Thank you!"

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      Miebakagh57posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Since The Arena Group bought hubpages, the later is no longer the same, and has diversified into various niche sites.                                             Certain of these niche sites has now its own online newspaper or magazine.

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   Brenda Arledgeposted 2 years ago

   We know nothing about this Arena platform, but we've heard it mentioned a little.
   As far as comments...they are gone.
   We use the forums to communicate.
   
   However, we are not allowed to post our own articles for discussion.
   Yet...if another Hubber post them...we can enter into a discussion.

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3. 98

   Madeleine Claysposted 2 years ago

   Thank you Brenda, Jodah, eugbug and Miebakagh for your helpful feedback! I greatly appreciate all of it, as it gives me the guidance I needed to get back on track with this writing platform.
   
   -Madeleine

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      eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      You're welcome Madeleine.
      The main forum page, accessed from "Forums" in the menu is probably the best page for seeing what writers are saying. Apart from the community forum, there's a topical forum too with various categories, and this is very active, especially the political category, but in the 11 years I've been here, I have only visited it a handful of times. The official Hubpages announcements section isn't updated as frequently as it was years ago and we aren't kept as informed as we used to be about what's happening behind the scenes.

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         Madeleine Claysposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you eugbug. I checked out the main forum page and see what you mean--thank you. I recall that the forums were a good way to stay current on what was going on with HP. Being that it appears to be a challenge to contact HP, would you say that HP is still a reliable site to write on? Also, have you seen a decline in earnings on this platform since the pandemic?

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            eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

            My views and earnings for last year were the highest in the 11 years I have been writing on the platform. Views and also CPM declined sharply this year. So either advertisers are bidding less for ads or Hubpages/TAG are giving us less share of earnings than they used to. They won't discuss the details and it's this lack of transparency which has been annoying writers here in the last year or so. As regards reliability, it's hard to say. There's an excessive display of ads which may be giving a poor "page experience" as Google calls it. However Hubpages have told us that they are working on a new ad layout. The intrusive ads more than likely cause annoyance to readers and make them leave articles before fully reading them, reducing overall views, defeating their purpose.
            There is the option of writing articles here and duplicating them on sites such as Medium.

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   Madeleine Claysposted 2 years ago

   Thanks for the feedback. I took a look at one of my articles and see what you mean about how ads are displayed. Yes, I agree that they hinder the flow of the article and offer a poor reader experience. Hopefully HP will change that as it will benefit them as well as us.
   
   About duplicating our HP articles to other sites, wouldn't that show up as duplicate content, or is it okay as long as we use the same author name?

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      eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      On Medium, you can add a canonical link back to the Hubpages version in the advanced settings for the article. This tells Google (and presumably other search engines such as Bing) that the Hubpages version is the original and keeps them happy. The Medium version is also listed way down the ranking. However I have found that this doesn't always work and the Medium version sometimes outranks the Hubpages version, appearing at the top of SERPS. I had to delete at least one article to rectify this conflict.

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         Madeleine Claysposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Interesting. Thanks for sharing, I may give Medium a try. How would you compare earnings on HP vs. Medium? If you had to had to choose only 1 platform, which would you choose? I assume it may depend greatly on the topics you write on.

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            eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

            Hubpages suits me because my articles are mostly "How To" style, DIY and gardening guides. I also write math and physics tutorials here. Medium is more "highbrow" and geared towards politics, history, creative writing, opinion pieces, emerging science and technology, lifestyle, life stories, programming etc. On Medium you earn when subscribing members read your articles, so you need to buildup a large following and/or write content that's popular and could potentially be shared. If non-subscribing Medium members or non-Medium members (I.e resulting from external traffic from e.g. search engines) read your articles, you don't get anything.
            There are lots of publications on Medium that you can pitch articles to and become a writer on, or you can start your own publication.
            My earnings on Hubpages are constant because I write evergreen guides. However they do rise and fall like a roller coaster as Google Algorithm updates uprank and downrank them. Earnings on Medium have fallen to a trickle because all my followers have presumably read my articles and the "stories" as they call them have also disappeared from view on any of the publications I submitted them to as new content was added (Remember articles can be reached by people searching on Google, but since there are no ads on Medium, no earnings are made from external traffic). Publications display image thumbnails and some brief text from articles in list or grid format. The only way one could have control and keep their articles on view is by creating their own publication, allowing them to move their articles back up the list. Then market the publication to get subscribers.

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   Madeleine Claysposted 2 years ago

   Very helpful--thank you for taking the time to answer my many questions. I think I'll focus on HP for now, as I get back into the groove of writing. Medium seems like a great option as well, depending on the topic. Thanks again for your valuable and helpful feedback. Many blessings to you, my fellow writer!

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      eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      That's OK Madeleine. I just edited the reply above to add more information about Medium.

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         Madeleine Claysposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you eugbug. I see the info you added and it makes me think that for me, HP is likely best, at least for now. Very kind of you to offer such detailed feedback--it is greatly appreciated.

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   Miebakagh57posted 2 years ago

   Medium Medium Medium! Everyone, on Hubpages talking about Medium about Medium these days.                                   The thing is that it's confirm to European countries. African, Asia, the Middle East couutries are out of the equation.                                  At present, I've a mind on Medium. I hope as one writer said here few weeks ago, that the others will later be welcome.

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