Traffic Has Fallen to Below 2017 Levels

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   eugbugposted 9 months ago

   After two years of non-stop decline, traffic hit a new low today, less than what it would normally be on Christmas Day.

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      Jodahposted 9 months agoin reply to this

      Yes, it is a sad decline.

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   Misbah786posted 9 months ago

   Ah, the resonating "Sigh!"
   
   Much like a melody, it captures the highs and lows, epitomizing life in all its richness.

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3. 94

   jansharesposted 9 months ago

   Ditto, Misbah (Sigh). Eugene, I don't know (or don't want to know) what it means but it's hard not to worry about where we are headed as a writing site. I have an article I'm reworking that I wanted to post here but I'm thinking I should just put it on Medium. I'm not earning there yet because I'm not active enough but I'm really asking myself is it worth putting big effort here anymore. I'll post a poem every now and then but not a length article that could do better elsewhere with more readership. I saw a post from Bev yesterday saying she's making way more on Medium. I'm sure Misbah is, too.

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      Misbah786posted 9 months agoin reply to this

      +1
      My earnings on Medium have been excellent, and I'm truly grateful. In the past two months, having two articles boosted and distributed was the cherry on top.

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         jansharesposted 9 months agoin reply to this

         Proud of you. You are a true go-getter.

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      Jan Stepanposted 9 months agoin reply to this

      Let us not assume that Medium is somehow better than HubPages cause it's not, and its format is not a successful formula for the future, that I can say for sure.

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         jansharesposted 9 months agoin reply to this

         Thanks for that feedback, Jan.

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      Daughter Of Maatposted 9 months agoin reply to this

      Medium is changing up its partnership program. As of August, they are removing the 100 followers necessary to participate in the program, but requiring that you have a subscription instead. I've been moving a lot of my articles over there, and although I haven't been as active as I should be, I'm getting some traffic. I already have a subscription because I love the articles on Medium, so it might be a viable alternative. Substack is another alternative, and has the advantage of being a newsletter, meaning you "own" your audience. You can also go paid with it, which could be lucrative.

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         jansharesposted 9 months agoin reply to this

         Thank you for this helpful information.

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   PaulGoodman67posted 9 months ago

   I earn ten times as much at HP and do far less work. The problem is that it’s dispiriting when views and earnings keep going down.

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      Misbah786posted 9 months agoin reply to this

      But you have more than one profile on HubPages. No?

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      eugbugposted 9 months agoin reply to this

      The frustrating thing is that we write good quality content (not being big-headed about it), so it's so annoying that Google won't rank it and yet frequently put thin stuff at the top, even give it featured snippets sometimes.

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         Jan Stepanposted 9 months agoin reply to this

         Yes, that's what bothers and frustrates me as well. It's tough when you know you're better than the vast majority, yet not get rewarded for it.

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   Solarasposted 9 months ago

   I think you guys may be experiencing what I experienced and bemoaned for 2 years: an alarming decline in views and income, down to 20% of the best years on HP.
   
   Pethelpful has made a bit of a comeback, for my account at least.  I doubt that TikTok has much to do with it, since the investment of resources in "News" started a over year ago, and its arrival coincided with a further decline in views.  But maybe I am wrong, and "News" is finally paying off.
   
   Ask a Vet may be helping to buoy the site.
   
   The increase in my views coincides with a site wide attempt to replace the first image with a new image, and push the made for Pinterest images further down the page.
   
   There has also been a Google algo change, in that I see fewer The Spruce results returned, which is interesting.  It seems smaller, more targeted websites are near the top of the SERPs.
   
   I am also seeing recommended articles to the right that are associated with the articles topic, which seems to me had been missing for a long time. 
   
   My recommendation would be to add images with SEO relevant  captions to your articles. Also, build your own back links to relevant articles in a Links Capsule with "You May Also Like" as the capsule title.

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   Eurofileposted 9 months ago

   I agree that it is frustrating to see such a decline. I keep hoping for a turnaround soon. But it's a long time coming, if at all.

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   Moondot1822posted 9 months ago

   Almost all my articles have blue arrows. It's so upsetting.

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   Barack Jamesposted 9 months ago

   Could it be too many ads displayed in hubs that is hurting ranking and traffic due to poor user experince?
   
   I mean, it only makes sense to show one ad once on the same page.
   
   Better rank high in the search engines and show few ads to many, than rank low and show many ads to few.
   
   The ads are also slowly loading, further compromising the user experience. But, no one listens to hubbers anymore.
   
   Hubs are being updated but the traffic and earnings are nose diving annually.
   
   Amazon earnings are also falling to zero due to few links. If something is not done, soon we will only afford to buy a cup of coffee with our stellar hubs on network sites.

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      eugbugposted 9 months agoin reply to this

      Well yes, that's what we think and have discussed this extensively. Also there's the problem of slow loading time and readers being presented with confusing white space on pages while waiting for images and ads to load. So they never see the ads and that means no impressions. Also the layout of ads and the video at the top is awful, with no alignment whatsoever. So either Hubpages have given up on the whole thing or they have no control of the layout technically. Or maybe TAG dictates everything and won't allow it. The less feedback we get, the more we speculate. Interestingly when I turned ads off for two weeks on a long article, there was no increase in views or time spent on page. This would suggest that with the ads, people still persevere and don't hit the back button because of a bad user experience.

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         Solarasposted 9 months agoin reply to this

         Well slow loading ads is a problem for HP.  We only get paid for one pageview, so if only half their obscene number of ads load, too bad for them.
         
         Except, we have readers dealing with white space and unable to scroll down past it.  That is sick.  They cure that by not letting the reader back out of the article until the video has loaded.  That has been my experience on a pokey old computer anyway.

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