Trying to work out if HubPages is right for me

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   MichaelAtkinsPrescottposted 5 weeks ago

   I host a weekly radio show, and I post playlists online every week. Currently they’re posted on Tumblr, but the more I’m on Tumblr, the more it feels like it’s just not a site for adults.
   
   I’m worried that a site like HubPages might view a list of songs as low-quality content.
   
   I have given up on social media for reasons I won’t bore you with, so I have no social network I can leverage. The advantage of Tumblr is that there is a community of people just browsing, who can happen upon my posts. That’s important too. On Tumblr, each post was worth a few likes, comments, shares and new follows.
   
   It would be perfect if it weren’t for all the Supernatural fan art.
   
   The potential to monetise is great, but I don’t care about monetising it just yet. I volunteer at the station, and it’s non-profit, so I think there might be ethical concerns with monetising what I do there. But I am a writer, and I am hoping that if I can get a following, I can use it to promote my writing and other content. Then I might think about monetising.
   
   So, what I need is…
   
   -lots of leeway regarding what I post.
   -an active community of people who might stumble across my posts.
   -potential for monetisation, but options regarding what I do and do not monetise.

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   1. 95

      Solarasposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      This is not likely to be the platform for you.  This is not an active community, we rely on SEO to bring in readers. 
      
      You would need to make interesting, relevant comments about the music on your lists, new ones each week in order to lure readers. The content must address information on the music that people are searching for, and be unique and informative.
      
      Check out Spinditty.com that is where music articles reside here.  You may find another route to accomplish what you would like to do with your lists. 
      
      You might look at using Reddit and asking a question to the readers for them to answer regarding your list.  Like - Here are this weeks top whatever - do you think soandso is a quality artist compared to soandso on this list.  Then people may want to weigh in.  Many of the niche sites here don't even allow for comments.

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      1. 59

         MichaelAtkinsPrescottposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

         I think I have HubPages all wrong, then… from what you say, I agree, HubPages wouldn’t be the place for this. But those niche sites sound like places for my writing content.

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   2. 91

      Kenna McHughposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      HP frowns upon self-promotion, such as your radio station and playlists. You can place a link to the radio station in your profile. I would read the guidelines to determine if HP is for you.

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      1. 96

         eugbugposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

         I've never understood why sites don't like self-promotion. Is it because they think it results in competition or it's considered spam and causes issues with Google? Similarly with Facebook groups. I allow some moderated self-promotion on my Facebook group. Meanwhile, we're still not allowed to place donation buttons on articles.

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         1. 59

            MichaelAtkinsPrescottposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

            Spam, I think.
            
            When Chief Twit bought Twitter, and everyone was looking into alternatives, I tried one called Post. The idea was that you could monetise your posts. So every post was “please like, comment, and subscribe for my thoughts on pierogis (coming soon).” There was no actual content.
            
            That’s why I don’t want to monetise until I have a following. IMO, promotion has to be within content, like a little link at the bottom of the page and some good SEO, or else everything turns into promotion.
            
            It’s a crowded field, one must promote as much as possible, so platforms that don’t want to be all promotion all the time have to curb it.

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            1. 96

               eugbugposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

               I've got 40 original articles, some with links, on a blog and several months down the line, Google still haven't indexed them or even indexed the home page. Facebook have also blocked it, claiming it's spam.

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               1. 59

                  MichaelAtkinsPrescottposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                  Sites like Facebook are over cautious, and it sucks.
                  
                  In the olden days, you wrote, and if you got published, then the publisher would take care of promotion. We don’t have publishers any more, we have platforms that do less while expecting us to do more. And as long as we have to be our own promoters in an environment where promotion is increasingly not tolerated, these things will happen.
                  
                  It’s a bit like being an advertiser in a world where everyone has ad blockers. You gotta understand that no one likes ads, but getting ads in front of people is your job, but the more you push ads, the stronger the ad blockers get. It’s an impossible situation.
                  
                  And as for Google’s indexing, having everything depend on one of the world’s largest corporation’s opaque algorithms that keep changing makes me very nervous. Don’t get me started on that.

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2. 94

   daydreamsposted 5 weeks ago

   I think Medium or Substack sounds more like what you are looking for than Hubpages.
   
   Hubpages is not about building a following and there's a lot of quality control to get content published.

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   1. 59

      MichaelAtkinsPrescottposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      Good to hear Medium being suggested. I considered it, but they don’t have a community forum that I can ask questions like this to. And their weird monetisation system makes it sound like they bury content that’s not monetised.
      
      Then again, it does also suggest they have an active community of browsers.

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   psycheskinnerposted 5 weeks ago

   I would agree hubpages is not a good match.  It sounds like you want a platform that is popular across age groups, with a userbase but also accessible to anyone online.
   
   Depending on who your key audiences are I think that would be a Facebook page on professional mode, Instagram or possibly Reddit.

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4. 91

   paolaenergyaposted 5 weeks ago

   Probably a good combo could be to have a Substack newsletter with an embedded Spotify playlist, you could have a paid version so that people subscribe monthly or annually to access your content; you could also have some posts that are free and some that are paid.

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