HubPages vs a Mixed Bag Blog

1. 68

   melbelposted 14 years ago

   From what I've heard, having a mixed bag blog isn't a great revenue model because of the varied topics.
   
   What makes HubPages any different? Here there are articles on travel, financial stuff, and even knitting. How can a site like HubPages do great but not a smaller mixed bag blog?
   
   For example, if a writer on HubPages were to take their articles off of HubPages and start their own blog with their content, could they not do just as well as they did on HubPages (aside from the temporary duplicate content penalty?)
   
   Furthermore, what would be the best course of action for a writer:
   
   Have blogs each tailored to a keyword for each article like if there are some financial articles use their domain like financialarticles.com and then with their travel articles maybe travelarticles.com knowing that each blog will seldom be updated.
   
   Or throw all articles on a mixed bag blog. While it would be mixed bag, it would be updated far more frequently than a blogger with a larger number of sites?
   
   Which, from a traffic and earnings standpoint would be the best bet?

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2. 61

   paradigmsearchposted 14 years ago

   Ya know… I’ve been getting the distinct impression that Google indexes each of my Blogspot entries as a standalone entity. Am I right? And, if so, what should I make of it and how do I take advantage of it (if I can).
   
   Or, as melbel has hypothesized/inquired, should I put it all in a single hub where it is indexed as one large entity?
   
   Edit: In other words, pretty much the same question as melbel.

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3. 38

   Chapterposted 14 years ago

   mixed bag blog is not give you much money but i see some good hibbers can get money from mixed topic such as jimmythejock.

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4. 74

   Bill Manningposted 14 years ago

   The mixed bag stuff works on Hubpages because of shear volume of hubs. Travel hubs go in the travel section for instance.
   
   So you have thousands of hubs about travel in that one section. Google sees that as it's own section with it's own subject.
   
   Whereas a blog with many subjects, your luck if you get up to a hundred or so post per category, or section. So Google sees the whole site as just random subjects and ranks it low.
   
   A blog would work with many subjects if you had many people writing about all the different categories. Otherwise you just can't do enough to make it stand out.

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5. 61

   paradigmsearchposted 14 years ago

   Thank you, Bill.

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6. 84

   WriteAngledposted 14 years ago

   So the final death knell for the renaissance man or woman who is curious enough to be interested in many things...

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   1. 74

      Bill Manningposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Not at all. Just make a site about each subject your interested in. I have 3 dozen now myself and hope to add at least that many more before the end of the year.

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7. 68

   melbelposted 14 years ago

   Very thought-provoking responses.
   
   Let's say you have hmmm 1000 articles spanning a number of topics. Is this enough for one standalone articles site?
   
   What is it that causes a site with four travel articles and eight financial articles, etc, etc to do poorly compared to a site like hubpages with hundreds of travel articles, hundreds of financial articles, etc?
   
   What is it about the sheer volume of articles that makes HubPages perform so much better than a standalone blog/site? Is it the interlinking? The backlinks?
   
   From what I understand, one of the problems with a mixed bag blog is that relevant ads aren't as readily triggered among high bounce rate due to their being little other relevant information.
   
   What if the site were to group similar articles together as HubPages does? Have a financial section and a travel section, etc? Does this make any difference?

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   1. 74

      Bill Manningposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I'm far from an expert on any of this. But as for your last question yes, that makes a big difference.
      
      You want to group all your related articles in one category, section or however your doing it. Take my tourist site for example.
      
      I have a category for Disney, then one for Universal Studios, one for cruises and so on. Adsense ads in the sidebars show up that are relative to that category when your browsing the list.
      
      So it's clear that Google sees that category different than the others. I use Wordpress so I use the category function.
      
      You could even make sub-directories in your main site for each different category.
      
      But in general, one site devoted to one subject, especially a narrow one, will rank higer that a mixed site, even higher than Hubpages.
      
      My new pet site that still has zero page rank, ranks higher for most all my keywords than Hubpages. But I go after narrow, specific keywords.

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      1. 68

         melbelposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         That's what I was thinking about like niche sites vs HubPages (not that HP is bad or anything.) When I first joined HubPages, one concern of mine was putting content into a large pot of mixed content. Although, the categories here DOES help.

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