I just don't see how they can survive this financial crisis
Perhaps they don't have much staff and do it out of someone's home but I really doubt that
I just looked at quantcast and compared it to squidoo and it was really eye opening
and search keeps dropping and dropping - if I'm not making any money then they can't be either
They don't work out of someone's home, but their office is tiny. I believe the moderators, whom I assume are temps to get them over this hump, work from home. So their overheads are pretty low.
One thing to remember is that before Panda, HubPages was doing far better than most internet startups. They started with a small investment compared to most,, so they don't have the crippling debt of, say, Helium (which borrowed $17 million a few years ago). So yes, they were hit hard, but they're probably in a better position than most to weather the storm.
The question is whether they'll want to. Before Panda, HubPages had a very successful business model, working in synergy with internet entrepreneurs who were more than just writers. That collaboration produced highly profitable Hubs.
The new rules has meant the end of that collaboration. Whether the site can get back to profitability with just writers is something they'll have to work out. I wonder how long they've given themselves to decide whether the new strategy is working?
P.S. I should point out I don't mean to be disparaging by referring to "just writers". What I mean is, in my experience, "just writing", however good you are, isn't enough to make money on the internet. Misha once said making money online was 10% writing and 90% other stuff, and I'd say he's right.
They're still ranked 106 according to Quantcast. While not the position it once had, it's still a respectable ranking out of the millions of websites. They do have a small staff, but it's run out of an office in downtown SF. I don't think bankruptcy would be in the plans at this stage. Diversification may be in their game plan. All successful ventures at different stages of their growth must change and adapt. I'm sure HP will figure it out. It's only been since late February, things don't change overnight.
Some have gone on to make their own sites and onto other places.
But ranking and viewers take a while to build, and a lot of work.
As far as Squidoo, I have to say, whenever I've done a search, I hardly ever see a squidoo article in the search results.
whatever.. it's my opinion. Time will tell.
I'm off to go 'soak up the sun'.
hey, you're just a sock puppet with no hubs.
just for you EG.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ivz7cqXHKc
In a depressed market, negitivity breeds negitivity, so time to start talking and thinking positive
Dam sock puppets, I wish they would go get a show of their own
I see no reason whatsoever to think they are in financial trouble. Most online companies use casual staff whose hours they can cut to reduce costs.
Losing 50% of your income potential has got to hurt.
Losing 50% of your income potential with a great focus on the profitable and commercial terms may be something cutting a few staff cant save you from.
The loss of just a handful of the more prominent commercial minded hubbers that were once frequent forum contributors here alone was probably a loss of around 10-20k a month.
I pulled a profile that was probably netting 1k for 50 hubs to Hubs, I can only imagine what the profiles with hundreds of successful hubs would have been netting hubs.
There is more reason to believe financial trouble then to not
If thats not trouble! ..then they were making out like bandits before
Losing 50% of your income is a pretty common event for a small business. The only thing I would take as evidence of financial trouble would be... evidence of financial trouble.
Considering that 50% of US small businesses fail, I would agree that its a pretty common event, Recovering from it, I imagine, less common
Im only guessing, of course - but some of the vocal earners that left would have had been earning as much as several hundred casual users. Traffic may have dropped an estimated 50% (figures could be off) but the loss of potential from the unique skills they had isnt as easily quantifiable - Id guess since Its free to do so and all - that HP is at about a 30% profit potential after the commercial/spam raids and alienation on internet marketers - not merely 50% as suggested by the graph
some of the drop is seasonal so the graph is overly dramatic on first glance
I have thought about this a lot and a simple graph of "number of views" doesn't tell the whole story. I know of at least 4,000 hubs that were deleted from a few accounts for low quality, but each of those authors had over 1,000,000 views. I extrapolate that to mean that a large number of the views sacrificed will hopefully lead HP out of the Google doghouse.
While some of those lost views will certainly hurt in the short run, I am crossing my fingers that the long term gain will more than make up for it...
I hope...
This is a very scary concept. Everything changes and it would seem that HP is experiencing some growing pains. It may sound a bit Polly-Anna but, support and loyalty may prove to be helpful in such a situation. I believe they are really trying to make this one of the best sites again, just give it time. I agree with Mutiny--
HubPages staff has to want recovery a lot more than we do, don't 'cha think?
With that said; I am crossing my fingers!
I was just responding to the OP and early comments. "File for Bankruptcy" is a pretty big assumption. But FUBAR isnt much of a jump.
Is the new Hp worth the same the loyalty that the old Hp engendered?
SF - I guess it depends on where you sit. I miss the old HP. I am glad they are getting rid of the spammy hubs, but I think they have "thrown the baby out with the bathwater."
Too many of the older hubbers are frustrated and have either left or quit publishing. Those were the exact folks who could have helped to reinvigorate the climate here and spearhead a resurgence.
I suspect a new generation of hubbers will come in and assume the leadership roles of the lost hubbers.
As for their finances...who knows? We are not privy to their books, nor should we be. It is safe to say that their increase in staff and that associated cost shows that management is confident in the future.
Would you mind spelling out what FUBAR stands for?
NO, you don't want that IzzyM!
Fubbed Up Beyond All Recognition is as close as you need to go.
@SF- you make a good point regarding the worthy nature of loyalty to the new HP; however in my humble opinion loyalty is simply loyalty. That is what makes it such an important and vital path to survival and recovery in any situation. The real failure with HP current condition (strong writers leaving) would seem to be directly related to the loyalty concept. With loyalty comes success as well as integrity.
But I do understand the need to keep the bills paid when it is all said and done.
Well, people I don't think HP is FUBAR. According to http://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com is it still No. 108 which although dropped from its previous high is still better than my PR1 blog which is in position 86,730,243.
I agree. Even with all the problems that have occurred lately, HubPages still has a far higher quantcast number than the other sites that I write for and my articles have a far better chance of being indexed by Google, or of being indexed in a reasonable position, at HubPages. I understand that this is no consolation for people who used to earn a lot of money from HubPages before Panda or before the changes that HubPages is making, but I don’t earn much from online writing, so any benefits that I can get from one site compared to another one are important to me.
Panda has knocked me back six months, that is all. Only six months ago I finally got a grip of how powerful HP was, and learned how to write for search engines (not that I always put it into practice).
So some of those incredibly lucky people whose hubs got thousands of hits a day are upset because their views have dropped from 20,000 to 10,000 a day feel that is a reason to walk??
I would be over the moon if ANY of my hubs got 1,000 visits a day!
Absolutely agree with you Mutiny on the tide principle regarding loyalty. Personally, I do feel a sense of loyalty from the encounters I have incurred with the HP staff/team/community. Other than this very serious Panda-emic of late, HubPages has done what they said they would do--loyally.
I do see where it can feel otherwise when looking at diminishing numbers in stat reports; even making the most loyal writers cringe a bit. For me though, I have to maintain my faith that the team is working hard to rectify all that has gone nutty. These are some very tense times and we have to rely on one another in more ways than before. We feel overwhelmed, and I am most certain that the hard working HP team does as well.
HP do seem to have shot themselves in the foot by pissing off loyal members. They even had a go at Marisa Wright, after she stood by them. After they had pissed off even more successful long term members.
I must agree it was disappointing to see MW leave.
It was disappointing to see many excellent hubbers being shunned by staff. Not only was it disappointing, but quite rude.
I thought so too - meanwhile there is still so much crud published while those that have been mentors have been picked on for petty issues
Possibly no rude intent on HP part, just simply overwhelmed with new tasks? I do see the point here. It's nothing good for any of us to say the least.
Any one holding a magic wand they are willing to wave over this situation?
My heart breaks when I think about some of my mentors who have left, I have much respect for each of them who stayed, and for those who had to make the hard choice to leave. :{
I'm not gone yet, either!
I'm not going to delete my surviving Hubs because most have a link to one or more of my websites. Those links are valuable because they have 'age'. I may be annoyed at HubPages, but I'm not going to lose a valuable asset just to make a point.
What I am doing (when I get around to it) is cutting down the length of those Hubs to 400-500 words and re-using the surplus material on a variety of other rev-sharing sites - which means I no longer have all my eggs in one basket.
I have unpublished a few Hubs which have never done any good in two or three years and am going to try them on some different sites, too.
I was alarmed that someone said you had gone. You've been a valuable mentor.
Do you have to allow a period of time to pass before you can use the surplus material so it doesn't come up duplicate?
If it's gone from HP then the Hub won't get a duplicate warning. I'm not so concerned about it otherwise.
I know duplicate content isn't recommended and I know people say material hangs around in the Google cache for a long time, but in my experience that's not so.
Some time ago, I deleted an old blog. A week later, I posted the posts to another site which didn't allow duplicate content, and I had no problem. And I know they really checked, because I accidentally posted an article from somewhere else, which was still published, and they picked it up straight away.
I think it depends how often the old version is crawled. Maybe someone who knows can explain how it works?
They haven't completely pissed me off yet. I only have one hub doing well and if it becomes unpublished tomorrow, I might well walk, but until that happens, I am staying loyal.
Quantcast numbers means nothing if the way you present your information or commercial opportunities is crippled and/or editorial/moderation is vague and uncommunicative.
In my personal experience since Panda and HP's reaction, its easier then it ever was to rank to a new site. HP is easy to outrank now.(term by term, niche by niche)
The massive amount of content and promoters will always keep it well trafficked, but is it ranking well enough for the tradeoff one makes in profit potential, creative control and such.
It hasnt been long enough for my own tests quite yet, but early signs are that publishing on HP is detrimental to an articles success compared to self publishing or guest posting on "non-slapped" rev share or traditional sites.
I concur. My new sites are getting a LOT more views than my newly published hubs on similar topics.
I can back you up on this.
Two days ago they unpublished an article of mine for moderation because of "Free downloads" (the hub was about MS Office templates.)
Four hours later, they republished it after "clearing it for publication."
Yesterday, they sent me another email about it saying that it was unpublished again for the same reason as before. Both emails started with "You recently made changes to your hub.." but I hadn't. The only changes I've made to any of my hubs over the last two months was in an effort to be in compliance with their rules.
A few hours later, I got a fourth email saying it had been unpublished for linking to "unrelated" hubs. It had an RSS feed with articles based on technology. It may be a bit broad, but unpublishing it for that reason seemed pretty arbitrary.
So, in summary, they sent me four emails about one article, the first to announce unpublishing it for review, the second to announce it was cleared and republished, the third for the same reason as the first, and the fourth to announce unpublishing it for an entirely different reason.
I've drawn my own conclusions.
We live in hope. The Alexa ranking is still slipping away rather quickly.
Starting at a rank of 74 a few months ago it has slipped to 265.
What is a bit worrying is that the slip has accelerated to the point of losing a position a day in the last 2 days.
Bankruptcy?
Not unless the business has been very badly handled fiscally, which I doubt.
Seed capital is hard to get for any business, and it would have been careful to cover it's ass on startup in my opinion.
I would think that their business plan would allow for lolls and slow times. I know that changes in February have caused some issues, but that's where adaptation and restrategizing come in, which I am sure the owners of hub pages are doing.
by Melanie Palen 14 years ago
It would be nice to be able to click "my account" and instead of just seeing a list of my hubs, I could choose to view different metrics for the hubs. Currently if I want to see the income potential or number of backlinks a hub has, I have to go to that hub. It would be nice to see all of...
by Andrew Day 8 years ago
Hi,I've signed up and am ready to start making hubs in my specialised subject, but I was wondering what the earning potential of hubbig (if that's a word) actually is. I realise it all depends on how attractive your pages are and how good they are etc, but what are people actually earning? I am not...
by Andrew Hill 7 years ago
I'm not being funny here,the hubstats yet only change 3 or 4 times a week, if you are lucky.Not to mention hubs take over 24 hours to publish. No mentions about it on the blog, no apologies, it isn't like the issue hasn't been ongoing for a while now...Anybody have any idea? Hope I've missed...
by David Stone 10 years ago
I think I know something about writing articles. I created a new hub yesterday. HubPages took 24 hours before declaring, in one of their mystery messages, that it was of sufficient quality. You know what? It was too good. I deleted it and will now easily place it elsewhere and earn with it.No...
by TiffanyDow 16 years ago
Okay, last month - from ALLLLmy blogs, all my everything - I earned a pathetic $1.82 in AdSense revenue. Total. (Don't spend it all in one place, right?)In April, I began Hubbing. This month so far, 17 days in, with my small pack of 12 Hubs (most created this week), I've already made $9.26.Now...
by Zara Rasul 11 years ago
Do you think HubPages is one of the best site in the user generated content space?
Copyright © 2024 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2024 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |