Does the HubPages team ever pay attention to your emails?

1. 83

   Healthy Pursuitsposted 12 years ago

   I have a hub that is doing well (at least for me, as a beginner), but is not monetized because it has one swear word in it. I have written the team twice asking them if they would look at it and remove the filter. They don't answer and it still is blocked from being monetized. This is a short story and the swear word is part of it. Does anyone have any tips for getting the team to stop and take notice of emails?  As a side question to this, if HubPages is doing so well, why can't they afford to have enough staff/volunteers (whatever mix they use) to provide even email support?
   If they can't afford more full-time staff, they could at least hire part-time staff.

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   1. 83

      Jamie Brockposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Greek One, LOL! .... Healthy Pursuits, Every time I have emailed the staff they always get back to me fairly quickly.  I know there are lots of things going on right now so maybe they are extra busy.  I'm sure eventually someone will get back with you.

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   2. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Whether it's justified in the story really doesn't matter.  You can't use swear words on a Hub which includes Adsense advertising.  You need to decide whether the swear word is indispensible (in which case live without the advertising) or whether you can delete it.
      
      
      
      Make sure you're emailing to the right email address, and add their email address to your contacts list so their reply doesn't end up in your spam folder.  Also be patient, as it may take up to a week to get a reply.
      
      
      
      Who said they were "doing so well"?  HubPages was doing very well until early 2011, but it was still fairly new, and only just beginning to turn a profit - and then the site was absolutely decimated by Google's Panda update.  They hired a lot of staff to work on moderating content and improving the site in an effort to recover.  That must have cost them dearly at a time when their income had been cut by half.  So having spent most of 2011 losing money, even if they're doing better now, they've got some catching up to do.

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         Healthy Pursuitsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks for the information. I'll have to decide about the swear word. Probably won't change it.
         
         Also, as for HubPages doing so well, I've had a user i.d. for a little over a year, but have only been adding hubs for a few months. When I became interested in writing for HubPages, I took my info from posts by other hubbers, who seem to think HubPages had maintained more financial stability than it actually did. I appreciate a clear statement from someone about that. And I'm glad, especially if I'm putting part of my eggs in the HubPages basket, that it's recovering.
         
         I knew HP was hit, like so many other websites, by the Panda update, but I saw nowhere on the pages that the site was decimated. All I've been able to find is discussions of the page rank.

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            Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Take a look at Quantcast, which tracks traffic. 
            
            
            
            As you can see, traffic dropped from over 800,000 views to around 400,000 views.

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            1. 83

               Healthy Pursuitsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               Wow! And thanks for the source. I do learn a lot on HP!

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   Greek Oneposted 12 years ago

   i have had erotic email exchanges with most, if not all, of the staff members

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3. 76

   psycheskinnerposted 12 years ago

   I have always got a response of some kind.

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4. 81

   shibashakeposted 12 years ago

   I find that I get the best results when -
   1. I make the emails short and only include the most important points.
   2. I am very polite.
   
   However, some of the responses do not actually address my questions. Some responses gave me incorrect information, that was only later corrected after a very long drawn out exchange, and  I finally reached someone who knew the answer. When it is a more complex issue, I find that it is helpful to ask whom I am corresponding with.
   
   There were a few of times where I got really frustrated and sent longer or annoyed emails, and those were all ignored.

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5. 61

   Anamika Sposted 12 years ago

   The Hub Staff are helpful and reply to mails, at least that is my experience. There might be some delay if you are mailing on the weekend anyway. With over 2 lakh hubbers, the moderators definitely have a heavy work load. Normally, You should get a reply back in maximum 3 days in any case. Like shibasake said, 'keep your mail short, up to the point and polite'.

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6. 67

   Debby Bruckposted 12 years ago

   Hubpages staff have always responded to my numerous inquiries and email messages in a timely manner.

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7. 73

   Max Daltonposted 12 years ago

   I've found they've always been timely and help in their responses. It generally takes them a few days, which is pretty good as far as I'm concerned.

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8. 68

   VendettaVixenposted 12 years ago

   In my experience, the HubPages staff are fine at responding to any questions I've had. As has already been said, just be polite and they'll most likely get back to you as soon as possible.

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9. 65

   relacheposted 12 years ago

   To the best of my recollection, they have always paid attention to my emails.

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10. 80

    GmaGoldieposted 12 years ago

    The team who handles the emails is exceptional. I have never had an email unanswered. The time frame typically is within 24 hours.
    
    I wish other sites had the same attention to detail.

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11. 83

    IzzyMposted 12 years ago

    Staff have ignored emails from me too. I only tend to write when I have had ads disabled or something, and they don't always reply.
    
    I can think of two occasions offhand, when they didn't reply.
    
    Once I asked them if it was OK to use the word 'ass' in the title of a hub to describe Pippa Middleton's behind right after the Royal wedding when it was obviously going viral.
    
    They never replied, so I wrote a blog instead. It was a week late in going up (because I was waiting on HP's response) but it still got 60,000 hits and they are still coming in.
    
    The other time was to ask to get the ads put back on my breast cancer hub. They never replied, and I finally moved it to a blog last week, after sitting here over a year without ads.
    
    So, just to say to everyone who thinks they always reply, they don't.

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    1. 56

       Joan Kingposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       From all the responses here, one can assume that HP responds to most Hubbers but not to all hubbers in a timely fashion since I have to assume that  Healty Persuits is not lying about not getting a response from HP.

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       1. 83

          IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          I think sometimes mail goes astray, rather than HP staff ignoring requests.
          
          I have a feeling they once said they hadn't received an email from me when I wrote twice over something.
          
          Thing is, if I don't get a response within a reasonable time, I seldom repeat the request because I don't want to appear annoying, if you know what I mean.
          
          I'm not pushy enough to ask twice lol

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    2. 86

       Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I agree, they don't always reply.  As the OP found, sometimes emails just get buried, and sometimes they end up in the spam folder.  Like you, I hesitate to send a second or third email because I don't want to clutter their email box even more than necessary - so I usually wait ages before having a second try, which means it can take ages to get things resolved.
       
       It's a great pity HP has never worked out how to set up a simple support ticket system.

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12. 83

    Healthy Pursuitsposted 12 years ago

    Thank you all for your replies. I received a reply this morning from the HP team to my Sunday email - with apologies for the delay. They said that it had gotten buried in their 300-per-day email stack.
    
    I learned something new - how touchy the advertisers are. In my story, Beatrice says one swear word (granted -several times) and her attempted suicide is mentioned. Those are the reasons given that my ads are disabled. I thought that the swear word had been caught by an automatic filter, but a moderator had actually disabled the ads.   
    
    As I have no plans to change the story to make it more palatable to commercial interests (with the back on my hand against my forehead, I want to say that I am, after all, an ARTEEST), I guess that's that.
    
    However,the good news is that HP does consider it well written, and won't go so far as to unpublish it,and I can keep my Amazon links.
    
    So good news and bad news. And a learning process.
    
    Thanks again. And thanks to the HP team for getting back to me.

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    1. 58

       Dale Hydeposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Not just swear words.  I did a hub on Sex Orientated Google ads showing up from time to time on a site that has nothing to do with "sex", and the word "sex" I presume, caused the hub to not be monetized.  I moved it to my blog where it has done better than any hub I have published here, lol.  I did scout around and found other hubs with the word "sex" in them were not monetized as well.

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