Traffic has declined over the years

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   robhamptonposted 9 years ago

   I don't follow HubPages much anymore, I check my earnings a couple times a month maybe. I am nearing the million view mark, but seems as I look back on earnings over the last 2-3 year that traffic has declined considerably. (I've read the forum rules, and it doesn't say anything about discussing figures so I think I'm ok here).. a few years ago with just 30 hubs, I received over $600.00 for a one month payout, my biggest to that point. 90% of my hubs are expressly seasonal (Swimming Pool articles) so for about 6 months I was getting an insane amount of traffic, a few years in a row. Many of my hubs still appear on first page Google with VERY general keyword searches, ie: "rain in pool", or "repair pool vac". A lot of my hubs have been moved to niche sites, but even before the niche site thing, traffic has been declining. I've just now reached the payout this month, and it's the end of the month. I was making way more than minimum payout in march of last year. I'll see what May and June will be like, but I don't think nearly as well. Is it the niche sites?, Is it Google weeding out content farms? Will these niche sites really improve traffic?

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      SmartAndFunposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I think traffic and earnings have gone down for just about everyone, but there are a few things you can do to (perhaps) retrieve some of your traffic.
      
      First of all, since you haven't been around much in the last few years, update yourself on the new policies. It could be that some of your articles have been unfeatured due to new rules and policies being applied to them. Check your account page and look at the last column ("featured"). A black circle with an H means the article is featured and so it can be found by search engines. A half circle means your article has been hidden due to low traffic, and a white circle with a black outline means your article has some sort of policy violation that needs to be fixed.
      
      Have any of your swimming pool articles been chosen for the Home and garden niche site (Dengarden, I believe it is called). If so, sit tight and hopefully you will recover some views. People are reporting increased traffic for niche site articles. I haven't bothered to check mine, so I can't vouch for that.
      
      This answer is incomplete but I've got to run. I hope others will chime in with more information.

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         robhamptonposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Much appreciated, but I'm pretty well up to speed on the status, most are featured and none have been removed

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      Anna Marie Bowmanposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I hear you. I have been around for a while, and have seen my traffic, and earnings, climb high, and I was elated.  Then, I saw them fall, slowly at first, but then it kind of bottomed out.  It was never about earning big money for me, but it was still disheartening to see the decline.  My best advice, keep active. That has certainly helped my traffic start to climb up again. Some may call it a coincidence, but since I don't believe in such things, I have to hope that the more I write, the more I work, the better things will get.  Besides, I like writing.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Sorry, Rob, but it is clearly stated in the TOS that we are not supposed to discuss earnings publicly.  You would be wise to remove this post before you get banned.

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         robhamptonposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I have read both the forum rules and Terms of use in depth. I do not see anything that states this. If they want to ban me from posting in forums, that's fine.  It's not like I'm on here constantly.

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      Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I've been here the same amount of time as you have and have experienced basically the same thing. Yes it has to do with Google waging a war against what they consider content farms.

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   Azure11posted 9 years ago

   I agree. Most of my traffic now comes from Pinterest so anything that has not been pinned will likely be moved elsewhere...

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   robhamptonposted 9 years ago

   I aslo failed to mention that I had opted in on the HubPro editing thing and although the hubs look nice, I think it may have contributed to a decline in traffic

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      lobobrandonposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Well the niche sites seem to work for most writers, my hub there is doing 100% better and it was already receiving 100+ visits a day - so I guess that is good, even though it's anyway close to the best of the lot.

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   Sue Adamsposted 9 years ago

   Yes, for me too both traffic and earnings have declined considerably (about 80%) compared with a couple of years ago, even though I do update my hubs regularly.
   
   My articles on the new sites are doing OK but no better than before the recent move.

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   jansharesposted 9 years ago

   Yes, Rob, I'm seeing the same over the last 2 years: overall, lower traffic and earnings. However, since the niche sites, I've seen steady increases, especially over the last few weeks. I have hubs on three niche sites now and unfortunately, have not seen a remarkable increase in traffic for those particular hubs.  Traffic actually went down for those individual hubs (or stayed the same). Increased traffic may be due to the changed format of "related hubs" which features the author's hubs more prominently; it seems that I'm now getting more visits to other hubs still on the mother ship. This is where I think the recent traffic increases are coming from for me.

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   relacheposted 9 years ago

   In 2012, HubPages hit a peak, with 1,256,826 published Hubs and 232,660 registered users.
   
   That same year Google announced it was declaring war on content farms.
   
   As of April 30, 2016, the stats on the "about us" page show HubPages now has 400% fewer users, and 70% fewer published Hubs.

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   Marisa Wrightposted 9 years ago

   As Relache says, Google publicly declared war on content farms several years ago, and has been "weeding them out" ever since.  Most of the revenue-sharing sites that existed in 2011 have closed down - HubPages is one of the last survivors. 
   
   So of course traffic has declined - and HubPages is well aware of that.  Why do you think they are creating the niche sites?  Because they've decided the current business model has no future.

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      robhamptonposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      That definitely makes sense. My traffic was highest in '12-'13. Hopefully with many of my hubs being moved to the niche sites, traffic will begin to see some improvement. Thanks for the insight

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