Should I bother writing any more articles?

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   robhamptonposted 4 years ago

   My traffic is way down this year, and even worse than two years ago. I'm feeling a little uneasy about the whole Maven takeover thing and am wondering if I should even bother putting my time and effort into writing more articles. Gut instinct tells me HP days are numbered. I really hope I'm wrong.

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      Robie Benveposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Rob, I really hope you are wrong too.
      My traffic goes up and down, and a few articles on a niche site bring in most of it. They are all quite old, from 2012, but I've been updating them regularly.
      One thing I noticed is that getting rid of hyperlinks wen not necessary seems to help - Like for creative commons images that don't require a link, just the credit.
      I noticed you have several links to other articles in the same niche site, I don't know if that's penalizing for google searches, probably not, I think they are considered internal links.
      However, I'd recommend stay positive and keeping writing. It may take years for an article to get good traffic, at least in my experience. Worse case scenario, you'll have them all ready to go, and you can always move them to another site if your prediction proves right.

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         robhamptonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Editors seem to be ok with the few backlinks on here. I've been here from almost the beginning as well (9 years) My traffic is insane during the summer (at least last year was 3-4k views/day in May) then nearing 5-7k views/day in June-August (views, not impressions) but regardless I'm down about 40% from last year. For three months in 2018 I made over $1200 each month. I was able to pay my mortgage and car insurance lol! This year, not so good

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            Will Apseposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            If it as any consolation, I am 75 percent down this month on the same period last year. Traffic is not so bad but income is a disaster.

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               robhamptonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

               Yikes! Yes, that makes me feel better lol

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      robhamptonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you everyone for your responses and input. As paperfacets mentioned, I'm hoping it's just a weather trend as my articles rely solely on this.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I get you.  I really do.  Several years ago I lost the majority of my views overnight.  No reason was given, and none could be found.  I turned to my forum friends for help, got tons of good advice, dumped a bunch of articles and completely updated the rest and moved on.  It was a lot of work...but since then views and money have continued to increase.  You've got nothing to lose by keeping your hubs online and everything to gain by doing what I did and then adding on.  In about 3 weeks I expect to hit 4 million views.  Had I not hung on, I'd have nothing today.  So hang in there and get busy.  You'll do fine.

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      chef-de-jourposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I hope you're wrong too! Better to stay and write some new articles, update your old ones and outdo the competition. I see you have only 27 articles so room for many more.
      I've been with HP seven years and am thankful for all their efforts - they've made mistakes in the past but I get the feeling they're always willing to learn and move onward. That has to be a positive. Their editing teams are for the most part all singing from the same hymn sheet, all keen to better the writing outcomes.
      I know they've worked for me - increased traffic on some of my best articles. My number one gets over 1500 views a day. I've many more with hundreds of views per day. I update them all on a regular basis and this without doubt helps keep them competitive.
      The Maven takeover was worrying initially but barring stupid accidents and rash decisions and natural disasters I've no reason to concern myself overly with the future of HP. I'm kinda head down, write one or two new articles a week, get them niched, plough ahead and reap the rewards for what has been months of hard graft.
      
      So I would definitely write more if I were you, build up a substantial stock of quality articles. Give it your best if you've the time.

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   paperfacetsposted 4 years ago

   I am thanking seasonal traffic or I would be thinking the same thing. Out of around 100 articles only three or four bring enough earnings to keep me going at this game.

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      robhamptonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, mine are extremely seasonal. My money is made during the summer. They just updated the earnings and I'm thankful for what I'm making right now, but it's nowhere near what it was last year.

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   paperfacetsposted 4 years ago

   Think about the weather patterns this year. Even SoCal is not ready for pool turn-ups this year. It is barely 70 degrees here and extremely cloudy. Plants are a big Google draw.  Are there shrubs or other greenery that should not be planted near a pool? 10 steps for turning up the pool for spring? Or shutting it down?

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      robhamptonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      You are VERY correct about that. I was thinking the same thing as may last year was one of the hottest on record. I'm also hoping it's just that too.

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   psycheskinnerposted 4 years ago

   I think it's always worth trying out other options on the side to see if one of them will pay off better.

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      robhamptonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I thought of that as well. I have a Shopify business on the side, but until it gets better, for now, this is good income (again, not near last year)

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   paperfacetsposted 4 years ago

   Personally, I would never mess with the seasonal results you are getting. Stay here until it goes flat.

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   DrMark1961posted 4 years ago

   If you are successful here, as you are, you can count on about 20% of your articles to be winners and have good page views. Since I have almost 300 articles, about 60 of them are responsible for the majority of my income. (I make quite a bit more than you have mentioned and it is year round.)
   Yesterday I was looking at another hubber here who does well in a niche site and has over 1200 articles. That means that her 20% is about 240 articles. Even if she is only getting 300 page views each for those articles (a very low estimate), she is getting about 72,000 page views per day. Not really sure about impressions, but she is probably making quite a bit more than 5k per month here, year round.
   So do I think you should write more. Definitely. I cannot tell you for sure if Dengarden is going to do well in the future, or even how many years HP will be around, but if you are looking for financial gratification (besides just the mortgage payment) you definitely have it in you to do a lot better. Try for just one or two good articles a month. Most of them will just grind along, maybe 80%, but every once in a while one will do really well and make it all worthwhile.
   Best of luck. Get started today!

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      robhamptonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      That is very sound advice. Two articles a month definitely won't cut into my schedule. Thanks for the encouragement DrMark

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I think your figures are a bit high.  I'm getting more than twice that number of views each month but am not making anywhere near 5K per month.  I have 158 articles right now on my main site.  To get that type of income hubs would have to be wildly popular.

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         DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Those are traffic numbers per day. I think she actually makes about 10 k, but I was being conservative, not using high impression/CPM numbers.
         She has more than 8 times as many articles as you do. I do not think they are all successful, but if you were making more than 8 times more than you are at this time, would you consider this site worth your time?
         Totally disagree that your hubs have to be wildly popular. If you have enough hubs, and they are popular, that is fine.

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   lobobrandonposted 4 years ago

   it mainly is what paperfacets says. As you know my traffic has been holding up with one of my main articles gaining while the other dropped (no loss in rankings but a lost snippet). But, some new ones that I wrote and one that I edited are getting good traffic as well (considering they are new, I think 100 - 200 views a day is good). 
   
   Internal links are helpful and I try and link every one of my tomato hubs together. The ones that have no potential to be interlinked are the ones that do not rank in the top 3 results. I plan on writing some support articles to get some internal links to these ones.
   
   The image below shows my traffic year on year. Last year in July I made almost 1k. This year the CPMs seem to be rising the same as last year and if things go as they are and considering Amazon sales don't nosedive for some reason, I should reach the 1k this year. Even if I don't it's a good ROI for the time spent writing.
   
   
   
   I do not see the Maven takeover affecting our traffic. They have not done anything crazy to harm our rankings. The stupid interlinking among mavens that they tried some months ago seems to have ended and according to SEMRush dengarden traffic is up 6% compared to last month. SEMRush averages yearly volumes, so this 6% increase means keywords are ranking higher and new keywords are ranking this month compared to last month.
   
   My suggestion, keep writing if you can. As DrMark points out, not every hub is going to be a winner. But, almost every hub can be if you keep working and improving at it. Below is one of my old hubs that was dying each year. I got it moved to Dengarden and now traffic is 4 times more than it ever was (on a single day, crossed 250 today for the first time) and this month alone it has received 13% of its lifetime traffic and it's a 7-year-old article. I did have to edit it a lot and make it one of the best if not the best resources out there.
   
   
   
   You may want to edit your older articles to keep them fresh. HP tested that this improved rankings and I see the same from the three that I edited on Dengarden. I don't have the numbers here to do real tests and comparisons, but it's worth a try.

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      robhamptonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Good insight Brandon. Thanks! Do you think it makes a difference if I edit myself, or the editors do it? (They just edited like 8 articles in the last week)

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         lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         The edits from editors are mainly heading changes in my case. Not sure what they are doing to yours. Mine they changed my well placed H3s and made them H2s which disappointed me. I will change them back soon.
         
         But, by edit, I mean look up your main keywords and then look up the top results (even if you are already #1) and see if any of the top 10 cover something related to the topic that you have not try and add info on that topic to your hub. I would not say dotting an i or crossing a t counts as an edit. Sometimes there is no more that you can do, but I find that to be the case very rarely for any piece of work out there.
         
         Right now I'm mid process of working on a hub which is not my best, but is on a niche site for a few years. Two years ago it was getting like 300 views a day during the summer months and an average of 100 the other days, but dropped to just 20 most of this year. It keeps going down, but on 10th May I edited it to add some more information which is related to the topic and traffic is going up since the 12th of May (60 views on average this week), somewhat matching last years for this period. Still low, but a step in the right direction.
         
         If you want specifics or to know which hub this is, shoot me an email.
         
         

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   Stacie Lposted 4 years ago

   I know the feeling of wondering if I should bother writing anymore since I spend my time chasing down copied hubs !
   It doesn't seem to help to file DMCA's anymore and Google isn't responding to my latest request.
   I did write to some hosts and they denied that the thief has an account...:-(

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      chef-de-jourposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I know where you're coming from. I've recently sent three DMCAs, two of which were successful and over the years sent many more, the majority also successful. There will always be cheats and as a writer online I feel it's my duty to try and foil them with as much help as possible from Google.
      
      So I recommend you carry on writing, if you still enjoy it, and keep at these cheats and plagiarists who need to have their web pages taken down.

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   bhattucposted 4 years ago

   I am not sure about the effect of Maven on the earnings but one thing is sure that if advertisement earnings of HP decrease and our traffic also decrease then the result would be disastrous.

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