For over two years I have been creating content at the HubPages writing site. It has been a mostly enjoyable experience and I have met a lot of people and learnt a lot about the write content for money game.
Mostly I have learnt it doesnt pay any money but thats a lesson of sorts I suppose.
When I first joined in October 2010 people could write any old garbage and the ranking was still good. That was because Google unfairly favoured the large content sites over small amateurs. Write rubbish and get paid would be a reasonable slogan at the time.
Great! Im not proud and after a few months I was beginning to understand the sheer awfulness required to get some traffic and money. How to do the simplest thing - with wall to wall Amazon and eBay adverts.
The first Panda strike came in 2011 and decimated HubPages traffic. Much better awful writers than me complained and left. Their tricks no longer worked and HubPages had lost a large amount of ranking clout.
I stayed. I was still learning and mistakenly thought things might turn around. They never did. In fact, virtually every Panda release has further ground down HubPages ranking and traffic. There have been brief periods of false recovery.
All the time I have been improving my content. Not with tricks but techniques - to try to provide a reasonable result for my search visitor. My stuff isnt great but compared to the rest of the web - its OK. Yet my traffic continues to drop.
A rough estimate of the drop. If traffic from two years ago was based on my content now I would expect ten times as much. Yes, I am that much better but my visits are worse.
As I have developed my offering and tried to provide sets of pages that have some relevance to each other - aiming for that all important stay with me angle - I have become increasingly irritated by the way HubPages interferes with that.
Despite their content being largely generic crap, they group their pages not by author, but by subject. Search for something and the bottom of the page will have lots of links to other peoples content. It wont be written the same, but apparently being on the same subject is good enough. No benefit to me at all.
Sure, I get some cross fertilisation (visits) from other Hubber pages, but that is small recompense for the links promoted on my pages. I am selling ME, not cupcake recipes.
The other huge and growing problem is the sheer weight of spam advertising on a HubPages page. We all know that the adverts pay the bills - indeed they are the reason most of us are there - but there is surely a limit.
The pages consist of more adverts than is acceptable in my opinion. They say I am a spam site the moment you open the search result. HubPages have recently introduced an additional set of floating ads that accompany the poor reader as they scroll through the page. Not only are these ads intrusive and poor - the revenue from them is not shared! Are they trying to milk the last remaining money before they sell up?
What is ridiculous is that HubPages have been running a quality control process for months. This is not a bad idea at all. Five years too late of course, but at least they appear to be trying. Just as that might be about to bear fruit in terms of Google seeing the site as less awful than it was - they add their new set of excessive adverts!
As a HubPages contributor I have no say in this. My carefully constructed offering has over the top adverts and links to other peoples content. I am surrounded by a sea of generic crap. My reader is encouraged to do anything but stay with me and read another of my pages.
As Google tightens the screws on content sites each search visitor becomes more important. I know that. It is why I have tweaked and improved my pages as far as makes reasonable sense. The idea being to offer the reader enjoyment and interest, and to hope that a single search hit turns into a proper visit.
HubPages are doing everything they can to thwart that aim. That is why my bounce rate on blogs and sites is far lower than HubPages. Yet my best content remains on their site. It is where I have concentrated my efforts for so long.
I wonder if I had put all that effort into my own sites where would I be now? Probably nowhere - because content writing is a hard game to crack. At least though I would retain control. The links and adverts would be mine - my choice as to how hard to spam my poor reader.
As Google via their Panda and Penguin algorithm changes have hammered HubPages, Squidoo and others the content farm reason for being has disappeared. There is no ranking benefit anymore. A revenue sharing site becomes a revenue drain - well take half and give you nothing in return for your efforts.
They do offer a site - for those who cannot face setting one up themselves. Given that most pages consist of some text and pictures it is not really that hard to create your own web offering. Perhaps their best attribute is that they give people like me a place to start creating content and learning the game.
Time to leave the nest and fly or crash on my own. Forget about algorithm changes and constant hope against the reality of dropping traffic. Create something that doesnt have wall to wall adverts and other peoples links.
Goodbye HubPages. It was fun and I will always be grateful for that first taste and learning experience but the game has changed.
