Essentially for me those words mean that I won't be deleting all of my Hubs like many others may have done. In other words, I will retain HubPages as a source of passive income. I haven't written anything for the site since June 4 of this year and that was really to complete a grand total of 200 Hubs. Before that, I hadn't published since March. I only end up going to the site every few days and checking to see if I have any comments to address.
Despite that lack of activity, I managed to earn $14 through their Ad Program and a couple bucks in Amazon purchases and AdSense ads. Clearly, it is not the most lucrative venture but it is entirely passive at this point and pays for my hosting costs at Hostgator. That is clearly OK in my book.
HubPages got hit big with the Panda update in March of this year. I saw my traffic nearly disappear and decline through the summer. But recently, I have seen an uptick. However, my traffic is still less than half what I received in January 2011. It would be great to see a return to that level, but I won't necessarily be doing anything to encourage traffic since I feel that my efforts are more useful with other projects.
Nonetheless, I won't be complaining too loudly about income that will pay for my expenses without any effort on my part. I am pleased that I can continue to earn passive income for work that I have already done.
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I agree with you, Kidgas. All too often writers have a knee-jerk reaction to changes like Panda and they take their content down and place it elsewhere. I’m like you, I tend to leave things were they are. Even if the income isn’t what it used to be, it’s strictly passive and doesn’t require any additional work.
ReplyDeleteI believe in creating new cheese instead of dragging my old, moldy stinky cheese around from one site to another. Can you tell I’ve re-read Who Moved My Cheese?
Yes, I can tell you have re-read that book. Emotional reactions are not always the best course. I try to sit back and analyze the situation first before responding.
ReplyDeleteI also agree you are smart to keep your articles on HubPages instead of investing time and energy placing them elsewhere. Nothing wrong with making a few dollars a month off of older articles - I earn a few dollars here and there from old sites I no longer write for - it's nice getting that little bit of extra income. Moving forward is the best way to keep the momentum going and that seems to be what you are doing - keep it up! :)
ReplyDeleteI'd keep my articles on there, but I wouldn't contribute any further to these content farms. I don't think they have a completely happy ending. Not like they used to. But I think you can still pull a nice chunk of passive income from it, for sure.
ReplyDeleteDeanna and Jared,
ReplyDeleteKeeping the articles there does not hurt anything so it is worth it to me. I actually wrote a really quick Hub today to boost a little exposure and maybe get a quick traffic hit for a little extra Ad Program income.