I Just Got PAID by Another Writing Site! Comparing Steemit and HubPages
Seeing as how we are here, we tend to get rather wrapped up in the world of Steemit.
This morning, I had a notification that $60.64 had been deposited to my PayPal account-- in this case from HubPages, another site out there that pays contributors for their content.
So-- for the benefit of those who haven't tried blogging and writing anywhere other than Steemit, I thought I'd take a moment to compare the HubPages experience to Steemit
A Bit of History
Apple harvest...
HubPages is-- quite possibly-- the oldest venue on the web to have been continuously paying contributors for content. Active since 2005; I published my first article there in 2007.
Unlike Steemit, this is definitely a "centralized" organization, where there's a "company" that's responsible for paying contributors, complete with 25 employees.
Contributors earn in part for getting paid "per page view;" in part by sharing in revenue generated by Amazon links, and in part by revenue sharing from Google Adsense.
In their favor, I will say that HubPages has reliably been paying out for 12 years... the downside is that the rewards are meager for most people; non-existent for many. In all truth, that is simply an honest reflection of the fact that most web content has very little commercial value.
Some Differences
Unlike Steemit, your articles on HubPages will continue to earn royalties for the duration of their published existence. That's kind of nice, if you like passive income.
A bright fall sunset
My most successful article-- published some ten years ago-- has been viewed some 66,000 times and has slowly earned me a little over $400.00 in its lifetime, and the pennies continue to trickle in.
By comparison, by most valuable article on Steemit-- Steemit Truly IS Changing the World... and How it Has Changed Mine-- earned $279.71 in just seven days, off just 145 views. My most read article on Steemit-- Are You A Highly Sensitive Person, or HSP?-- has been read 2,124 times but only earned $12.75. Clearly, a very different rewards structure.
HubPages is centered around a fairly strict system to assure Quality Content. It is very much a site for writers, and if your contribution isn't good enough, it's unlikely it would pass the fairly strict "Quality Assessment Process" that involves each piece being "rated" by numerous human eyes before being approved as "featured" (or basically "visible") content, or not.
A lot of hopeful content creators on HubPages find themselves in the "or not" category. They'll happily put together 15-20 articles only to discover that the work is judged "not good enough." Your work will still exist, and you can direct link to it on places like twitter or Facebook or your blog, but it won't be visible to someone browsing the main HubPages site, and it won't be visible to Google in searches.
So even though HubPages boasts "over 657,000" articles, what is not mentioned is the estimated 6-8 million articles "hidden in the basement."
Pluses and Minuses
Both Steemit and HubPages have their pluses and minuses.
Although once a Top-100 site on both Alexa and Quantcast, the HubPages format has become increasingly dated for the modern web, and the site has been losing ground... these days, Steemit is actually ranked higher.
A very spiny cactus...
Whereas it is a "plus" for me that my HubPages content continues to earn over time, the "minus" part is that I have to go back and do "maintenance" on my articles on a regular basis.
How so?
I have to check for dead links, outdated information and anything else that makes articles look "dated." In addition, HubPages likes to change/update their user interface on a regular basis, which generally also requires extensive editing by authors... at least if you care. Right now, for example, the format is being changed to be more mobile adaptive, as a result of which I now have to go through all my articles and edit out any "half width" photos. Which is a pain in the rear that's going to take me the better part of a month. In that sense, Steemit is far simpler.
As mentioned before, the basis for rewards between the two is very different. I do like the ongoing rewards of HubPages, as well as the fact that they are pretty strictly based on traffic rather than "who knows who." On the other hand, I really like that Steemit is a SOCIAL site... which HubPages doesn't claim to be.
In any case, I plan to continue writing in both locations, for the foreseeable future.
How about YOU? Do you write anywhere else than Steemit, on sites that compensate writers for their content? What has your experience been? Have you ever heard of HubPages, till you read this article? Leave a comment-- share your experiences and feedback-- be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Published 20170928 14:02 PDT
Always looking for additionally resources to leverage content. Will have to check out this one for sure! Thanks!
Comes mostly with the caution that you have to drive your own visibility on HubPages-- your writing is definitely good enough-- but truth is that I owe much of my success there to being admin if a couple of Farcebook groups with 15K+ members... who trust me.
I will go for building my own website and publishing the articles there, hubpages pays very less amount and it is not the worth time spending there. Have you used Bubblews which paid quite a good amount for almost two years and after that their model was unsustainable and they got shut down?
I was on Bubblews for a while... but they were doomed from the start. You can't pay people 1c per page view when the advertising you sell is only worth 0.2c per page view. On top of which Arvind & Co didn't do enough to police the thousands of spammers and scammers who infested the site.
Yes this was the reason behind their shut down.
Whereas it is a "plus" for me that my HubPages content continues to earn over time, the "minus" part is that I have to go back and do "maintenance" on my articles on a regular basis.
Kinda like what I've been doing on Steemit.
I have a bunchaton of stuff that I've written in the last year. Left alone it's got a one week payout then it's GONE. I've been reposting the good stuff. Making MORE MONEY.
So far it's working pretty good.
been reposting some of my stuff too; nothing newer than 3 months
anything older than a week is pretty much forgotten by the old timers...and don't forget the newbies...a thousand or more a week?
three months is more than sufficient I'd guess.
good to know; I was thinking about spacing content too. Try to keep new stuff outweighing the recycled stuff
Most definitely
Recycle, yup.
As you pointed out yourself a while back... with the number of new people here, our "old" stuff is "new stuff" to new members.
I figure 4-6 months is a pretty good window for republishing.
heh...a thousand new members a week last I heard?
4 - 6 months is overkill.
Hubpages did some restructuring so that they now place special topic articles not just on hubpages but on sites that have different names but are still run by hubpages. Like my recipe articles are now on delishably.com. My views got boosted with the change. I think if you write good content that gets picked for these special sites it's easier to make money there. I do recommend hubpages for a passive income for things like recipe articles which for me are the best moneymaker. I make around $100 a year from hubpages for recipe articles. I also make around $100 a year from enabling google adsense and putting youtube recipe videos into my posts. It's slow earning though. It took years to build up my hubpage account to earn more than a few cents.
The special interest sites helped some of my articles... some not so much. I get the impression my content is somewhat rare in the sense that 100% of what I have written there is "featured" and two-thirds of my pieces have been finetuned and are on the niche sites.
HubPages is definitely best used for "evergreen" content, which most of my psychology/self-help stuff is... which is also part of the reason I don't put so much of it here on Steemit.
AdSense has always been a "slow death" for me... I still get a $100 payment every 8-10 months or so, although it seems to have slowed some...
I’ve never tried writing on other blogging sites. Always assumed there is a bit of an expense to set things up and keep them running in the form of money.
I have wanted to take a few things I have written that have nothing to do with steemit, or cryptocurrency and post them elsewhere as well just to see how they do.
Wanting to create a larger social outreach is something I have not looked much into but I find myself wanting to explore more options. If nothing else but to bring more exposure to my own steemit blogs.
If you're doing it purely for additional social exposure... a WordPress or Blogger blog is a good way to go; generating income from those is a long tedious process, however... until you have a following of 1000s, income is minor. It's a bit like having a YouTube channel... until you have 1000's of viewers, it's slow going.
I still enjoy blogging elsewhere, though... mostly niche stuff there doesn't seem to be that much demand for on Steemit.
Great you got paid again, @denmarkguy. I'll be getting paid next month. HubPages truly is a good, reliable site. It's a lot of hard work though. I like the fact that it lets me earn a passive income, though meager. I plan to remain on the HP platform for the foreseeable future. Good comparison between HP and Steemit, by the way.
Thanks @tintiano; I plan to stay on over there, as well... at least for a while. At least a dozen of my articles are solid "producers" because they still get 100-500 views a month, even years after publishing. It doesn't add up to a lot but it's nice to get an occasional payment.
That's some good traffic! I have 64 published hubs at the moment and almost 30% of my entire traffic goes to one hub! The others get much less views.
Ooh thanks for this! Signed up right away and I'll be looking for good, older articles of mine to post there and maybe re-post here aswell, after some editing :-)
Just remember to edit them enough @playfulfoodie to where they aren't just straight copies or their plagiarism checkers will pop up warning messages all over the place.
Good point, thanks for the warning :-)
hmmm, does hub pages let you recycle content you had on another blog previously?
one strategy may to publish steemit first, and then recycle to hub pages.
I'm also considering the 200+ articles on my blogspot
I've done some "upscaling" of previous blog posts there. But it involved quite a bit of rewrite.
They do have their own "cheetah-like" tracker that sends people nastygrams when it discovers duplicate content... they crack down on what they perceive to be "stolen content" pretty hard.
These days, I'm mostly considering a redo of some 1200 archived blog posts from Xanga, written between 2001-06-- updating and gradually setting them "free" on Steemit, over the next couple of years.
At the moment, Steemit holds the most promise, for me.
OK, so they don't let you duplicate your own work.
I got enough to do right here anyway ;>
thanks for the answer, and the description of hubPages!
Never heard about Hubpages before, maybe because I was not looking for other sites. Honestly saying, im not that long busy with writing and posting on the internet. But steem grab me and I do like to read about many different topics.
Im here since the 1st July 2017 and stay for much longer : https://steemit.com/introducemyself/@livelifefullest/introducemyself-nice-to-meet-you-steemit-community-from-livelifefullest
So thanks for the info, but here I can spent already hrs per day,.. so with another page the days will be too short :-)
Steemit is definitely the "highest and best hope" at the moment... for me, anything else is secondary. Consider this: It takes me six to eight months to make on HubPages OR on my personal blogs using Google AdSense what it takes me ONE month to make here on Steemit.
And on Steemit, I even get to be a "stake holder" (i.e. accumulate SteemPower) which I don't get anywhere else.
Thanks... this is really great information. It's nice to know what else is out there. You have a great blog :)
Thanks