Your Own Website vs. HubPages
82Should you create your own website or use HubPages as your primary money generator?
The general answer is simple - you want to do both. However, this does not tell us which one you want to focus on? What are some of the risks? What will you gain from having your own website and what will you lose?
I started my own website about 2 years ago, but it was only in the last couple of months that I started focusing on building it out. I also began to move some articles from HubPages onto my own website.
Here, I will discuss the pros and cons of having your own website vs. HubPages, and share some of my own experiences in shifting my focus from HubPages to my own website.
Advantages of Having Your Own Website
1. You have much greater control.
If you run your own website, you have total control of your website design, content, advertisement placement, and everything else. You can personalize the fonts, colors, images, and other website design elements to specifically suit your content.
You can use whatever advertising links that you want and place them wherever you want. All you need to do is follow the guidelines of your advertisement partner (e.g. Google AdSense). You can also place as many affiliate links as you want, and from any company that you want. HubPages only offers affiliate programs from Google AdSense, Amazon, and eBay.
If you want to place other affiliate links, you are limited to a total of two promotional links from a given domain.
2. You get 100% of the clicks, and 100% of the revenue.
With HubPages you only get 60% of the total number of clicks. If you are using your own website, you get all of the clicks and all of the click revenue.
However, note that HubPages has gotten special permission from Google AdSense to place more advertisement units in a single page. General Google AdSense policy only allows three AdSense units per webpage, whereas HubPages is allowed to have four. This extra advertisement unit may make up for some of the shared clicks.
In addition, you can make some extra money from HubPages by referring others to join.
3. You get all the benefits of your website promotion efforts.
One of the most difficult and time intensive aspect of online success, is promoting or marketing your online brand. If you use HubPages as your primary revenue generator, you will partly be promoting yourself (i.e. your online author name and profile picture) and partly be promoting the HubPages website.
If you have your own website, you can focus your promotional efforts on your site, and get the benefits of all the incoming links, visits, and clicks. With enough effort, you can slowly build up your Google search rank, and then use that to launch new websites.
On the other hand, if all your promotional efforts go into the HubPages site, you lose some of those key internet marketing benefits.
Advantages of Using HubPages
1. You get free hosting.
HubPages hosts your content for 'free', i.e., you do not have to pay any upfront fees. However, HubPages gets paid by taking 40% of your advertisement clicks.
If you host your own website or blog, you will probably have to pay monthly hosting fees. I am currently using Bluehost for my website which charges $6.95 US per month. In general, I am happy with their hosting service. There is little downtime, and they have an automatic script for installing WordPress blogs, and updating new WordPress releases.
Note - if you currently make $17.50 US per month from all your affiliate links on HubPages, then you are already paying HubPages about $6.95 US per month. If you make more than that per month, then you are paying HubPages more than normal hosting fees.
From that perspective, Bluehost does not seem to be that expensive after all.
2. You get crawled and indexed by Google Search very quickly.
The most important benefit of HubPages, as I see it, is the search engine advantage.
Update Feb. 2011 - There is no longer a Google Search advantage after the Panda algorithm update.
The HubPages homepage has a Google search rank of 6. In addition, Google search crawls the HubPages site very frequently, and your articles can get ranked, and appear on Google search anywhere from a few hours to one or two days after publication.
This is in contrast to using your own website which will usually have a much lower Google search rank, and is crawled less frequently by Google and other search engines. It usually takes about two weeks for static pages on my website to appear on Google search. My blog entries appear within one or two days.
Publishing on HubPages will help you generate more visitors for your content because HubPages will provide you with better search engine visibility. This is especially true if you are just starting out with online writing, and are still learning about search engine optimization and online marketing. You will likely have your hands full with learning how to optimize your individual articles, and may not want to deal with the added issues of running and marketing your own website.
Remember too, that the articles you write on HubPages will not be wasted. If you choose to start your own website later on, you can use your existing HubPages articles to generate back-links for your new website. You can also move some of your HubPages articles over to your website, because you retain all the rights to your HubPages articles.
3. You get help from a fun and knowledgeable community.
HubPages has a very knowledgeable community of users. There are many people who know how to write well, there are many people who know about web marketing, there are many people who know about Google AdSense and other advertising affiliates. In fact, there are probably hubbers who know something about everything you might want to do.
By joining HubPages and participating in the HubPages community, you get an initial audience for your content, as well as help on your online journey; whether it is to make money, have fun, express yourself, or something else.
Risks of Using HubPages
The main risk of using HubPages as your primary money making site is that you have no control over the site.
HubPages may institute new content or advertisement policies anytime they choose, and you must either comply, or leave. HubPages may suddenly decide to change their revenue sharing model, and you will have few options but to accept all their rules and policies.
HubPages is also a public site, and open to everyone, including spammers, plagiarizers, and everybody else. You have very little say over the site participants. You also have no control over how the site is viewed by search engines. If Google search, Yahoo, or Bing decides that HubPages is producing too much spam, and downgrades its search ranking; you will suffer the consequences even though you may not be responsible for the actual downgrade. For example, many social networking sites already do not accept links from the Hubpages domain because of previous spamming activity.
Update Feb. 2011 - We also now see this downgrade in the Google Search Panda update.
For these reasons and more, I have decided to focus on building my own website. However, HubPages is still very useful for generating back-links, and testing out new topics. Therefore, it makes sense to maintain a presence on HubPages. In fact, I still visit HubPages very often because I enjoy the HubPages community and the articles that get published here.
Risks of Moving to Your Own Website
The main risk of moving to your own website is that you may lose visitors and search engine visibility.However, this is much less relevant after the Google Panda update.
Because of the large number of articles hosted by HubPages, on a large range of subjects, you may also get visitors from other HubPages articles and from the HubPages community. Moving to your own website, may significantly reduce those visitors, and possibly also your search engine visitors. This could ultimately result in a loss of advertising revenue.
Moving to your own website will also require some startup costs. You are now responsible for your website design, operations, comments, users, and everything else. However, using a blogging platform such as WordPress will simplify many of these tasks, so the startup costs may not be as great as you imagine.
Moving from HubPages to my Own Website
When I first considered moving articles over to my own website, I was ready to take a short term reduction on number of views and advertising revenue. After about two months, I am glad to see that my number of visits have increased and my revenue has remained stable. I have lost some views from the HubPages website, but have gained it back on my home website.
If you plan to move articles from HubPages to your own website, you will experience some disruption in your search engine traffic because of the change in URL. For this reason, move your articles over slowly, so that you minimize the search engine effect. In the past months, I have moved about 10 articles from HubPages to my own website. I chose articles that have medium traffic, and mostly search engine traffic.
In this way, I keep all my high traffic articles intact until I get more experience with my website. I will also leave all my HubPages oriented articles on HubPages. My plan is to only publish articles that are of interest to the HubPages community, and to use HubPages to test out new content areas. Because of the high crawl frequency from Google search, HubPages is ideal for testing out new content.
In terms of startup costs, there were several things I had to learn when making the move. In particular, I wanted to transfer my HubPages comments over to my WordPress blog. I also wanted to add polling capabilities to my articles, similar to what I had at HubPages. I was able to accomplish both of these tasks within about one week, with the help of WordPress.
I am also starting to learn more about web design and the WordPress environment. This process has been very interesting and a lot of fun. It has also resulted in many HubPages articles about WordPress, as well as a better designed home blog and website. Since the move and refocus, the number of views on my website have grown by about 35%.
Do you have your own website or blog?
See results without votingHave Your Own Website vs. HubPages
If you are thinking of starting your own website or blog, go ahead and take the plunge. It is will likely turn out to be a lot less effort than you imagine.
Find a hosting company that supports WordPress installations and you can get started right away. All you need to do is pick a compelling WordPress theme, and a good domain name.
From there, you can put in as much or as little work as you want in terms of website maintenance and enhancements. Spend some time learning the WordPress system, as that will allow you build-up your blog, and improve user experience. Whatever work you put in will expand your web knowledge and bring tangible results down the road.
Join HubPages, make some extra money, and drive new traffic to your website.
Yes. It's funny, because I originally intended to use Blogger to backlink to HP and other rev share projects -- and soon realized it was better to work it the other way around.
I considered removing everything from rev share sites, but having multiple platforms provides exposure and information. Some of my material here has been live for more than three years, so I'm leaving it be. Interlinking helps a lot. My sites get traffic from HP, so it's all good.
You're right, things have changed enormously since Panda. Some platforms are adapting to it better than others. HP has maintained traffic better than another rev share adventure I tried.
Yeah, it used to be that it was much easier to get traffic on HP, but not so anymore after Panda.
Recently, I have been experiencing a lot of traffic instability only on HP. I think that will be a common occurrence now with most content farm type places.
As you say, it is best to focus on our own sites and use these other places as support.
Thanks for your detailed article on your experience. I lost faith in HP when it changed the TOS. I'm glad about it now, because I branched out and created niche sites. I used to buy into the idea that the rev share sites like HP can bring in more traffic. I found that my top site on Blogger gets steady traffic and my conversions are growing. Anyone on the fence about it would do well to take your excellent advice and do both. I much prefer having control over my pages -- and having financial transparency.
I tried to get wordpress, but it came up with some weird exceeded memory error with plug-ins (apparently a common problem). I have been building hubby a website with a WYSISYG program Webstarts. I have zero programming experience (and no desire to acquire any). He wants to sell stuff on-line. Have build about 5 pages so far plus the e-commerce parts.
http://www.webstarts.com/?aff=RockyRocket
I am thinking of writing more about Apsergers. Have you considered writing any ebooks & selling them on your website? (if they let you do that?)
Wow - you have a nice collection of hubs across some very interesting areas.
If you want to test out WordPress, you can sign up on WordPress.com for free and experiment with the system. WordPress.com does not allow ads though.
Another possibility is to go with Blogger which does allow AdSense.
Ultimately though, you get the most flexibility by starting your own site. The beauty of WordPress is you can put in as much or as little effort as you want. Initially, all you need to do is sign up with a hosting service which has one-click WordPress install (I use Bluehost). Then, just find a free theme, and you can start writing stuff.
If you have questions about WordPress let me know. I like it, it is fun and it allows me to showcase my art. :)
You have a beautiful website. I am considering making a website, but I am unsure what sort of commitment I am willing to make
Hello Baileybear,
After the Google Panda update:
- Traffic on my own sites went up some.
- Traffic on HP went down significantly.
- Traffic on HP continues to drop as Panda is rolled out more widely.
There was one article that somehow got back its position on Google Search after a few weeks. I removed all News, RSS, etc. It stayed there for about 3 days and them got smacked down again. This does not bode well.
"Is it any more time consuming maintaining your own site?"
In general, I would say yes. Time spent would also depend on what platform you choose to use and the customizations you want to make.
Many people use WordPress, which is what I use also. The more customizations, the more time spent initially and also during WordPress updates.
On the plus side I get more control and get to collect more statistics.
thanks for the useful hub. How have you found the traffic on your own website vs HP after the recent google slap? Is it any more time consuming maintaining your own site?
A wealth of information. This is a must read for anyone who writes. Bookmarked for future reference. Thanks for your time and devotion in teaching all of us.
Thanks for the reply!
I'd like to add that I cover the same subjects on HP as I do on my website with good results, although I restructure and rewrite the content as much as possible.
Hi Andy,
I really should update the article with some new data points. As you observed, it is much easier to get traffic using HubPages. I spent about 1 year focusing on HP and 1 year on my website. Even after moving some articles away from HP I still get much better traffic in HP.
I think HP does an awesome job at getting visitors especially on broader, more general topics.
Going forward I will probably do both in more equal amounts rather than just focus on one.
Your hub brought clarity about something that I was in two minds about: my blog or my hubpages.
I've continued focusing on my website, but still get more traffic to my hubs than to my website, which has loads more contents. It's a matter of time, I suppose.
Thanks, great article.
Hello Michael,
"Is it very hard to learn"
If you already have some programming experience, then it is not difficult to pick up at all. In particular, you just need to learn PHP and be familiar with CSS.
Ultimately, if you want to do more complex front-end tasks, then it is also useful to learn some Javascript, but I didn't start doing Javascript stuff until much later.
WordPress already has a lot of useful functionality programmed in natively, so you can achieve a lot in a fairly short amount of time.
One of the biggest issues that I encountered when I first started learning WordPress is that many of the WP functions and hooks are not well documented. As a result, it may sometimes take a bit more time to figure out internal mechanics by looking directly at the source code.
Overall though, I was able to start doing fun back end stuff with my theme after about 6 weeks - and most of it was spent getting familiar with CSS.
Nice hub. I have a couple of sites I built with XSitePro, but I want to move to WordPress. Is it very hard to learn, if you want more than just the standard WP blog? In other words, learning the back end stuff.
I think for many hubpages is a good starting point, they can discover all about writing online before deciding whether striking out on their own is for them.
For me I have my own website which is my main focus (I had it before starting on hubpages), but I still use hubpages partly for building up traffic and links but also to write about stuff which doesn’t fit into the niche of my site. Plus of course when hubpages is secondary it becomes a light relief to working on your main site.
I spread my articles in some of the revenue sharing websites. It would minimize the risk and get more pageviews. Thanks for your info. I think hubpage is fine.
Sure. It's more important that you are able to tweak your sites as much as you want to.
"Not sure how I'll use Hubpages going forward."
Yeah - I don't write many hubs nowadays - doing WordPress is too much fun :) And I have learned that in terms of hobbies, programming is my first love, art my second, and writing comes in way after that.
Hope you will write some hubs about your blogging experiences. Would be very interesting to hear how it helps and complements your practice.
I see what you mean by KeywordLuv. It would encourage more than a few junk links and that would just stink up the page. CommentLuv is generous enough.
Great advise!
I went through this very scenario. Started on Hubpages and got my feet wet with online publishing. Got my blog going and used the content format I've learned here.
Not sure how I'll use Hubpages going forward. Probably to make complementary versions of key posts. I did that for 10 Reasons People Hate Dentists.
I'm hooked up with CommentLuv but not KeywordLuv. Better check that one out.
The cool thing is it was Shibashake's post on Why I HATE the Dentist that got me started. It was an organized rant. Much better than anything I had seen.
Thanks Shibashake!
Personally, I am not a fan of dofollow. It tends to attract people who are only interested in link building rather than people who are interested in the content.
As with most things, it has its pros and cons, so ultimately it depends on one's online goals.
WordPress can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it. Those who are serious about success will want to use a Theme like Thesis that is optimized for the search engines or install the All-in-One-SEO plugin.
I refer to How to Create a Successful Blog Based Business at http://www.growmap.com/blogging-success/ when having new WordPress blogs installed to make sure I remember all the plugins.
I also recommend all bloggers consider going dofollow and installing CommentLuv and KeywordLuv. Dofollow bloggers are very generous with linking to and commenting in other dofollow blogs. Do Follow is a great way to grow your blog community really quickly.
Thanks Rose. Yeah I am having a lot of fun working on the blogs. Spent waaaay too much time this Christmas on WordPress :)
Also, it is not too difficult to create multiple blogs to support a different topic. I actually have 4 different blogs - two of them are more like static blogs, and two of them I actually update on a regular basis.
With your own website you can do whatever you want :) It is great fun.
Nice screen shot of your website! You have the perfect niche for a website of your own. I like to write about so many different subjects I don't know if my own website would be a good choice yet. Maybe down the road. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences.
This cleared up some things for me as well. Im relatively new to hubpages still making some here and there. I also use blogger but having your own website def is something everyone who likes to write articles on specific niches should seriously consider. Thanks for the info
Hi Kelly,
Yeah - HubPages does save you a fair amount of effort especially initially.
The most negative thing for me about HubPages is that I have very little control over most things, e.g. filtering comments, what appears together with my article, etc. This is the key reason I switched my focus over to my website.
I must admit it was a bit daunting at first - but once I started getting into it, it turned out to be a lot of fun :)
Still - I spent about 1 year focused on HubPages and in that time I learned a lot about SEO, Google, affiliate marketing, and all that good stuff which I was previously really clueless about :)
If you are thinking about going the WordPress route again, I would be happy to help :) Have been really into WordPress lately.
These were the questions I needed answered. Thank you! I have had my own website - have chosen Hub Pages but this article helpd me clarify why? All the effort is a concern. Hub Pages is so much more versatile than Word Press. I know the revenue is less but eventually the exposure I feel will make up for the revenue percentages.
Thanks Carmen.
I would be happy to help if you have any questions about WordPress. Been playing around with it a fair amount lately, and I really like it as a blogging and website platform :)
Great hub, Shibashake from California, great dog too! This hub is definitely being bookmarked. I've been tossing the idea around or using wordpress for awhile. I do have a website for my book, but I have little or no control (pain in the a** programmer), and I really want to do more. So, thank you very much for this, you're awesome, and have an incredibly spectacular day while I listen to rain pounding against my office window. Beautiful B.C., can't really complain because it has been sunny up til yesterday! Ciao
Shiba - this was bloody brilliant, thankyou. Really, your easiest for me (so far) because as you know, the words won't stick :) It's interesting to read about the pros and cons as I've been thinking about something like this for a wee while. Really - thankyou, so helpful you are x
vimier 8 weeks ago
That was a great article, thanks for sharing your knowledge!