HubPages
| Type | Web publishing |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| Key people |
Paul Edmondson, Founder and CEO. |
| Employees | 24 |
| Website | hubpages.com |
HubPages is a user generated content, revenue-sharing website.[1]
Contents |
[edit] History
The site launched in August 2006 funded by a $2 million investment from Hummer Winblad.[2] According to Quantcast, HubPages has become one of the 50 most visited US sites on the Internet. In December 2010, it received around 42 million visits and over 90 million page views [3], which, according to the site, were across over 1 million Hubs published by more than 200,000 published users.
In May 2010, HubPages was recognized as one of the “2010 Hottest Silicon Valley Companies” by Lead411.[4]
[edit] Structure
HubPages is a revenue-sharing, article-writing site. Members (known as "Hubbers") are given their own free sub-domain, where they can post magazine-style articles (referred to as Hubs). Hubbers are encouraged to enrich their text by embedding videos, external links, reader surveys, photos and maps, and providing a comments box for reader feedback.
Hubbers retain all intellectual property rights to their Hubs and can delete them at any time.
Hubbers earns revenue through advertising on their Hubs, including HubPages' own Advertising Program, Google Adsense, eBay and Amazon.com. The Adsense and eBay earnings accumulate along with your HubPages Ad Program earnings which helps to reach payout faster.
Previously, Hubbers had to join each of these affiliate schemes individually, but by early 2012 all revenue-sharing channels will be consolidated into the HubPages Earnings Program. Hubbers will still require Adsense account in order to join this Program. The 60:40 revenue split is achieved by alternating the code used in advertisements: the Hubber's code is displayed 60% of the time, and HubPages' code 40%.
HubPages is not a blogging site. A Hub is typically a discrete magazine-style article, longer than a blog post and covering a specific subject in some depth (usually 400 to 1,500 words). A Hub is not continually added to over time like a blog (although Hubbers often "tweak" Hubs to improve their earning capacity or to update information). A Hubber who wished to write several posts about a single subject would be more likely to write separate Hubs and interlink them using the "Group" feature.[5]
To help people improve their online writing skills, Hubpages offer a Learning Center, contests, HubChallenges, and the Weekly Topic Inspiration program.
Hubbers also benefit from the many comments that can be posted on their hubs by anyone who visits each individual hub, thus giving them a sense of what others think of their writing and subject knowledge. However, hubbers have the option of not allowing comments to be posted to their hubs and of approving any comments prior to them becoming publicly available. Writers on the site can also greatly benefit from the forums section where many questions, answers and concerns are shared by the community.
Hubpages now has 24 people on staff.
[edit] References
- ^ Riley, Duncan (2007-05-07). "HubPages Debuts New Look, Ad Yield Technology". TechCrunch. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/07/hubpages-debuts-new-look-ad-yield-technology/. Retrieved 2008-04-08.
- ^ Arrington, Michael (2006-08-05). "HubPages Launches, Gets $2 m from Hummer Winblad". TechCrunch. http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/05/hubpages-launches-gets-2-m-from-hummer-winblad/. Retrieved 2008-04-08.
- ^ Quantcast (2010-06-09), HubPages Report, Quantcast, http://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com, retrieved 2010-06-09
- ^ Lead411 launches "Hottest Silicon Valley Companies" awards
- ^ Freeman, Larry (2008-10-07). "Hubs versus Blogs". HubPages. http://blog.hubpages.com/2008/10/hubs-versus-blogs/. Retrieved 2008-10-07.
[edit] External links
- Official site
- Google AdSense (2008). "HubPages Case Study". http://code.google.com/apis/adsense/docs/casestudies/hubpages.html. Retrieved 8 April 2008.
