Tuesday, February 28, 2012

HubPages, Knol, Squidoo, Wikipedia and Other Article Sites - Comparison

 

This knol provides selected information about various article sites that are of help in understanding and evaluating Knol's progress.

Google Trends

Knol is doing well in comparison to Many Article Platforms


Knol is doing better than Hub pages

See Google Trends Comparison between Knol and Hub Pages
                                               Between Knol and Hubpages

See Google Trends Comparison between Knol and Squidoo

See Google Trends Comparison between Knol and Xomba

See Google Trends Comparison between Knol and eHow

HubPages                                                                                                        

Hubpages  was launched on 5 August 2006.  CEO Paul Edmondson had  raised  $2 million from Hummer Winblad. Hubpages was started in Berkeley, but now operates from 95 Minna Street (3rd Floor), San Francisco, CA 94105.
Hubpages allows users to create web pages (like Wikia or Squidoo) and comments can be given by readers on them like blog posts. Pages can be  tagged by the author and also by readers. This allows for quick visits to related pages.
Hubpages inserts google ads,  links to Amazon, eBay and other affiliate-paying retailers, and splits revenue 50/50 with the page creator.  Squidoo,  only pays 50% of profits to page creators. Thus  Hubpages promised a better deal.
The Hubpages team was founded by three guys out of Microsoft that were part of the successful startup MongoMusic. The team includes Paul Edmondson, Jay Reitz, and Paul Deeds.
Source
Hubpages has a maximum daily global visitor size of  535 K and in June 2009 it recorded 1 million page views per day.

Source
http://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com (accessed on 19.6.2009)
Recent Statistics
As of July 24th, 2009, there are

413,641 Published Hubs
82,424 Published Users
http://hubpages.com/about/ (Accessed on 25.7.2009)
As of October 17, 2009, there are
536,059 Hubs
104,355 published users
http://hubpages.com/about/ accessed on 18.10.2009
In around 3 months time, 20,000 new authors joined and 120,000 hubs were written.
According to http://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com accessed on 18.10.2009 the daily  global visitor size is 618 K and  329 K US visitors. The maximum numbers are 661 K and 352 K.

Interview of Jason Menayan, Director Marketing at Hubpages
27 August 2010
http://www.blogherald.com/2010/08/27/all-about-hubpages-an-interview-with-jason-menayan/
Now there are 900,000 article written by 170,000 authors.

Reactions of Hubpages people to Panda update of Google search 2011
http://www.webpronews.com/google-panda-update-lack-of-consistency-on-quality-2011-03

27 March 2011
Hubpages has 1,142,497 hubs
206,000 published users
On 27.3.2011 Quantcast reports that for the period 27/9/2010 to 25/3/2011 hub pages has global average of one million visitors with max 1.6 million on 21/2/2011 ( http://www.quantcast.com/www.hubpages.com    )

Knol                                                                                                                  

Knol platform is started by Google. It was made available to public writers/authors on 23rd July 2008.
By January 2009, it had accumulated 100,000 knols. Which would mean that by June end 2009, it can report 200,000 knols.
According to an estimate made by me using the page views details given for most viewed authors by knol platform, so far 25 million page views must have happened in the last one year public service of knol. I made one more estimate of the top 800 knols. Page Views for Top 800 Knols. The page view number comes to be 8,350,540. Hence an estimate of 25 million page views for all the knols seems to be appropriate.
The current monthly page views can be between 4 million to 6 million. If one assumes an average page views of 2 by a visitor, around 2 million global visitors per month must be coming to knol. The number of unque visitors can be less than the figure and one estimate I saw is around 400,000 per month. Seems Ok if we think each visitor is coming 5 times in a month to the knol platform.
Knol is slowly increasing its features and options made available to authors. Authors can embed many items in knols like word files. ppt files, youtube videos etc. They can also make knol collections (human search pages like Mahalo from knols only - http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-build-a-mahalo-page).
25 .9. 2010
On many days 750 new knols are being written on Knol.

2011
Knol had even 1500+ new posts on some days during 2011. But its total page views per month were way short of its breakeven point of 36 million page views per month. The best estimate of page views per month for Knol is 11 million.

Google announced that Knol will be discontinued on 22 November 2011. Knol content will not be visible to public after 30th April 2012.

Squidoo                                                                                                           

Squidoo is a website based in Hastings on Hudson, N.Y. It allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects/topics of interest. These pages or lenses can contain Flickr photos, Google maps, blogs, eBay auctions, YouTube videos, and also text matter and links. It was launched as beta testing site in October 2005 and was launched as full site in December 2005. In one month, it could attract users who built 10,000 pages. In six months, the figure had gone up to 100,000 pages.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/05/AR2006010501846.html
Squidoo encourages its authors to write at least some minimum number of lenses so that they will have some earnings and thereby commitment to the platform. This statement in Squidoo blog is an indicator of that policy.
"Do you have 50 lenses you’d be proud to show your old English teacher? Your mom? Your kids? Your boss? 50 lenses worth bragging about and staking your reputation on?"
http://blogs.squidoo.com/squidblog/2009/03/31/its-march-31st/

Some facts about Squidoo as on 1 February 2009
Squidoo has nearly 900,000 lenses.
Squidoo  is one of the 300 most popular websites in the US.
Squidoo grew 91% in 2008.
Many lensmasters earn more than $1,000 a year from Squidoo. Some make $10,000. Others are happy with $40 or $4.
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo (accessed on 19.6.2009)
As of October 2010
Squidoo has 180,000 lenses.
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo accessed on 8.2.2011

Comparison of HubPages, Knol and Squidoo                                              


In terms of articles, knol matched squidoo in the first six months. Squid could build 900,000 lenses in 3 years. Can knol shorten the period?

26.3.2011
Now on Knol, there is increase in new knols posted. The peak number observed so far was 1800 on a day.

Wikipedia                                                                                                     

According to http://stats.grok.se/en/top and its associated pages there were 10,000 articles in August 2008, where there was a hit for every minute. It means 43,200 hits per month. The number four article in the list,  which is a proper article is 2008 Summer Olympics and the visits are 4,437,251(in one month). The 1000th position article is Jake Gyllenhaal with 147,266 page views or visits in August 2008. This shows the scope for a celebrity article even in knol.
Wikipedia recently crossed three million mark for English articles. The first million articles took five years, the second million came in 17 months and the third million took two years. (http://news.outlookindia.com/item.aspx?664957). The total articles in wikipedia are now around 13 million.
Last year Wikipedia foundation collected $26 million for the running expenditure of wikipedia.
Statistics of Wikipedia for the month of December 2010
http://stats.grok.se/en/201111

Wikia                                                                                                               

Wikia is a different wiki publishing platform started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
On 9.3.2010, on its home page the following statistics are presented
2,326 pages created in the last hour
15,911 edits made today
794,261,085 words added in the last week  ( http://www.wikia.com/Wikia    )
In a press release given on 9th September 2009, Wikia claimed that it attracts more than nine million unique visitors in the U.S. per month to its 70,000 enthusiast communities and nearly three million pages of content. It claimed that it is a top 75 site.
About Wikia
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and President of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Angela Beesley, a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board, created Wikicities in October 2004. By February 2005, 100th wikicity was launched. The hundred Wikicities received around 14,000 edits by 500 registered users in January 2005.

Blog Related Metrics                                                                                   

On a worldwide basis, Blogger blogs have a readership of 267 million people a month, compared to 143 million a month for Wordpress (comScore, April, 2008).
According to Alexa, Blogger's rank is 7 and Wikipedia's rank is 8. So Knol has sibling that is more successful than Wikipedia at the moment in terms of visitors and page views. Knol authors have to develop association with blog authors to develop a winning strategy for knol.

For the month of December 2010 http://www.quantcast.com/www.blogspot.com shows 57.4 million US visitors for blogspot. For blogger it shows 52 million US visitors. 

Other Article Sites                                                                                         

Ehow.com

According to dmoz.com, Ehow.com is an article website and it is a top 50 website. For the month ended 31/5/2009 it had a maximum monthly traffic of 14.5 million US people. (http://www.quantcast.com/ehow.com). It has around 350,000 articles and videos.
14.10.2009
According to Quantcast, ehow has more than 800,000 articles and 150,000 videos. Its daily US visitors are 2 million and global visitors are 2.8 million. This data gives the impression that page view per item could be between 2 and 3 for ehow.com.
Earnings from Ehow Articles
My first article (Ehow) has earned hundreds of dollars. One of the articles I wrote a month in to my experiment has now crossed the $1,000 mark (Writergig). http://mywahm.blogspot.com/2009/01/top-ehow-article-hits-1000-in-revenue.html
Earned $1,615.17    from eHow articles in Septermber 2008. http://mywahm.blogspot.com/2008/11/passive-residual-income-monthly-report.html 

About.com

About.com is listed at the position 76 in Alexa top 500 rankings.
Alexa is showing only Wikipedia and About.com in its top 500 rankings. This may be because it shows many google sub-domains in its ranking.

Associatedcontent.Com

This is also an article site. On 10 July 2009, the site claims to have 1,383,953 published submissions.
According to quantcast, accessed on 10th July 2009, the monthly traffic of the site is 14.2 million US and 22.3 million global visitors. In daily terms the average is 897 K global and 640 K US. The maximum visitors per day so far is 1.1 M global and 742 K US.


Infobarrel.com

http://www.infobarrel.com/About_Us

This article site was along at about the same time as Knol. This site is given 7,785 rank by quantcast.
It has 261.5K US monthly visitors. Max. 293 K on 18/1/2011.

Knol has maximum of 300K on 11/11/2010

Suite101.com


quantcast reports that (on 13.2.2011) it gets daily 849 K visitors.  Monthly visitors are 22.8 million ( http://www.quantcast.com/www.suite101.com   )
Suite101 claims 13 years online presence, more than 400,000 articles and over 20,000 professional, paid contract writers, and over 30 million monthly readers (http://www.suite101.com/about  accessed on 13.2.2011)

Zimbio.Com

Claims to be getting 18 millions readers per month
______________________________________________

Based on this article I prepared a new knol
100/100,000/1,000,000
Hundred/Hundred thousand/One Million

_______________________________________________

Interesting online author profiles

http://hubpages.com/profile/lindagoffigan




___________________________________________________________________________________________
Related Knols
Google Knol  compared with Squidoo and Hub pages last updated August 2008


Originally posted at
Knol 1326


No comments:

Post a Comment