One of the fun parts of my job is talking to people about HubPages who have never heard of it. This is not so surprising considering that if you read most articles on social media, crowdsourcing, blogging, or social networking, HubPages is rarely mentioned. If you check the Quantcast 100, most of the websites there are well-known names: Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. This makes sense. These are giant sites and most of their visitors are either members or customers actively using the site’s services. The most popular sites are for the most part: large and well-established.
For most of these sites, their users and their visitors are pretty much the same people. For HubPages, this is not the case. Most of our visitors will never sign into HubPages and they probably won’t register. According to Quantcast, HubPages gets visited each month by approximately 20 million unique visitors. Of this 20 million, roughly 160,000 logged in and did something on HubPages. Just to be clear, that means that our members represents only 0.8% of our visitors.
While 160,000 is a number to be very proud of, it is not a giant number. These 160,000 people were responsible for roughly 55,000 hubs published and roughly 80,000 forum posts on approximately 3500 topics. That’s a healthy amount of activity. And yet, these numbers are quite small in relation to giant web sites out there.
Facebook, which is quite open about its numbers, has 400 million active users, 60 million status updates each day, and 5 billion pieces of content shared each week. I mention a giant like Facebook to point out how small HubPages is in comparison. And yet, if we judge by U.S. traffic, Facebook is has only 12 times the reach of HubPages (as measured in terms of US unique visitors: 124 million for Facebook compared to 11 million for HubPages) even though their output is more than 1,000-fold greater than the output at HubPages.
Being able to get even this close to Facebook is a big deal. HubPages is currently ranked #89 in the U.S.
Still, my point is that in terms of the top-100 web sites, the size of the HubPages is still relatively small. Those 55,000 hubs were published by 15,385 different people and the 80,000 forum postings came from 2,398 different people. If we define an active user as someone who writes at least one hub a month or makes at least one post in the forum, then in the last 30 days, the number of active users was 16,242. These 16,000+ were responsible for all the hubs created and all the posts in the forums.
Supporting these 16,000 follks are 14 HubPages staff. When I started at HubPages almost 2 years ago, there were only 4 people listed on the HubPages About page. I was #4 (after Paul Deeds, Maddie Ruud, and Fawntia Fowler). I mention this only to show that HubPages is still a small web site.
I am not sure at what point a web site becomes a medium-sized site. We have over 700,000 hubs at present. At the rate we are growing, we will have over a million in less than a year. It may be when we hire employee #50 or employee #100. But when it happens, I have no doubt, that I will be a bit nostalgic for the present time when our active community is small and our reach is rapidly growing.
HubPages Blog 
Very interesting Larry. I think the fact that hubbers are writing hubs that attract that 20 million unique visitors each month is quite amazing. That speaks to a huge revenue potential. I feel quite inspired. Thank you!
I’m glad to be doing my part…..While Hubpages may be set alongside facebook and myspace in terms of comparison, this site fulfills something that the others do not in terms of article production….
I would much rather write here than anywhere else…
Thanks Hubpages….
I really enjoy writing on HubPages. I find it user friendly and so full of useful information. I don’t get any benefit out of my Facebook account, so I’m glad I found HP.
What makes HubPages so unique is the originality of its articles infused by its authors…all of whom have something significant to say.
Well done!
Very interesting comparison with Facebook which ranks #2 according to Quantcast and Alexa.
I am inspired by the notion of actually generating content driven information, as opposed to farming sea creatures or discovering which “i don’t have an eating disorder or abuse prescription pills and died of natural causes’ starlet”is your doppelganger.
Larry, I love it when you throw facts and figures at us! It’s food for thought!
FaceBook has 2,500 times more users but only 12 times more unique views than HubPages.com
If HP had the same number of users as FB by extrapolating the numbers by multiplying times 2,500. HP would have 40M users, 137.5M new hubs per month bringing in 50B unique views.
I think when seen in that light it shows just how productive HP’s active publishers are. Considering that less than 10% of the registered members are active and responsible for such big numbers make me wonder what if 30% or 50% were active?
Larry, b’vah’chah’shah, need help for a 67 year old Galois freak.
If f ( x+ c) is irreducible, then is f (x) is irreducible ?
c is a constant.
Need detail proof of such if u would care to help.
Tx, Gerry Mullen
Hah, well if you need staff I will soon be in america and may need a stable income for a year or two!
This is really interesting – I think the community at HubPages is better than FB! Stats can’t show that!
I found this item very interesting & informative. I enjoy writing and looked around on the Internet for sites that I thought I might like. This one grabbed my attention & I am very pleased to have found it.
I was surprised to see just how much traffic HubPages receives, compared to Facebook ~ pleasantly surprised. The content is, of course, very different.
I’m guessing that this could become one of ‘the giants’ in the not-too-distant future. 🙂
I’ve just signed up after hearing about you in a post I just read. I’m excited to hear the numbers of regular contributors are “low”. That’s a plus! Getting in on the ground floor – well, getting in on the gradual ascent is more like it 😀
The first hub I read was tremendous and has me excited to go and create my own which I will do right now.
Larry, this is so inspiring. While Facebook is fun and I have made great friends there, writing content on HubPages is thrilling for me.
I love using the writing tools and the publishing platform is so user friendly. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to hit that publish button and know that others will learn something or simply enjoy reading or find an ad that looks interesting. I love this community and am so thankful that I found it…. guess where?? Yes, it was an ad on Facebook! cheers Larry and staff.
Kudos to the writers and staff. That’s a lot of visitors.
I love this place! I never thought that I would feel so at home as I do on hubpages. I found it looking for information on a wholesaler that led me to a hub here on Christian practices. It has grown to be a very special group of people that touch my heart each and every day. I look forward to being a part of its growth. Thank you to all of you and to all of the staff!
God Bless.
It’s not quantity – it’s quality that counts when one is looking for information. And Hubpages is miles ahead of all the others in that regard.. It’s also super-easy to use when publishing your articles. Thanks!
The ask a question of Hubpages is unique and indeed an encyclopedia as Cindy Vine said. Hubpages relationship with Google Adsense and marketing strategies make the site highly interactive throughout the web. Hubpages numbers rating will surely improve as the writing website continue to add membership and readership.
With the scoring system it helps to sell how well my hub is doing overall. I have come and gone in Hubpages over the days. But I am here to stay now.
Marty Ware
The Creator of the Hubpages Tribe!
Wonderful statistics about a site use.
I am new to hubpages.But I found it very interesting.
When I search for something hubpages site appears somewhere near the top.
Thanks for your information.