In April 2018, I was invited to attend Maven’s Conference along with 25 HubPages authors to discuss the business plan for the merger of the two companies. It gave me the opportunity to meet some of the key players and ask questions.
Since then, Maven has been taken over by The Arena Group, a publicly traded content platform (NYSE: AREN) that now hosts our articles.
This is a review of what I learned at that three-day conference held in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. HubPages has always worked hard at doing whatever was necessary to help authors succeed. They understood the importance of professionally written content that had proven credibility.
Maven was aware of that, which is why they were interested in acquiring HubPages.
James Heckman, Maven's CEO, said in his keynote address “Our goal is to create a revolution. That business plan is necessary in the wake of large media firms that are too powerful.”
He went on to explain, “This makes us bigger than the New York Times, bigger than Yahoo News, bigger than CNN, and heading towards Twitter size.”
He explained that the plan to combine the best authors and journalists, who have survived the latest struggles of the Internet and have a passion for writing intense and superb content, creates the most powerful union that demands a premium opportunity for advertisers.
Combining three companies (Maven, HubPages and Say Media) was a self-fulfilling prophecy with a combined 98 million monthly visitors from organic traffic.
The two platforms were quite unique in the way they handled content publishing. Maven was more related to building a coalition of journalists while HubPages is a community of writers for magazine-type articles.
Changes were expected on both ends, but the tools and publishing methods HubPages had developed would remain. Individual network niche sites remained under the domains as they had been created. However, In mid 2024 The Arean Group decided to remove niche sites and combine articles under the Discover sub-domain.
The work that HubPages has done was already proven to help improve our ranking with search engines. I spoke with Paul Edmondson (Co-Founder and CEO of HubPages) on a number of occasions over these days together, and he agreed that HP understands that. There was no reason to unravel that progress, but rather, to build upon it.
In any case, our method of income for writing articles on HubPages also would not change. For that matter, it will only get better with new income streams being created—such as Header Bidding and Exchange Bidding Dynamic Allocation (EBDA), not to mention new advertising technology from Say Media.
Maven expanded their efforts for our success with the acquisition of Say Media, a technology and advertising firm.
I personally had the opportunity to chat with an employee of Say Media on the shuttle back to the airport and we discussed their use of Header Bidding. This is a method of selling ad space on our articles to the highest bidder, thereby leading to increased revenue.
On the last day of the conference Josh Jacobs, one of the Maven founders and a media and technology innovator, gave a speech that made everything clear.
Josh explained that writers continue to own their content and are free to use it as they see fit. Writers can concentrate on content creation and not worry about how to make everything work.
Technology is changing rapidly and Maven engineers work on methods to engage readers, keep them on the site longer, and keep them coming back often.
It was wonderful to have had the opportunity to finally meet other HubPages authors and get to know them personally. We’ve shared socially over these few days at the conference.
It wasn’t only all conference meetings. We ate together in restaurants, took excursions away from the hotel, and one day we traveled into the mountains where the skiers were enjoying the snow.
I felt privileged to ride the Peak2Peak gondola on Whistler Mountain with Paul Edmondson, the founder of HubPages. We had a chance to talk and share ideas.
Paul mentioned that he felt a responsibility for his writers and helping them keep their income. I realize that has always been the focus. After all, they get 40% of the revenue we generate from our articles.
The experience of getting to know other writers was most delightful. I learned that no matter what their beliefs, attitudes, or backgrounds, they are all genuine people with kind manners and respected insight. One can see why they are successful with their writing.
After that conference, I was filled with optimism, convinced that their plans had the potential to succeed. We all shared the belief that HubPages writers would continue to have the tools to publish articles on the network niche sites monetized by the HubPages’ Ad Program and Amazon sales. But now the niche sites are being eliminated with no transparency as to why they made that decision.
I came home with a new appreciation for this entire business plan. I expected us all to be around for a long time while the Internet and media changed over the years.
Since Maven was reorganized as “The Arena Group,” many of the promises made at the coalition conference were dismissed, and a new business plan was implemented. This plan seemed to prioritize experimentation with unproven methods of extensive advertising in our content.
In my opinion, and that of other authors, the method of placing ads every few sentences tends to lose readers prematurely before they finish reading. Google reacts to that by supposing our content is useless. With that determination, they lower our ranking for the search listings.
It’s evident that The Arena Group does not care about that since they ignore our suggestions to at least see the effect of using fewer ads as a test.
It was to our detriment that The Arena Group did not continue with the plans Maven had shared with us at the conference.
My shares of stock in The Arena Group plummeted. My earnings on HubPages also dropped. We authors struggle to make the best of it despite our income dropping to a fraction of what it was when the original HubPages staff controlled the platform.
This significant decrease in income has affected my motivation to create new content, as the returns are no longer as rewarding. And other authors expressed the same feelings in the forums. However, I'm staying with it since I still make enough to receive monthly payments.
I now spend much time updating older articles with fresh content and implementing the latest requirements suggested in the weekly newsletters.
One thing I appreciate is that many of the editors TAG has assigned to HubPages are professionals. They have been helpful in many ways, providing valuable feedback and guidance on improving my content.
This support stands out despite the organizational mishaps, which I hope will be fixed with the staff changes at the top level. In 2023, the board of The Arena Group fired executives such as CEO Ross Levinsohn, corporate counsel Julie Fenster, and the media president, Rob Barrett.
Public disclosures reported The Arena Group had reduced its workforce and replaced the CEO in early 2024. They appointed Jason Frankl of FTI Consulting as Chief Business Transformation Officer.1
The effort to lay off needless personnel and hire better leaders shows the desire to stay in business.2 So, I believe there is still hope for us.
