The Mysterious Ways The Arena Group Handled HubPages Articles

At this moment, HubPages still exists, even if in a lesser form. I can access the forums and post new threads. I can’t publish new articles. I’m waiting for a final check of $25.13 to drop into my PayPal account. I’m wondering if it will.

I deleted all of my articles off the platform since it ended its earnings program. I didn’t delete the pictures associated with the account. More or less, it sounded like a horrendous chore considering the high number of pictures there, and many of my pictures were stock photos, so they’d have to go through all the licenses anyway.

You might be wondering, why do I care about HubPages when I can’t write or earn there anymore? I’ll put it this way. You can’t do an autopsy on something while it’s alive. There are parts to an investigation that can’t be done until something is dead.

For Context: I wrote an article about the downfall of HubPages and ongoing issues with The Arena Group. The article is helpful for those who aren’t familiar with HubPages or TAG. It can be used to learn about the history of the online publishing platform and help with unpacking the jargon associated with the companies.

TAG is the owner of HubPages, and the company has had previous fiascos with its other publications, such as the AI Sports Illustrated scandal.

TAG Tried to Recruit HubPages Authors

One thing that strikes me as unusual in the shuttering of HubPages is the inconsistent ways TAG acquired HP articles for its relaunched niche sites, such as DenGarden, PetHelpful, Owlcation, Delishably, and AxleAddict. It’s so odd that I’m dedicating an entire article to explain what happened.

Back in 2024, when HubPages first announced it would spin off some of its niche sites to its parent company TAG, one person started a forum thread about how she was emailed by TAG members, and they offered her a deal to work for them and be paid upfront.

This person, Susette Horspool, was very excited by the offer, at least that’s how it seemed. She told us, “So keep your fingers crossed. You may be contacted next.” At first, people weren’t sure it was real. She attested it was the truth. I believed it. And something about it didn’t sit right with me. Why was TAG cutting special deals with some writers?

I’ve kept her name in the screenshots below as she provided important information, the forums are public, and her articles can be found on the new DenGarden. I have censored the name of another HP user because his articles haven’t appeared on a relaunched TAG site; therefore, some questions remain that make me feel his name and profile image should be censored.

The following screenshots are from two forum conversations: (1) a forum thread created by Sustainable Sue (Susette Horspool) discussing the offer by TAG, and (2) an official HP announcement about PetHelpful and DenGarden turning into standalone TAG endeavors. That announcement was created by HP staff member Lisa Winter.

Take a look at Sue’s forum thread and the responses:

The writer, Chef-de-jour, was one of the first to respond to the thread. His comment continues in the next image. I can only capture so much in a screenshot. He perfectly captured the bewilderment HP users felt at the time.

Chef-de-jour was one of the most polished authors on HubPages. He had hundreds of articles on Owlcation, an education-centered niche. He brings up salient points: evidence of chaos and a lack of communication behind the scenes.

To him, it appeared no one really knew who was behind “this latest strategic move.” He puts it quite succinctly:

“One editor claims lead role, another goes off at a tangent, another hasn’t a clue about either.”

Any plan in motion was muddy, and during the transition of relaunching PetHelpful and DenGarden, the whole HP editorial staff was cut. I believe some of the staff was transfered to other TAG properties, but I know some people lost their jobs entirely.

The above screenshot was one of Sustainable Sue’s first responses back in the forum thread. There are a couple of things we can glean here if we use a bit of deductive reasoning.

The part that sticks out to me is:

“Apparently they’re just starting with these two sites and being (understandably) selective about who they make the offer to.”

This leaves me with two questions: what was the selection process for this offer, and two, what were the exact terms of the offer?

Did they pay people something small, like $10 an article, or something more standard for freelance like $500 per article? Why were they recruiting people to write for the relaunched versions of PetHelpful and DenGarden, and was the role for a temporary or permanent position? Think about it. They’re recruiting someone who already writes for the site. That’s convoluted.

Another pertinent question here: Why was it “understandable” that they were being selective? There were plenty of writers on HubPages who created high-quality and high-performing articles. It seems to me that "selective” was a synonym for sneaky. Considering that less than a year later, there were allegations that TAG mined old HubPages articles and used AI or other software to duplicate those articles, it is my impression that sneaky is a suitable interpretation.

This isn’t a criticism of the person who brought the information forward. I do believe Sue was genuine. I imagine the TAG members during the call with her used the word “selective,” and Sue echoed the sentiment in her post. The word “selective” here is one of those slippery words that can mean something different than how it first seems; it’s a word that needs more definition or context. The only way to understand how it is being used is to ask more questions. But the time to ask Sue questions in the forums has passed.

One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that HubPages was a community-driven platform. The word “selective” implies a move away from community and an emphasis on individuals. There are pros and cons when focusing on content created by a community or experts.

• In community-driven media, you can see the rise of substandard quality.
• In expert-driven media, it can turn elitist — the common person’s views get ignored. Only a select few earn.

The Internet is full of both types of media, but Google has been pivoting toward experts.

The above screenshot is fascinating with hindsight. I want to make it very clear, I have no problem with Susette. I think during this process, she was doing her best to be helpful. She wanted to be a leader. She did leave a trail of gold nuggets, which, if you stop to think about them, are packed with meaning. Likely, it was unintentional that these little conversational phrases had so much meaning; nonetheless, they give a small amount of insight into the call she had with TAG.

I think HP writers would like to know what this sentence means:

“They know what they want to end up with, but the way to get there is what they’re working out now.”

It is an ominous thing to write. Why? Because eventually, TAG would pull the plug on having any new content by HP signup users on Discover.HubPages, and it would cut the ad revenue system, effectively ending the earnings program. Many high-performing articles it didn’t get from HP users appeared forged on the relaunched niche sites.

Surely, none of that is what Sue meant by TAG’s intentions. I think she would have raised an alert with people if that were the case. She seems to think our questions were helping TAG to navigate the situation. But I assure you, TAG’s staff didn’t care about HP writer concerns. I doubt its C-suite read what people wrote in the forums. If they cared, I think the end result would have been different.

I hope TAG paid Sue well when it asked her to be a contributor. I worry they took advantage of her niceness. She was one of the few people to defend the company’s actions, even if marginally.

This is an important part of the conversation. In the image above, Sue puts the blames on herself rather than on TAG. Perhaps she misremembered which niche sites would continue operating. (FYI: There were two announcements that sites with HubPages would become standalone endeavors with TAG. The first occurred in 2024 with Pethelpful and DenGarden. The second occurred a few months later in 2025, when the last remaining niches got the boot to standalone endeavor territory. On a separate note, several vertical niche sites, including Holidappy and Spinditty, were dumped back into Discover.HubPages, not turned into TAG publications where only hired contributors published content.) In the above image, Glen is likely right: we can’t trust what they tell you.

From what I can determine, TAG told her things that weren’t entirely true or not entirely written into stone. The other part of the image amuses me: FatFreddyCats jumped in to say Spinditty had gone the way of the dodo. (He would jump back into the forums a few times after this, but he aptly saw this moment as the curtain call.)

Let’s address Sue’s question here real quick. “Do you think they’re just filling in the empty slots with AI until they can get a real writer to write a real article on that topic?” The answer is no. There is no way this would be the case.

If there was a section on a TAG property of any kind and it was done by AI, I do not think it would be a temporary fill-in. In this case, if it was used, it was there instead of a human writer who could be hired to craft a real, informative article.

AI isn’t used as a substitute to help maintain daily traffic. It’s there permanently once it has been incorporated. It absolutely takes up the space of what a human can do.

Let’s rewind for a moment. There’s something here that needs an explanation. HP niche news sections may have been aided by AI; however, ages ago, I did see the job listings for the news writers where they had to punch out a certain number of stories every day for 8 hours — I think it was 20 or so stories.

These not-really-news stories were short and sweet and often taken from places like YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok, so the job was doable in a day, but it’s entirely possible a shortcut was used. The stories were fluff, not anything too taxing on the brain to write.

On a similar but different note, there was a ban on AI at HubPages; this was put in place for user signup writers who wrote hubs, not hired staff. I believe those who were writing the news sections could use AI as long as they went back through and edited it (let’s be honest, if they used AI many of them probably didn’t go back and edit them or at least not diligently, and they didn’t have a lot of motivation otherwise to do that because they were likely paid cheaply and micromanaged, which if Glassdoor is to be trusted, employees painted a picture there of what things were like behind the scenes.)

Let’s move on to the last pertinent conversation in this series of screenshots. This one puts the focus right on the center of the issues at play.

Who is SerenityHalo? That would be me! I called out the default transfer process to the new DenGarden and PetHelpful sites as sketchy. I made a point that TAG should have to get permission for every article it wanted to take for its new standalone endeavors. People were essentially forced to sell their articles for $0 to stay on the niche sites. And not everyone reads announcements posted in the forums or keeps up with all the HP emails, so there was likely content taken over without people’s knowledge or permission. Silence isn’t consent.

Even if an individual isn’t earning a lot from their articles, a giant collection of articles among thousands of writers is a never ending golden goose. The writers built so much content that it should have been a serious moneymaker for HP and TAG. That’s what appealed to the company when it bought HP. The problem was Google changed the game.

Algorithm changes starting in fall 2022 caused serious traffic decline to HP articles. To stay on top of it, it appears TAG wanted the best performing articles for itself — it didn’t prioritize fixing the problem for content writers.

Sue’s response to mine clarified a few things:

• TAG offered to pay her to write more articles for them, as though she were an on-staff contributor.
• She didn’t care about losing ad revenue for her old articles when they went over to the new DenGarden or PetHelpful because she didn’t make much on them anyway.
• Her guess was that TAG was trying to keep as many articles as it could, and that’s why communication was unclear with the writers (and let’s face it, the editors too).

A Rocky Transition Process

Many of us requested that our old DenGarden and PetHelpful articles be transferred back to Discover.HubPages, where we could still earn through the ad revenue system. We wanted our work to be in a place where we would be paid. We didn’t want to donate our articles to the new standalone endeavors — I keep repeating that phrasing because HP staff used it in its announcements.

We didn’t like being treated like children, as if we could be fooled by the mystique of privilege, to be on the new versions of the niche sites, as if that was somehow an honor. TAG offered something to us that was convoluted: donate your articles to us, even though you were the ones who originally built the sites with your content and hard work. Read between the lines: this was a way to get articles off the ad revenue system and make it seem flashy, exciting, and new!

The writers are the ones who made DenGarden successful with their content. HubPages had so many people writing successful, high SEO gardening content that the niche site, DenGarden, was created. A focused vertical site was more organized than piling the gardening hubs with everything else onto Discover, a smorgasbord of articles.

So the million dollar question is: why was TAG recruiting an HP user while also letting people’s work automatically transfer to the new DenGarden and PetHelpful? I think about this juxtaposition often. What does it mean? How many departments in TAG were offering different incentives for articles?

And why did they want Sue as a reporter and not others? She is an excellent writer, but that isn’t to say there weren’t other excellent writers, and it’s questionable that everyone’s content was defaulted to transfer to these relaunched sites, where we don’t have access, can’t make updates, can’t see traffic stats, and can’t earn.

The Drama Continues With AxleAddict

Months later, HubPages ended most of its niches, and the remaining ones were spun off as new standalone endeavors as part of TAG’s growing list of properties. Another user started a forum thread about how he was offered money for his AxleAddict articles. Initially, AxleAddict was shuttered. For some reason, TAG decided to bring it back. Why did TAG resurrect it?

We never received an official announcement from TAG or HubPages that AxleAddict would return. Not a single email, forum update, or smoke signal. This user was the only person who shed light on this development. Lo and behold, AxleAddict did return. We can safely assume this means the user did actually communicate with TAG and was offered money for his articles.

Oddly enough, I’ve looked through AxleAddict for the user’s articles, and I can’t find his name anywhere. Does this mean he sold his articles and TAG, or its third parties, posted them under a different name? Or did TAG not end up buying his articles, or perhaps because he mentioned these things in the forums, TAG decided not to buy them? That would not have been the case for Sustainable Sue since she wrote at length in the forums. Perhaps TAG’s offer wasn’t good enough for the mechanical engineer who moonlights as a writer.

This is all incredibly strange. Even more questionable when TAG and/or its third parties appeared to have mined old, high-performing hubs off Discover.HubPages, and it used either AI or a copy-and-paste system to scrape the articles and post them on the relaunched sites. This process very much stretched the TOS to its limits.

If TAG was willing to pay for some people’s articles, why did it allegedly also allow Owlcation and other relaunched niche sites to mine and duplicate other articles? It seems TAG was willing to:

1. Pay some writers for content
2. Allow people’s articles to land on TAG properties by default and without earnings
3. Mine, duplicate, and steal articles TAG didn’t get in the transfer/relaunch

There is no rhyme or reason to this. It makes me wonder what other deals TAG tried to work out privately. I’m sure other things happened that no one felt inclined to report to the community of HP users.

Also, I wonder if some of the other niches will be resurrected. I received tens of millions of views on PairedLife. I had more than 300 articles there. I feel like I’m in a liminal space, waiting to see what this company is going to do next. Are they happy with all the niche sites they got? Reelrundown, Spinditty, and Holidappy were all successful at one point, garnering millions of views a month. Could those sites rise from the ashes?

It’s possible now that they’ve ended announcements in the HP forums that they’ll quietly rebuild these sites and post more duplicate articles. Another big question is how far back is TAG willing to go through old HP data for deleted articles to build its new standalone endeavors? Perhaps five years from now, I’ll see an old article of mine outright on one of its properties. The company, or one of its third parties, already took one of my Shakespeare articles and spun it on Owlcation.

Staying Connected

Long investigative articles like this take time. I appreciate any responses to it. Sharing the article with people who are interested in this topic is encouraged. If you notice anything that needs correction, please reach out to me. I am willing to correct anything from typos, misstated information, or notable misinterpretations.

If you have an article idea about HubPages or TAG and would like to post it alongside my work in Academic Adjacent, please let me know. You can reach me at [email protected].

If you would like to help support HubPages writers, please consider signing the following petition, which explains other problems HP has faced under TAG’s leadership. This petition is meaningful for writers and readers who use the Internet, as it is about boundaries on what is fair and right online.

Works Cited

1. “AI-Generated Content on HubPages.” HubPages Forums, Author: HubPages Staff, 2023. <hubpages.com/community/forum/357709/ai-generated-content-on-hubpages.>
2. Davis, Haley. “Upcoming Changes to HubPages Sites.” HubPages Forums, Apr. 2025. <hubpages.com/community/forum/363791/upcoming-changes-to-hubpages-sites.>
3. Horspool, Susette. “Which sites are staying with the Arena group for sure?” HubPages Forums, August 2024. <hubpages.com/community/forum/361682/which-sites-are-staying-with-the-arena-group-for-sure.>
4. Levy, Ari. “After 12 Years and Endless Fights With Google, Start-up HubPages Finds a Buyer.” CNBC, 6 Jan. 2018.
5. “Maven Rebrands as the Arena Group, Expanding Business Strategy Around Consumer Media Verticals Anchored by Flagship Brands.” The Arena Group Media Contact: Rachael Fink, Communications Manager, Business Wire, 20 Sept. 2021.
6. “Reminder: Upcoming Changes to HubPages Earnings and Publishing.” HubPages Forums. Author: HubPages Staff, January 2026. <hubpages.com/community/forum/369998/reminder-upcoming-changes-to-hubpages-earnings-and-publishing.>
7. “Tips for Boosting E-A-T.” HubPages Forums, Author: HubPages Staff, 2023. <hubpages.com/community/forum/356724/tips-for-boosting-e-a-t.>
8. Winter, Lisa. “Upcoming Changes to Pethelpful, Dengarden, and Discover.” HubPages Forums, August 2024. <hubpages.com/community/forum/361706/upcoming-changes-to-pethelpful — dengarden — and-discover.>
9. Winter, Lisa. “We’re Moving Content To Discover HubPages.” HubPages Forums, July 2024. <hubpages.com/community/forum/361529/were-moving-content-to-discover-hubpages.>

In the event TAG disables the HubPages’ forums, the above citations can be searched for in the Wayback Machine.

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Bonus tidbit: here’s a link to a job description of a writer position through TAG where you have to write 40 stories a day for a salary somewhere between $150,000-$200,000. That’s an impressive publishing rate of 1 story every 12 minutes if working an 8 hour shift… and with no breaks. I assume what I hear is people collectively groaning as they read this.

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Disclaimer: The article was written by a human. It is not intended to smear, libel, or slander any parties. The article does its best to stick to facts and to specify where there is uncertainty about what may have happened in HubPages’ downfall and TAG’s practices. The author is aware that she does not have TAG’s side of the story, and that its story may appear different from its angle.

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The article was originally published on Medium.