It was strange that I suddenly remembered Orble.com since I hadn’t been to the website for years already.
So, I decided to visit the website again. I wanted to see if there were any changes the last time I’ve been there.
I don’t think I ever told anyone before. But back then, I used to have a website on Orble.com. And I also made some money on Orble.com too.
The money that I made wasn’t the ad revenue sharing that got many people to sign up with Orble.com. It was the affiliate commission that I got from CDJapan, the payment for the sponsored posts and payment for the ad placement on my Orble website.
Sure, the money that I made wasn’t that much. But it was a game-changer for me since I never made a single dime online before. I only started to make money when I started writing on Orble.com.
As I waited patiently for the website to load, the only thing I got was a notice from Firefox. It said that the browser couldn’t reach for the website because it was offline.
Feeling curious, I started to look around about the news related to the website.
Lo and behold, I came across this blog post saying that Orble.com disappeared. And the news was five years ago as I write this blog post.
What in the world is Orble. com, anyway?
In a nutshell, Orble.com is a website that allows you to write any topics you want online and make money from it.
Once you already have around 3-4 posts on your Orble.com account, you have the chance to upgrade your website with your own domain name.
Some people who had been on Orble.com long enough said that they had to pay for the domain name if they wanted to have a website on Orble with their own domain name on it.
But in my case, they offered the upgrade to me for free provided that I took over the inactive domain.
At first, I was skeptical to take over the old domain since the available domain names didn’t reflect the content I wrote. But I did manage to find one that seemed close to what I wrote on my Orble account.
After telling the support that I wanted to take over the said domain, they upgraded my account with that domain the next day.
What about the money-making part?
The main way to make money on Orble.com is through the ads. But you have to split the ad revenue with Orble.com. And you also need to have your own Google Adsense account and linked it to your Orble account since that was how you would be able to make money on Orble.
To be honest, I couldn’t remember the percentage for the ad revenue split. But regardless of the percentage, it was still crazy to split your ad revenue with Orble.com.
The reason for that is because it’s already hard enough to meet the minimum threshold for the Google Adsense payout. And it’s even more difficult when you have to split the ad revenue with Orble.com.
For some people, it was a crazy thing to do. But for me, I didn’t see it as a trade-off since it wasn’t easy to make money with Google Adsense.
If you really do want to make money with Google Adsense, you need a huge amount of traffic coming to your website. And it was something that I didn’t have when I had my own website on Blogger. But I was sure that it was something that Orble.com had.
Traffic generation was the hardest part for me. And I was glad that I didn’t have to worry about doing the traffic generation myself since Orble.com took care of that.
Something unusual happened
I couldn’t exactly remember when it happened. But it was probably around 2012 that I realized the traffic to my website wasn’t like what it used to be.
Rather than basing my assumption based on the traffic stats, I was basing my assumption based on the affiliate commissions that I made during that time.
During that time, I realized that I wasn’t generating as many affiliate commissions as I used to be.
Rather than keep on posting on Orble.com, I decided to move to Tumblr and continued with my usual posting there.
Even after moving to Tumblr, I was still actively posting on Orble.com. But after seeing that my post on Tumblr was gaining more traction than the one on Orble.com, I decided to stop posting on Orble completely.
After a year on Tumblr, I did come back to post something on Orble as well. But I abandoned the website once again when there wasn’t any traction at all.
Is that the telltale sign of the demise?
Well, I’d like to think that the traffic is taking a nosedive is the telltale sign that Orble is going downhill.
But I don’t think that’s the case at all. Pretty much any websites that has a similar concept like Orble, minus the free domain name still exist today even though the website doesn’t have a huge traffic like it used to.
Just take a look at Hubpages. It’s still using the same compensation model as Orble. But it still exists until today. The only downside is it becomes much stricter than before ever since the website took a huge hit from Google for having a lot of low quality contents.
In the end, nobody knows why Orble.com suddenly disappeared. Many people who used to have a website on Orble were just as perplexed as me when they found out that the website has no longer existed.
The key takeaway from this issue
The disappearance of Orble.com made me realize how dangerous it is to have your years of the
I was fortunate that I left Orble somewhere around 2012 when I noticed that my affiliate commission was taking a dip.
To be honest, I don’t care about losing all the things I’ve written on that website since those posts didn’t matter to me anymore.
But for some people who depended on Orble.com, it was unfortunate that they didn’t have any chance to back up their posts. And it was even worse when the website disappeared without any prior notice.
So, what can you do to avoid the same thing happening to you again?
The answer to that is simple. Have your own website where the domain and even the hosting are more or less belong to you.
Not sure what to use? You can take a look at what I personally use right here.
I get your sentiment about not wanting to have your own website. But if your body of work matters to you more than anything else, then having your own website is the best thing you can do for yourself.
I'm an author who writes thriller and suspense light novels. But when I'm not writing a book, I love to blog about books that I enjoy reading. Some of these books also become the inspiration for my novel as well.
Most of the books that I talk about on my blog tend to be manga and light novels, with nonfiction books in between. If you're looking for interesting books to read, then you will certainly enjoy reading my blog. 
Same thing with me. For about four years I published the blog “The Jukebox Hero” on Orble which was ranked as the top Music/Entertainment blog. I actually made a little money from Google Adsense. When I took a sabbatical and then decided to return to Orble POOF it was gone. Out of commission. I was extremely disappointed because I enjoyed my association with the community of good interesting writers. In the aftermath of Orble’s disappearance I’ve tried, without success, to acquire copies of some of my old story posts because of their relevance to recent developments in music. Still trying to find someone who knows how to go about that.
It’s great to know that you do make money on Orble through Google Adsense since quite a handful of people who write on Orble don’t make that much money with Adsense. And I happened to be one of them. But I’m fine with that since I make money through affiliate marketing and sponsored posts. I don’t think that I would be able to experience my first affiliate commission and the payment from the sponsored posts if it’s not because of Orble.
By the way, if you happen to know other ways to get your old posts back, feel free to share it with me here. I may not care that much about all the posts that I used to have on Orble. But I’m sure that other people who are in the same boat as you would love to know that as well.
This is what worked for me to get my Orble posts back:
For anybody who’s looking for their old posts — I’ve had some success finding what still exists on The Wayback Machine. Go to
https://archive.org/web/
and type
http://orble.com
into the search field. You should see a calendar with various dates circled. The last date is July 8, 2015. Click on a circled date and Orble appears. You can navigate around pretty much like you used to be able to do. You can even extract PDFs and take screenshots if you want to have something to prove these are your posts.
I did this a while ago, so not sure if it still works.
Thanks for sharing. The Wayback Machine is one of the possible ways to get the old blog posts on Orble back. I tried that and it works. I was able to view all the posts that I had on Orble.
But my suggestion is rather than typing Orble.com, it’s best to type the domain name of the website that you use on Orble.
Of course, that would be for blogs that got a free domain name upgrade after you met a specific number of posts on Orble. If you don’t have that, then just type yourwebsitename.orble.com instead. The Wayback Machine should be able to retrieve the old posts.