Can You Make Money on HubPages?

Writing and earning revenue from articles is one of the most common monetization techniques online. Whether you are a newbie or an advanced blogger, you’ve probably heard that you can do this on a site called Hubpages. Can you really make money on Hubpages? I set out to investigate and here’s my personal take about this blogging network.

What Is HubPages?

HubPages is a blogging platform that hosts and publishes articles on various types of niche topics. Its primary goal is to build readership for a writer through good quality content which can become a source for community engagement and educational learning.

In the process, writers can earn some revenue through the advertisements generated on their articles.

How Can You Make Money on HubPages?

Before I go any deeper, let me show you the format of a typical HubPage article.

The content sits on a subdomain and is flanked by ads at various parts of the page – the top, sidebar and the bottom area. When a reader clicks on any of these ads, the writer – that’s you – will earn a percentage of revenue from the companies that the ads are related to.

Theoretically, by placing more ads, the writer could potentially earn more from the readers’ click. That is in a nutshell, how you make money on HubPages. There are generally two types of advertising programs that you can be part of.

1) Google Adsense

Google Adsense is an ad network program whereby companies partner with Google through Google Adwords to have their products or services featured on a publisher’s webpage. The placement of the ads is based on keywords matching and is entirely managed by the Google team. The revenue generated from this ad is then split between Google and you.

Applying for this program is a requirement before a writer can sign up for other ad programs offered by HubPages.

2) Hubpages Earning Program

Under this program, you can make money in 3 different ways;

1. Ad Program – Enjoy better ad rates through companies that partnered with HubPages to display premium ads.  
2. HubPages Amazon Program – Earn commissions when readers follow Amazon ads and purchase something from the online marketplace.
3. HubPages eBay Program – Earn commissions when readers click on eBay ads and purchase products listed on the online marketplace.

Other (smaller) ways of earning is through contest winning in which the best article is rewarded with a monetary prize and getting referral impressions for every new writer you recommend to HubPages.  

What I Like about Hubpages

Unlike other blog aggregator sites, there are some features that make HubPages stands out.

• At any given topic, an article is usually written in-depth (and length) from someone who’s knowledgeable in a particular field. Most writers take their time to include relevant images and videos for better reader’s engagement.
• As a result, it creates a community that is active with intellectual discussion and expert sharing. Unlike most blogs, people actually take their time to read these articles and offer relevant comments.
• Anyone who has a passion for online writing or sharing a certain knowledge can join HubPages for free as long as they follow the publishing guidelines.
• There’s no need to acquire or maintain a website as articles are created in a specific writing software called HubTool that will walk you through the proper placement of titles, content and ad settings.
• HubPages uses PayPal for fund transfer so that makes payment processes more secure.
• The ‘Learning Centre’ has many resources explaining how the advertising monetization works, how to create good quality content and how to promote articles for online traffic.
• Content duplication is strictly prohibited in the community and a step-by-step guide is provided for anyone who wants to file a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint.

What Are The Limitations that You Should Know

While this form of online monetization is totally legit, once you dig into the system, things are actually harder than you think.

• Google Adsense is the main requirement for monetization, but you can easily be declined if don’t know how to use Adsense properly. As per HubPage’s recommendation, you are encouraged to publish at least 10 high-quality articles AND wait for 1 month before applying for Adsense (for some countries, this could take up to 6 months).
• Some of the ad program applications would require your tax information, so that can be a bit of a hassle.   
• When it comes to online ads, you don’t really have a lot of control over what’s being displayed next to your articles. Sometimes they are relevant to your content, sometimes they are not. Either way, the desired end result is that a reader ‘leaves’ your article, with interest in visiting another website through an advertisement.
• As part of maintaining the publishing standards in HubPages, articles are subjected to quality assessment by the team and if it’s deemed inappropriate, your articles can be ‘unpublished’ at any time.
• Although there are a lot of learning resources, there are no structured tutorials that could teach you about proper keyword research in relevance to creating good quality content. Without having a good grasp of this knowledge, you could end up producing articles that would take forever to rank online, or worse, no one would be interested to read.
• Regardless of how good your article is, as long as it sits on a subdomain, it’s pretty difficult to build a brand for yourself as opposed to having a personal blog and creating your own social followers.
• Most importantly, you must understand that the total advertisement revenue is split between you and HubPages (60% to you and 40% to HubPages) and you are actually earning the accumulations of cents (not dollars) from all these different ad programs. Therefore, you’ll need a lot of clicks if you want to achieve a steady income with your writing skills.

So, Is HubPages Worthy of Your Time?

It depends. If you are talking about the ease of starting out or writing purely for gaining readership, HubPages is not a bad platform. With effort, you could probably earn between $50 to $100 per month for your articles.

However, if you are an experienced writer or want to make money in the business sense, you are better off investing your time on a personal blog so that your content can fetch better values in terms of search engine rankings as well as diversifying your income potential.

Advertisement isn’t the only way to make money online. There are other techniques that generate better revenues;

• Affiliate programs – Income potential ranges between $20 to $100 per referral.
• Sell your own products (physical or digital) – You get to set the selling price.
• Offer consultation services – Usually in the range of hundreds of dollars.
• Offer online teaching – Also within the range of hundreds.

All these may seem daunting at first, but there is an awesome platform called Wealthy Affiliate University that can guide you through these marketing techniques. Here are the features you can benefit from their training.

So if you are an aspiring writer and entrepreneur (which I think you are), check out how you can start your own online business with Wealthy Affiliate within minutes. Once you are in the training area, I will personally help you out too.

Hope to talk to you soon.

Do you have any thoughts or questions about this topic? Feel free to leave them in the comment area below and I’ll get back to you.