Make money writing for Hubpages

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How I make $2 per month for each article I write at hubpagesOver the last month or so I have been running a little bit of an experiment.

Basically, after hearing from some others that there is money to be made with Hubpages, I decided to give it a go.

Before I start getting into detail, I should explain the basics.

What is a hub page?

Hubpages is a website that basically allows you to publish an article on their site.

I use the term “article” loosely because it can be as short as an article or more like a single page website. It is completely up to the user.

A hub (their lingo for article) can be about any topic you could possibly want to write about. You could create a hub explaining 10 things you wished people knew about you, how to play guitar with your toes, or facts about albino grizzly bears.

You do not need to be a great writer and honestly, I have seen some people who are terrible writers do quite well. All you need is the ability to say a little bit about something. And who knows maybe hubpages will be the first step to helping you make money from a blog?

So how do you make money with Hubpages?

There are actually a variety of ways, but the simplest and most effective way I have found so far has been by using Google Adsense. After you finish your first hub you can install your Adsense ID and you will begin sharing the revenue with Hubpages for your hubs.

If you pick good keywords (which I will get to in a minute) you will likely begin getting traffic from the search engines within 24 hours of publishing it. If these visitors click on the ads you will get a cut of that revenue (I think it is 60%).

My results during July

I spent most of July trying to create a hub every day or so and I am now up to 23 hubs. I didn’t do the best job with keyword research and did very little if any work after creating the hubs and yet adsense still made $47.14 in July.

This breaks down to $2.05 per hub/month.

Two dollars doesn’t sound too exciting, but if you consider that is probably completely passive income it is pretty exciting. In theory, that $2 per hub should continue paying that each month – and to be honest most pages do better in the search engines after they have been around a few months or more. So it very well could increase over time as well.

I am going to continue to create some more hubs during the month of August and see what the results are. I will try to keep this post updated with the new results each month.

Steps to get started

If you are interested in giving this a shot, these are the steps to get started.

  1. Sign up at Hubpages
  2. Create your first hub. Once you get to the design page, it is pretty self-explanatory.
  3. Sign up for an Adsense account (if you don’t have one). This might take a couple days to get approval.
  4. Add your Adsense ID to Hubpages. When you are logged into Hubpages, you click the “My Account” button, and then the “Affiliate Settings” link. This is where you will install your Adsense ID.
  5. That’s it. Once it is installed, you will begin making money when someone clicks on the ads. Warning: do not click the ads yourself or tell others to click them. Google will catch you and will ban you from the program.

Keys to succeeding

Keyword research

This is probably the most important part. The title of your hub needs to be based on your keyword research. A good place to look is Google’s Keyword Research tool – drop in some keywords that your article might be about and see what comes back at you. I believe this is more of an art than a science, so just find a keyword phrase that is being searched for and give it a shot.

But I do suggest looking for longer phrases, i.e. Don’t title your page “ipods” but something like “how to put music on your ipod” would likely work a lot better. But either way, you just have to test to see what works. Sometimes your research will work just like planned and other times it won’t. But the good news is that even if you don’t do any research, you still have a chance of picking up some visitors on Hubpages. But, the more you plan out your keywords the better you will do.

Get Links

Like I mentioned above, I didn’t really get many links to my hubs, but if you can link to it from your blogs and get other links it will definitely be helpful. Submitting it to social bookmarking sites might be helpful as well. Linking your hubs to each other is a good idea too.

Content

Generally speaking the more content you put on your hub the better. I would say 400 words should be a minimum. Shooting for 600-1000 would probably be best. And add as many of the widgets as you can. You can add a news widget, a poll to ask your readers a question, etc. You don’t necessarily NEED to add a bunch of widgets, but it will probably help.

Learn and adapt

Not all hubs will work. In fact, for me of the 23 I have created thus far 5 of them are generating about 90% of the traffic.

Referral Program

Per a reader’s request to discuss the referral program, I will touch on that. The links to hubpages in this article are referral links. I haven’t referred any users in the past and honestly don’t really know how or how much can be made from the referrals – but if anyone signs up via the links, I will add that to the update next month.

A new site just like hubpages is on the scene, it is called InfoBarrel.com and they are just about the same as hubpages, except that they pay out a higher percentage of earnings from Adsense. You might want to add them to your arsenal.

Looking to find out more?

These are a few articles that go into a whole lot more detail than I did here on how to make money with Hubpages.

2+ Years Later (UPDATE)

I originally wrote this article over 2 years ago and I have gotten a lot of requests to update it. Since that time hubpages has made some technical changes to how they pay (which actually make it easier), but you still earn via adsense, amazon, and ebay.

Over the last couple years I have added more hubs – mostly to get links and to drive traffic, but in doing so the earnings have increased as well.

In Nov ’11 they made $174, Dec ’11, $210, and this month is set to make about $200.  So if you average the last 3 months it comes out to about $2.32 hub/month – which is a bit better than it was previously.

But even better than the earnings is just the fact that it is completely passive and I don’t have to do anything to maintain it!

Related Posts

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. @pinyo
    yea – with as many things as I am interested in it gives me the freedom to write about different topics as well as get backlinks to my blog as well.

  3. Well done on your earnings! I have made 45 Hubs and earned hmmm around $6 so far. I made them within the space of three weeks so now I’ll keep adding more and waiting for the others to mature. Hopefully we’ll both see some continued passive income 🙂

  4. Nice job Bob. I would have to say that you’re above average in that $2 per hub figure. Now if you throw some backlinks at them in a couple weeks, that would be really good.

    It’s also an interesting insight about making longer Titles. That is something I’ve debated myself. It’ll bring in more longtails if you stick some decent keywords in there, but you don’t want to make it hard for Google to tell what your hub is about.

    Anyway, good luck. And with the referrals thing – I have found that many people who sign up don’t even end up creating one hub. But a sporadic few become prolific hubbers. Essentially, for every 6 hubs they create you are getting 1 at no expense to you.

    • @Web Career Girl
      my hunch is that so much of the earning potential comes down to keyword research. If you don’t have specific titles based on keywords, it will be tough to get traffic. As I mentioned even doing keyword research, not all of them will take off – but it gives you a much better chance of success… my 2 cents…

  5. I just saw that blog post on the first page of Hubapges. That should get you some more traffic.

  6. Bob,
    Thanks for this post. I’ll definitely check this out. I guess when I read your article I was thinking of how I could post personal finance articles, but you’ve broadened my thinking in that I could write about anything I know about or is of interest. I think another important point is staying current on the tools available to people today to share information or opinions. The Hubpages seem to be another form of that and can definitely become a part of blogging with linking to the articles that have been created. Aside from the article and as a reader of your blog I do appreciate the variety of content you offer in your posts.

  7. I had wonderful results doing the same thing back in 2008. I would take two follow left were his great toward blue times. Weasel wanker wanna we we.

  8. Thanks for the post about hubpages it gave me the inspiration to look into it. I’ve written a couple of hubs under dc2004, although I’m not expecting much from it the experience has been fun

  9. I joined HubPages about 6 months ago, and when i did, my primary aim was to try earning something online. Somewhere along the line, i discovered i could do a bit of writing..(modesty!). I didn’t earn more than a couple of pounds in over 4 months.
    Then i decided to take part in the 30hubs-30days challenge, so that i can at the least, increase my number of hubs. I heard it said that the more hubs, the better for you.
    I was unprepaired for the massive increase in traffic, and then the income started coming in, everyday. Never before had that happened.
    Joining the challenge has been the best step i’ve taken since trying my hands on IM.
    I’ve published 20 hubs out of the 30, and i’m on day 13.
    The secret is in the keyword research.
    Goodluck fellow hubbers!

  10. Nowhere did you state how long it took you to write 23 hubs. Even if, minimally, each story of your recommended 400 to 1,000 words took 1 hour to write, your payback of $47 is pitiful and hardly worth your time. You might as well be answering online surveys.

    If adsense imposes no standards on the quality of writing, i can see where writers would dash off poorly written pieces on nothing at all, just to make a few dollars and all this content will just serve to further clog up the blogosphere.. This, to me, is not professional writing.

    • Fern,
      to answer your question I spent probably 30-60 minutes on each. I wrote some of them, I purchased some of the articles as well. As far as the $47 – like I mentioned in the post, it by itself isn’t that exciting, except that it is passive income that (in theory) will continue month to month. And as far as writing, I am not sure why you are so cynical about it – I don’t like junk articles any more than the next guy and I wouldn’t suggest writing bad articles on purpose either. Hubpages will probably ban you and you probably wouldn’t make anything anyway…

  11. Great Chris, you really did it alot more faster than me. It took me 50 hubs to earn $41 Adsense, the more you write quality researched articles the better. I have also written my experience with the 50 hubs earning $40. The other best way to increase your earning is to join the challenge which will just help you increase the number of hubs you have. The more quality hubs you have the better chances of earning with hubpages, I just remember writing 27 hubs from the hub challenge I did got for the first time $11 in one day today 22/08/09.

  15. Thanks Bob! I am just starting out on HubPages and this is all great info. I have 5 hubs and pretty much steamed ahead without doing the keyword research, so now I need to go back and do some tweaking to get the most out of my efforts.

    I ticked the ‘followup comments’ box so I can keep up with everyone’s ideas here.

  16. Thanks for the information.I have just started writing hubs my self and I have 17 so far.The keyword research you need to do takes time, but I think it is time well spent if it gives me better rankings.You said you have 23 hubs so far, do you know if all those are generating revenue or just a few of them?

    • Tom,
      I am sure that not all of them are earning much, I haven’t done a great job tracking them, so I don’t really know…

  17. Bob,

    Any chance you will be giving us an update on how this is going for you? Maybe you can even write a 6 month review or something so your readers will see it again…

  18. Andrew – you are right, I haven’t updated with the last couple months… August was a pretty big drop – $22 and then in September it was at $45 and then October was over $50. I have only added a few more articles since writing this one. I will try to write a more formal followup to this article when I get a chance…

  19. Hi, I would just like to thank you for writing this article! I have recently joined hubpages and I’ve applied for an adsense account. But I’m just wondering, how old did you first start using hubpages and earning money through it? Thanks once again, Bob!

  21. Hey Bob,

    Great article! Keep up the good work. Did you purposely use key words that payed well with google adsense or did it just work out this way? What is the average key word paying and what is the supply and demand for those words?

    To Health Wealth and Happiness,
    Jim

  22. Hi Bob,

    I’ve created a HubPages profile done some basic settings after I read this post about a month or so ago. I am yet to write a hub, but I just pray to the Lord that He anoints my hands to write something that glorifies Him!

  23. Did it worked? I mean you still receive about 2 dollars per hub? Maybe more?

  24. Writing hubs has been a joy for me for the last 3 years, what I like most is the various topics I can explore and share. Thanks for sharing your experience and I will be sure to follow your journey.
    Laurie

  25. when i try to sign up for adsense, it tells me that i need to have a website.
    what url do i post there?
    i have not written my first hub yet. assuming i do, do i post the direct link to that hub there?
    if so…do i need to keep updating my adsense every time?
    thank you for this beautiful article! i wanna get some pennies rolling!

  26. I just started using hubpages a few weeks ago. It is real, and you can make money off of it. If your trying to make money on the side then I would def recommend it, but for a living no.

    • Hi Jeff, I think if one really want to make money on the net, it is possible, but one must always keep in mind that there are many opportunities, I created my first hub today, and just followed instructions, I will write 24 hrs a day if I could, unfortunately its not possible. Good luck to you, and your writing. Greetings from South Africa.

  27. Thanks for your article. I enjoyed the info in it. I have a question. I know you have to agree not to click on ads from your own hub articles, however, can you click on your own article to re-read it? I sure hope so. Thanks so much. Kelly

  28. Thanks for a good article. I have been on Hubpages awhile but not making much money—-need to post more hubs.

  29. I’m interested on trying hubpages, but once you write or build a hub page do you need to constantly update it? like a blog? the idea of maintaining 50 or so hubs seems frustrating 🙁

  30. Thanks very much for this article. Its refreshing to hear an honest account rather than an “i made thousands in my first week” BS !!

    I will be starting on hub pages myself this coming week… wish me luck!

  31. Hi, everyone. I made a couple of hubs and then I applied for adsense, but I didn’t get approved. I think I didn’t put in the proper website URL. I clicked on the help button next to it and it says that I’m supposed to have my own site. Does any body know if this is supposed to be the website of your article at hubpages or is it just hubpages.com?

  32. Hello Bob!

    I really like your website. It motivated me to start writing and to look for ways to make money on line. I’ve obtained vital information from your articles. I wish you the best.

    I have one question. Is it better to write articles for Hubpages or have your own website and post the articles there?

    Thanks!

  33. Always good to find a new way to make money online and that sounds like quite an attractive way to increase my adsense page impressions.

  34. Seems he is a genius on the topic. I know you have spent some time on it, but it is really worth reading. Looking forward to more “FREE” stuff from you!

    Thanks

  37. Hey Bob I’ve been earning a steady income on HP for almost 2 years now and the best advice I could give anyone that wants to earn money there is to write what we call evergreen content. Content that is going to be as important years down the road as it is now with pictures, video, polls, maps, and links to relevant external sites. How to articles are great as well as travel articles. We’ve recently found out with the new Google update that short, product related articles that are primarily intended to sell a product without giving the user anything they couldn’t find in a thousand other places online, do not work well. Write for the reader and no matter what the topic and it stands a good chance at earning on hubpages.

  38. Pls I need to know if I will make money if I use poems instead of articles as my hub.

  39. Adebiyi, though I haven’t created any poems on Hubpages, the general consensus on the forums is that poems and religious Hubs don’t usually generate a lot of income. If you are wanting to maximize income, write Hubs that are informative and draw readers in, who will in turn click on the ads within your Hub.

  40. I am desperate. I joined Hubpages and have so far only put in 2 hubs. I desperately need Adsense but I applied twice. First time they said I couldn’t put Hubpages as the website on my application. Then I looked for more info and opened an account at blogger as someone suggested. Again applied and again was turned down. So How do I get to get accepted in AdSense??? How is it done or am I just dense? If I can’t get info on this then what’s the use and I am broke…… Please reply to my e-mail.

  41. im a newbie ! can you please tell me ….what do you mean by Ads ? so even though i write … but if they only read ..and not click the ads … , that would mean nothing ?
    thanks….

  42. @Pinyo the reason you write on other sites like infobarrel or hubpages is cause everything like advertising the website and making it popular is done for you. All you need is to just post and post and not worry about advertising your content cause google immediately captures after it has been posted.

  43. WOW!! you are doing great at hubpages. I also need some tips. I have some 16 hubs but my earning through adsense is $0.03. How can I increase my earnings??

  44. Been writing hubs for a couple of months. Have Amazon ads and still no money. Applied to Adsense but they turned me down twice. How do I get them to accept me? Just keep trying? I don’t have my own website. Just hubs and blogs on Blogger.

  45. is it good that my title is 4 words and in order the global searches are
    30,400,000
    1,120,000,000
    7,480,000
    5,000,000 ?
    i know thats not how many people would click but do you think that would bring good traffic?

  46. Hi Jennifer Speer.
    I think you may do that but you should not.
    Because if you search for the same query in Google it will show two results for the same.One will come from your blog and another one will be from your hubpage.
    So Google will consider that they are copied content and might ban your blog from search result page.

  47. hey im 16 years old bt the adsense says that the payee needs to be above 18 years. What should i do please help…

  48. hey for getting adsense account in india your website needs to be 6 months old what should i do. Is there any other way of earning revenue on hubpages. PLEASE HELP!!!

  49. how about using a positive title to your hub? Instead of “do not know”, how about using a title such as “how to present an argument as a student”?

  50. Papabear – with over 1500 articles on this site – each with open comment sections I am not able to respond to all comments, but I will make a quick update to this article talking about where I am now with them…

  52. Hello Bob,

    thanks for all the info. I am considering to join Hubpages now. My goal is not to earn directly from AdSense (however, it may be nice bonus), but promote a new outdoor game called GeoCheckpointing. I have written some SEO optimized articles and submitted to Ezinearticles and other article directories. From your experience, if I write a 500 word long hub and a 500 word long article which I submit to top 10 article directories, can I expect more readers at Hubpages?

    Thanks!

  53. Thank you for your articles. I don’t understand everything I read but I hope to continue researching and become successful. I have created an account on MTurk ($1.20 so far) and I will try to get into HubPages as I enjoy writing. Your articles have been inspiring!

  54. Hi Bob, just finished reading your article and it was brilliant. I bet you already know that from the response you received. What wondering what your hubpages profile name is. I will definitely follow you up there – K Kiss from hubpages

  55. Hi. This is a great post, it seems like a fun easy way to earn money. I have a couple of questions, though. Maybe I need to do more research to find the answer but, does this money-earning apply to everyone, or only for people living in the States? And how does it get to you? Do you give some kind of code of an account to be credited with it or how does it work? And again, does this account has to be American. Or is it here when the google adsense comes in?

  57. Maybe because then you don’t have to pay to host your own blog? (and if you end up generating enough traffic to make decent money of it, I do believe you’d need to pay for a domain name)

  58. I was pretty pleased to find this site. I wanted to thank you for your time for this particularly fantastic read!! I definitely savored every part of it and i also have you book-marked to see new stuff in your blog.

  59. Does anyone else find them too strict and difficult with their approval process? They don’t like my fitness site and do not allow linking to it because they said it was
    1. adult content (they later said that was a mistake and retracted that but I wasted a lot of time trying to figure that out and their response took days)
    2. Prohibited because it’s a fitness site. But it’s not one of those cheezy one-off sites that sell acai berry or other BS. I actually give a ton of info for free and am quite dedicated to it.
    3. Contains a “lead capture”.

    So I removed ALL links. There are no links whatsoever though I do mention my site and I do say “dot com”. And I got another email saying it links to a prohibited site even though are NO links! geez

  61. hey thanks for the info, i realy want to make money online and i think this is the right one for me…

  62. For some reason Hubpages makes you wait for 6 months before you can earn ANYTHING. I found this hard to understand. I could see maybe making the hubpages earning program a wait, but to not allow you to earn from Adsense, Amazon, ebay, etc for 6 months seems a bit extreme. What is my incentive to push hard for the next 6 months? Maybe you could aim for creating awareness but that seems a bit harsh. Who knows what will change in 6 months. It would be nice to see a few pennies at least in appreciation for all your hardwork. Dunno, maybe I’m seeing the glass half-empty but I’m probably going to spend the next 6 months placing my blogs in places where I can earn something.
    Regards,
    David

  63. Hi Bob I stumbled on hubpages by accident, I loved your article, but have two questions for you. First must hubpages be approved before they can be published? Why and I’ve heard that one must at least write ten hubpages before adsense will approve? Why do they make it so difficult?? Thanx Bob

  64. Hello

    Thank you for this informational post. Please suggest – I don’t have an adsense account , can I still go and make account on hub pages and start posting there , while waiting for adsense approval (if I sign up today)

    Or would you advice otherwise ?

    Thanks
    Saakshi

    • You can start hubpages without asdense account but then you will not earn anything from your articles from ads. Hubpages give you earning options only as something additional, but the main reason to join there is to write and share it with the others. Hoewver if additionaly you want to earn they give you such options. You can still earn from Ebay or Amazon with hubpages.

  67. I just published my first hub today. If only I could have seen your article an hour earlier. I’m happy to have stumbled upon it and look forward to implementing the strategies you suggested. Congrats on your success and thank you for the post.

  68. Great article.
    Thanks for going into details and sharing your experience with Hubpages.
    Will be joining the site right away as I’m looking for other ways to make money online except for my ebooks. I don’t want affiliate links on my blog and it seems like Hubpages is the best option for that so far.

    All the best,
    Lidiya

  69. I have been a hubpages writer since I believe 2012. I have a little under 200 hubs written. Because I have not been able to spend the time required to figure out the payment part of this system, and I do not use hubpages for money but as a place to practise my writing and to see what people like to read and just because.

    Also, for a while I was unable to spend any time online because I did not have a computer, rules changed and I was unable to update all those articles as was wanted by the powers that be. I should have some money stacked up somewhere but I dont know.

    I do intend to spend some time fixing up things and doing the keywords etc. and I intend to take some of the lesser read articles off my account. This is my last attempt to make any kind of money at this, and if I fail again I think I will try on some other site. I think I may actually understand this sysem enough to make it work, at least on a small scale.

  72. So, all I need is a PayPal account? I do not need a Stripe account for Hubpages?