I've been writing on HubPages since 2009. Since then, I have learned a lot about creating articles that bring continuous monthly income long after publication.
HubPages is part of The Arena Group (formally Maven). It's not a blogging site. They only accept magazine-style articles. That means content that stands on its own merit to attract organic traffic.
On many other writing platforms, writers earn revenue by acquiring paid subscribers, such as with Medium and Substack. But HubPages attracts organic traffic from search engines, and income is earned from advertising. So writers can concentrate on creating quality content without spending time promoting their work.
HubPages is not just a single platform. It's an entire network of 30 niche sites. That unique feature among writing sites helps avoid being considered a content farm. Placing related articles together under specific niche domains improves search engine ranking.
Writers must be experts in their written subject to get approved for publication on any niche site. Otherwise, their articles remain on HubPages' home site, earning little to no ad revenue.
That is because HubPages focuses on top authority figures for their content. To be an authority with your writing, you need to be a professional in the field you're writing about or be involved in any other way.
For example, it's acceptable to be a user of a product you write about. That makes you an authority on the product. The same goes for medical content. Writers need to be either a professional in the field or a patient with direct experience. Once again, one is considered an authority figure if they have had experience with an ailment they're writing about.
I've written about several medically related subjects, and I'm not a doctor. But my articles were based on personal experience with the ailments.
There is a term for that. It's called "Your Money, Your Life," or YMYL. And that has specific rules to be considered an authority. More on that in a moment.
I find organic traffic to be a goldmine because there are always additional readers looking for answers to things online. They do a Google search and find articles that answer their questions.
Google is strict with favoring quality. They rank based on view duration—the length of time readers remain on the page—which is an indicator of quality. But they also rank on spelling, grammar, and the author's expertise and authority.
HubPages uses algorithms that detect when articles use proper grammar and other criteria for stellar quality.
Content that falls under "Your Money, Your Life" can impact readers' health, finances, and safety. Therefore, writers must be qualified to provide such information.
Another term that's important to understand is E-E-A-T. That stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These things are crucial for YMYL-related articles.
So when writing YMYL content:
HubPages' editors know the importance of giving Google what they want. Therefore, only the highest quality stellar articles are published on the niche sites.
New articles first reside on the home domain (at HubPages.com). Then, if the algorithm detects stellar quality, the editors review it within a few weeks (sometimes just days). If approved, they move it to the appropriate niche site.
That helps with ranking because Google does not like content farms. As a result, articles that are combined with unrelated content are ranked low and get little organic search traffic. So it's important to keep related content together under a single domain. That's why HubPages has 30 individual domain names in its network.
Articles that are of poor quality remain on the home site. They are still published but don't have ads and will not make money. However, if an article has potential but lacks stellar quality, it may be published on a "discover" domain with ads until the author improves it to qualify for a niche site.
In 2012 Google introduced the Panda algorithm, which put most content farms out of business. HubPages was hurt too. I saw my income drop to half. But they quickly took matters into their own hands. That's when they created the niche sites for the best articles so that Google would recognize the intent of each domain and rank them accordingly.
When articles reside with other content on the same subject on a single website, they rank better in search engines. That is because it helps Google determine the subject matter, and index it appropriately.
HubPage uses several methods to monetize articles. They developed two strategies to increase ad revenue: Header Bidding and Exchange Bidding Dynamic Allocation (EBDA). Both methods allow advertisers to bid on ad space. The highest bidder gets the ad space on our articles. Ads are rendered by AdSense, a Google advertising media. But other ad agencies are used too.
Authors can also place Amazon ads on our articles, but only when the item is related to the subject, as indicated by the title. In addition, it must be clear to the reader that the author uses the product.
That avoids making it seem spammy, which is another thing Google frowns upon. And therefore, HubPages is careful to prevent improper use of Amazon ads. Your Amazon ads will be snipped if you don't follow the rules. However, when used appropriately, they can bring additional revenue.
An example to show you how I make the Amazon ads relate 100% to the title is my article describing "Five Books by Benjamin Franklin About Self-Improvement."
The income from all the methods above is shared 60% for authors and 40% for HubPages. The money is distributed to authors at the end of the following month after posting. But Amazon residuals are paid at the end of the second month since Amazon delays payment to account for possible returns.
When you write on HubPages, you agree to allow them to edit your content when necessary. Editors occasionally review high-quality articles for possible improvement. The theory is that it's worth paying professional editors to enhance articles that are already doing well. It brings them up another notch.
When they see something that needs attention, they edit it to comply with HubPages' standards for the network sites. Most of the edits are done to fix errors with title capitalization, make complex sentences simpler to read or add subtitles to help readers who like to scan.
Having professional editors examine our content is a great benefit. The improvements they make help increase Google's ranking. That brings more revenue for authors as well as for HubPages. In addition, I discovered that the editors' changes also helped me improve my other content because I learned from seeing what they do. So it's a win-win for all of us.
It's only fair to bring to your attention the negative side of the platform so you can make an informed decision before you spend a lot of time writing for HubPages.
Since "The Arena Group" took over hosting HubPages articles, they have inundated our content with an enormous number of ads. I realize they think this brings in more revenue, but authors are making a fraction of what we were paid before the takeover due to much less organic traffic.
It's difficult to know if that decrease is due to too many ads interfering with reader friendliness or for some other reason.
From my perspective, and that of many other authors, the frequent placement of ads disrupts the reading flow, often leading to readers giving up and leaving. Google interprets this behavior as a lack of value in our content, resulting in a drop in our search rankings.
So, even the best-quality content is being hurt by how our content is hosted. Nevertheless, based on my experience writing on many other platforms that have gone out of business, I still feel HubPages is the best platform. We don't have many choices of professionally managed platforms on which to publish.
You can start by registering for a free account and then creating your HubPages profile. Then I recommend you study the learning center before writing articles. You can get to it by clicking the "Help" button that you'll see at the top-right corner of any page on the site.
To get paid for your views, you'll need to have a PayPal account. When you have it, go to the earnings page on your HubPages account and enter your PayPal email address under "Payment Settings."
Welcome to the community of professional writers.
See a list of my tutorial articles with tips and advice for writing on HubPages.
