What You Need to Know About Making Money on HubPages

HubPages is a "unique publishing platform and community of writers and readers" that offers an opportunity for writers to earn an income from their writing. It's free to join and use. Hubpages uses a revenue-sharing model, which means the writer and HubPages both take a share of ad revenue earned on each article. So, can you make money writing on HubPages? Possibly, yes. Hubpages isn't a scam. It is an entirely legit platform that will send your revenue share to PayPal each month. If you earn more than $50, that is. How likely is it that you will make more than that each month?

That will depend on how much you write and what you write about? I have been writing on HubPages for more than ten years. I currently make around $350 a month. Sometimes more, sometimes less. That might sound like a lot to some people. But it might sound like very little to others, considering that I've been writing articles for ten years. But I often went for months at a time without publishing anything. If I had written consistently, I would be making much more. It is time-consuming to write and research articles, which is something you need to take into account.

How Much Money Could You Make?

I tracked my earnings for a month to determine how much I make per click, and the result was 0.007 cents. So for every 1000 clicks, that's $7. I usually get around 1400 to 1600 views per day. Sometimes I get spikes in traffic up to around 2500 views. That's from 191 published articles. Only 75 had views in the last 24 hours, while 63 got zero views. Only one of my articles always has one hundred plus views. Three others regularly go over a hundred per day. 

I'm making money because I've got a lot of articles. Some get dozens of views; some get 1 to 5 views, and some get none at all. But with a lot of content, it adds up. All of this means it's possible you may have to write for months before you start making money. Based on my 0.007 cents per view, around 7000 views a month are needed to get a $50 payout. That's about 230 views a day. You might get lucky and get those views from one or two articles. Or you might need a few dozen. It depends on many factors, including how well you write, the demand for that particular topic, and how much competition you have in search results. 

In the first five months of 2021, I published 20 new articles. In August 2021, those 20 articles received approximately 175 views a day. Based on these views, it would take about seven months to earn an extra $50 per month. In my experience, the longer an article is published, the more views it gets. I've had articles that didn't start getting decent traffic for close to a year. It's now May 2022, and those same 20 articles receive approximately 250 views the day, an increase of about 75 views a day.

You can also place Amazon links in articles and make money from that. I don't make much from Amazon. Amazon revenue can be very dependent on what you write about.

All of this is a long way of saying; that if you decide to start writing on HubPages, don't expect to make money straight away. It may take months. 

What to Write About

In my experience, writing on HubPages is like throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks. I've written articles I thought would do well that get a trickle of traffic. And articles I expected to get low traffic do very well. I haven't figured out any particular formula for what does or doesn't work. 

Hubpages recommends writing about what you know and writing evergreen articles. Think about your hobbies. Think about your job. Think about your interests. Do you like to cook? Do you enjoy fixing things? Are you good at certain things like training dogs or playing an instrument? Do you know a lot about a particular topic? Do you own some products you love or hate? Have you figured out how to solve a stubborn problem? Think about things you know that others might search for online.

Evergreen articles are articles that have long lifespans. Avoid writing about current affairs because people may only be interested in them for short periods. You want to focus on writing about topics people will be reading about for years to come. If you publish an article today, you could be making money from it for years to come if it's an evergreen topic. Hubpages recommends refreshing articles regularly. I try to make updates to my articles about once a year. However, I have some articles on streaming services that I have to update more often. People may ignore an article on streaming TV services as an example if it's more than a few months old because things change so often in streaming. Keep articles on topics that undergo frequent changes as fresh as possible.

To get an idea of what to write about, go to discover.hubpages.com/. When you write an article on HubPages, that article may stay on Discover, or it may be moved to one of several Hubpages network sites. These include Axeladdict for all things automotive, Delishably for cooking, Reel Rundown for entertainment, and lots more. Go through the featured articles on each of the network sites to see what topics are being covered. 

Risks to Consider

Before you start writing, consider that HubPages could go out of business. They have been around since 2006, but you never know what the future holds. The increased use of ad-blockers makes it harder for websites that depend on ad revenue to make money. Larger publishers are turning to paywalls and subscriber models to bring in revenue. Hubpages won't be able to do that. If you start writing now with the hope of making hundreds a month five years from now, there's no guarantee HubPages will still be there. 

Save Your Work

When you write an article, save it outside HubPages. That way, if they do go out of business and you've written many articles, you could try setting them up on your own website or blog. When I publish an article, I go to print on my browser and then 'Save as PDF.' I then save those PDFs in Microsoft Onedrive.

If you are considering writing on HubPages, I hope I have given you some idea of what to expect. It can take time to start making money. But that also depends on what you write about. Not all articles will get traffic. Remember to write evergreen articles on a variety of topics. And the more you write, the better.

This article contains Amazon affiliate links. Clicking on these links doesn't cost you anything extra, but it helps to support this blog.

Does Talent Exist? Are Great People Born or Made?

Are great people born, or are they made? Are some people born with the required talent to become world-class chess players, scientists, musicians, architects, authors, or sculptors? Or is time and practice all that's needed for anyone to become great? In other words, are skills developed?

Chekov’s Gun and Foreshadowing: What Is the Difference?

Chekov's Gun Versus Foreshadowing

If you are writing a story, and you mention early on that the main character has psychic powers, your audience will expect those psychic powers to have relevance later on. If you never refer to those psychic powers again, your audience may feel cheated. By failing to bring up the psychic powers again, you made a "promise" to the audience that you failed to keep.

However, if you don't mention that your main character has psychic powers early in your story, but later on, that character uses psychic powers to solve a problem, the audience will be confused. They will wonder where these random powers came from.

To avoid confusing an audience, a writer must introduce elements early in the plot that will have some relevance at a later point. Chekov's Gun and Foreshadowing are two commonly used dramatic principles that do just that. Since they serve a similar purpose, it's easy to confuse them. However, while they have similarities, there is a major difference.

How to Create Twitter Cards for Blogger

Instructions to implement Twitter Cards on Blogger

For a long time, I wondered why some links to articles I tweeted turned into preview links while others didn't. When I set up my blog, I wanted to use this feature. It took quite a bit of searching to figure out how to create them. The main problem was that I didn't know what they were called. And because I didn't know what they were called, I didn't know what search terms to use. Then I learned that these preview links in a tweet are called Twitter Cards, and knowing that led me to instructions on how to implement them.

Twitter Cards are quick, easy, and, best of all, free to implement on a blog hosted on blogger.com. But you have to exercise some caution because it involves making minor code changes. To practice doing this before implementing it on my actual site, I set up a temporary blog with just one post. I wanted to be sure I could get everything to work without breaking anything. These are the instructions to add Twitter Cards to your blog.

What the Heck Is Anagnorisis Anyway?

The Wizard of Oz

Anagnorisis is hard to pronounce but relatively easy to understand. After all, it refers to something familiar to anyone who reads or watches works of fiction. The Greek word loosely refers to change. It is the point in a story's plot when a character's eyes are opened, and they make a critical discovery. The Encyclopedia Britannica calls this a change from "ignorance to knowledge."

Anagnorisis is often crucial to plot resolution. It is the moment the protagonist gains some insight into their true nature, the true nature of another character, and/or the reality of a situation. The best way to understand this is to look at some examples, starting with The Wizard of Oz.

A Simple Guide to Showing Versus Telling

When perusing book reviews, you may sometimes come across reviewers excoriating an author for doing too much telling and not enough showing in a novel or short story. Aspiring authors are often advised to show, not tell and students may earn a low grade on an essay because they told rather than showed.

The Effect of Playback Speed on YouTube Watch Time

Many new YouTubers wonder if playback speed (1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75. and 2x) on YouTube affects watch time. This is important because to monetize videos, a channel must have 4000 watch hours in a year in addition to having at least 1000 subscribers. Even after getting 1000+ subscribers, 4000 watch hours can be a difficult goal to reach for newer channels.

How to Create a 6 x 9 Document for Self-Published Books in Google Docs

To upload a self-published paperback book to Kindle KDP, you need to create a document using one of the recommended sizes for a novel. These sizes are:

• 6 x 9
• 5.5 x 8.5
• 5.25 x 8
• 5.06 x 7.81
• 5 x 8 

There is a Page Layout feature in Google Docs. However, it does not offer these sizes or a custom size option either.

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To create custom sizes, you need to use an add-on. On the top menu of Google Docs, there's an option called Add-ons. Click on it, then choose Get Add-ons. Search for "page sizer" and then choose Page Sizer, which is a free tool.

Page Sizer is a Google Docs add-on used to create custom page layouts

Click Install and go through the various permissions options. To use this add-on, go to Add-ons again and choose the Page Sizer tool. Click Open. You can now create your own custom page layout size.

Use Page Sizer to create custom page layout sizes for self-published books