Hubpages Review From A Member's Point Of View

Hubpages is a platform on the internet where people from all over the world get to publish articles of interest, tutorials, poetry, short stories and even opinion pieces.

Hubpages was created by Paul Edmonson, Paul Deeds and Jay Reitz way back in 2006.

The site is one of the most popular publishing platforms on the internet and has an active forum where members can post questions, make suggestions or argue with each other. Hubpages.com homepage has Google Page Rank of 6 (other pages on the site might be lower).

To join Hubpages you need to be 18 years or older and a valid email address. Some countries may be prohibited from joining so check first. You may also use your Facebook account to sign up. You can also connect your FB account after signing up.

As with anything that involves residual income it will take a while for you to start earning on Hubpages. For many people it takes over a year to reach the minimum payout of $50 and this is just from ad impressions.It took me 11 months to reach payout. You have to write many articles that are search friendly in order to get organic traffic to your hubs.

Earning from Ebay or Amazon.com is not easy as it takes a certain type of hub to earn from this. You have to be quite good at referral marketing and product reviews to sell anything. In the time I have been a member here I have only sold two eBay and one Amazon items.

You may think that referring people to the site or to good articles of interest is easy but not so. Many people find the site by searching the internet and only a few sign up through referral links. Using your referral trackers to get traffic to other hubbers articles may work with Facebook but not so easy elsewhere.

There are several ways to earn on hubpages and all you need to do is sign up, learn the ropes and write.

1. Ad impressions: This is the most popular way to earn on Hubpages. You need to write quality material that will attract organic traffic from search engines. Your hubs should be what are called evergreen content which simply means that the information provided can't get old. Ads are placed in your hubs and each time someone views your hubs you get paid. The amount paid per impressions depends on the ad value. You also have the option of adjusting the amount of ads displayed on your hubs by adjusting your setting to "high ad level" or "low ad level".
2. Affiliate programs: The second most popular way to earn on the site is by promoting Amazon or eBay products in your hubs. The best way to do this is to write product reviews or promotional hubs on the items you are promoting.
3. Referral trackers: There are two ways to earn through the Hubpages referral program. You can have people sign up and you earn a portion of what they earn or you send traffic to other people's hubs and you earn a part of what that hub earns. You may place you referral trackers in your hubs with links to other people's work, place your trackers on Facebook, your websites and blogs.

As of February 17th, 2014, there are

• 884,880 - PUBLISHED HUBS
• 67,838 - PUBLISHED USERS
• 173,817 - QUESTIONS
• 715,497 - ANSWERS
• 2,534,657 - FORUM POST
• 18 - STAFF MEMBERS

In order to earn on HP you must:

• Have a Paypal account. Without this you will not be able to get paid as Paypal is the only payment system currently offered on the site.
• Have a Google Adsense account. The reason being that Adsense is the primary ad supplier for Hubpages.

Affilates

• To earn form Amazon.com you must have an Amazon associates account. Very easy to do. If you are an Amazon.com customer with a customer account, use the same info to sign up.
• To earn form eBay you must also have an eBay affiliate account. You can sign up through Hubpages which make it easier.

• If you are looking for a quick money making website then hubpages is not the place for you.
• Many users have had delays in having their adsense accounts approved let alone having their adsense accounts barred. Your adsense account being barred has nothing to do with the site really but Hubpages does seem to attract spammers which seem to click repeatedly on ads.
• As I mentioned the site seem to attract spammers. There have been instances where spammers leave hundreds of spam comments on hubs.
• The forums have also been a place that attract spammers and sock pockets.
• Due to the stringent rules many hubbers have left hubpages and opted for publishing on other content sites or their own blogs and websites.
• The new changes seem to not be sitting well with many hubbers. I myself have found that some of the features such as the "idle hubs" feature seem to be affecting the indexing on my hubs on Google.
• Some hubbers complain that they have been forum banned for no reason. There seem to be a moderator problem in the forums.
• If your content gets stolen, be prepared to fight the battle on your own as HP has made it clear that your content is your own so you will get no help there.
• Hubpages seem to be slow moving when it comes keeping spammers at bay. They do however have spam filters for comments left on your articles but as far as spammer signing up...well that needs to be addressed.

Hubpages is a great place to learn and earn. It may take a while to get your articles to start earning as they age but the site provides all the tools you need to get started. They have also been working very hard to rid the site of low quality content.

There are numerous hubs both by HP and other hubbers about SEO, and internet marketing that you can read to and learn from. There are also dozens of HP tutorial hubs to read for information on how to best utilize HP's features.

The site does have the propensity for change and has been rolling out new features recently. Some of these features, however, have not been welcomed by the entire community.

New advertisers also seem to be on the way which will mean more revenue to users without Adsense. This, of course is just in testing mode and nothing has been concluded.

If you are looking for a revenue sharing site where you can earn residual income from your knowledge, Hubpages is the place to start. The hubbers and staff are generally friendly and are always willing to lend a helping hand. If you are stuck and post a question or forum query, a hubber is usually the first to respond.

Hubbers also come together to fight the demon of content theft. If you want to know how supportive hubbers are, post your grief, heartbreak, or anything you are facing in the forums and you will have support from people you have never been in contact with.

Hubpages not only has great community support but staff also join in the fun and will send you kind words and advice if needed.

Like any other business or organization Hubpages lay out the rules for all members to follow. There are rules for using all the features that the site offers. Breaking of the rules may result in being banned temporarily or permanently.

In most cases, you will be warned before being banned. Some infractions will result in more serious consequences. It pays to visit the help and learning centers before venturing into the forums or writing your first hub.

Knowing the rules will help to reduce the risk of you making the mistakes that will penalize your account. See complete rules here.