My Experience With the HubPages Ad Program: Pros and Cons Of HP's New In-House Earning System

So, if you're reading this you've probably heard a lot about how HubPages has started courting big name advertisers to add an extra revenue stream. This is great news for members who are looking to diversify their income or are looking to increase their earnings.

For some strange reason, I was one of the few people the HubPages team chose to be part of their new program. I was a little skeptical at first, but I can say without a doubt that the HubPages Ad Program is a huge success!

Read on and I'll show you some of the pros and cons of the new program and talk about how it increased my online earnings (in a roundabout, not-disclosing-my-meager-income-sort-of-way).

Pros

• The eCPM is good. Real good. On average, I've earned around $3.00 per thousand views. It has never, ever, ever been less than $2.00, often coming in at over $4.50. Many unoptimized Adsense accounts will struggle to earn even the lowest boundaries of my average HP earnings.
• The earnings are consistent.There have been no random days of earning 20 bucks followed by days of pitiful earnings. My experience has yielded very few banner days but no disappointments , either. It is very easy to estimate exactly how much you will earn by the end of the month.
• The payout threshold is low. Only $50 to get your money sent to you by PayPal. It might not seem like a big deal to those who earn their income online, but for smaller publishers who struggle to make the $100 minimum to be paid by Google, it will put money in their pockets sooner.
• The advertisements look great! Since the ads are coming from respectable, high profile companies and brand names, you'll see better looking, image ads. That means no more hastily slapped together .jpegs of nude elf women, no more ugly clipart, and no more obtrusive text ads.
• HubPages has remained profitable through the Google Slap - Many Hubbers have reported very poor Adsense earnings after the whole Google debacle of February 2011. I was one of them. While my earnings per Adsense click went down, I continued to make good money from HubPage's ad program.

Cons

• You will lose Adsense revenue - Real talk, there's no getting around it. More ads mean less Adsense clicks. I experienced about a 40% decrease in Adsense earnings once I began to serve HubPage ads. This was more than offset by the higher earnings of the HP ads. However, authors who are focused on getting extremely high click values from specific keywords should keep this in mind.
• More Ads Means Less Affiliate Clicks - Like the loss of Adsense revenue, I noticed a drop in Amazon and eBay clicks. It was smaller, though, about 10-15% vs. the previous weeks.

I have only had a month's worth of experience with the HubPages ad Program, during two traditionally poor months for online earnings. I do not know if HubPages earnings will increase in the winter shopping season the same way Google's might. However, for those looking to make a consistent, regular income, the HubPages Ad Program is a huge step in empowering writers with new, meaningful opportunities to earn.

If you're interested in the trying out this brand new opportunity, sign up for HubPages today and try it out.