Getting Started
What browsers will work with HubPages?
PC: Internet Explorer 6+ and FireFox 1.5+. Other present-day browsers should work, but we have not tested them. Our development work is conducted using FireFox.
Mac: FireFox 1.5+. HubPages does not currently support Safari.
I’m trying to sign up, but the form doesn’t accept the funny characters I type in. What can I do?
Check your browser settings first. Cookies must be enabled to sign up and publish on HubPages. Here’s how you can enable cookies on your browser. Then try signing up again.
If you’re still unable to do so, your computer might be behind a firewall that doesn’t allow cookie enabling (this happens in many corporate computer systems). In that case, you should either try to use a different computer (like one at home), or contact us for additional assistance.
Where do I get support?
Consult our handy Starting Out Guide (PDF file), which should answer most of your questions regarding signing up, publishing your first Hub, and interacting with our community.
If you still have questions, feel free to post in the forums to get support quickly. You can also send us an email if you're experiencing technical problems. We'll respond as soon as we can.What's a Hub?
A Hub is a rich web page that you write and design. Each time you want to write another article, you'll create another Hub. It's just like in a website, which has multiple web pages. You have the capability to add text, pictures, videos, and links in your Hub.
What's a Hubber?
A Hubber is anyone who creates a Hub.
How do I make a Hub?
There are four simple steps.
- Create: You’ll need to create an account (It only takes a minute or two.)
- Name: Pick a title for your Hub, and add some tags that describe it.
- Add: Create the content capsules of your choice (Text, photo, products, comments, etc.) and fill them with whatever you’d like.
- Publish.
Do I own a topic?
HubPages does not assign ownership of a specific topic to a Hubber. Anyone is free to write on any topic they like. However, by creating a high number of Hubs filled with original, useful content, you will boost your HubPages status and you may become recognized in the community as an expert.
What should I name a Hub?
Think of your Hub as an individual article. What you name it should be germane to the content of the Hub. We recommend using the main phrase in the title for how a person would search for the information in the Hub
What's a capsule?
When you create a new Hub, you’ll be working with capsules – what we call the building blocks of the Hub. Any kind of content you want to enter into a Hub requires a capsule. There are text capsules, photo capsules, RSS feed capsules and more. You can adjust the color of the capsule, and where it appears in your Hub.
How do I add or edit a capsule?
Put a Hub into edit mode. On the right hand side of the page, you’ll see a box titled “Add More Stuff.” These are the capsules you can add. Click on a type of capsule. It will automatically be added to the bottom of the page, where you can edit or move it.
How do I move a capsule?
Use the directional arrows on your capsule to move it. If you’d like to change the order of how the capsules appear, simply select the tool on side of the capsule to drag and drop and move the capsule accordingly. When you’re finished, be sure to click on the update button.
What are tags?
Tags are keywords and phrases that describe your Hub. Tags can be important for people using a search engine to find Internet material on topics. They alert the search engines that you have relevant material on the topic described by the tag.
Let’s say you were creating a tag for this Help page. Your tags might include words such as “Help”, “FAQ”, “Questions”. It’s wise to combine words to make phrases such as “HubPages help pages.”
On the HubPage's home page, why are Hubs designated Hot, Best, and Latest?
Each explanation is based on different factors. Here’s the breakout:
- Hot – Hot Hubs are Hubs that received a lot of recent traffic. They may have been recently picked up by a high-traffic site like Digg.com and appeared on the front page. These Hubs will receive a lot of traffic in a very short time.
- Best – The best Hubs are determined by HubScores. See the explanation of HubScores below.
- Latest – These are the latest Hubs.
What's a HubScore?
We use this to determine the quality of individual Hubs, much like Google ranks popular pages. Many factors contribute to our rating scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being our top score. A HubScore is used to determine your Status.
How is HubScore computed?
HubScore takes into account a number of factors, and will vary quite a bit from the time a Hub is published as data about its performance continues to stream in. The most important HubScore components that you should be concerned with include:
- Amount of traffic, including percentage from sources other than HubPages
- The length of the Hub (the more unique writing, generally, the better)
- The uniqueness of content (copying content already available on the Web will be penalized)
- The number of thumbs-up votes from unique users
- The overall quality of the Hubber (author HubScore and Status)
We reserve the right to change the factors used to assess a Hub’s HubScore as we continue to determine those that measure a great Hub.
The bottom line is if you write original, useful content, your HubScores will reflect the quality and work you've put into them.
How does HubPages determine an author's Status?
Your Status is determined by a combination of your HubScore and the number of Hubs you’ve created. This system is very important, because it’s our way of ranking the quality of your Hubs, and it ultimately helps us weed out spammers. Look at the chart below. Your Status is designated by the various names in the chart, i.e. “Hall of Fame”, “Rookie”, “Spammer”, etc.
HubScore # of Hubs 0-24 25-29 30-74 75-100 400 or more Stop Prolific Elite Hall of Fame 100 or more Spammer Producer Very Good All Star 20 or more Rookie Experienced Good Expert 19 or fewer Novice Junior Average Prodigy Note that simply publishing a lot of Hubs won’t boost your Status. This is to prevent spammers from simply dumping loads of content on HubPages. Spammers tend to pack content full of keywords just to drive traffic to their site. Our HubScore algorithm alerts us to these people, and we automatically lower their HubScore (Note the designation on the chart below labeled “Stop” and “Spammer”, and the corresponding low HubScore.)
To boost your HubScore, your content must be original and useful. A lot of high HubScore Hubs will lead to a higher Status. And if you have a high Status, HubPages will help drive more traffic to your site. High-Status Hubbers bring great value to the Internet community. They reflect well on HubPages, and will be rewarded for their efforts.
What are Fan Clubs?
You can build your own Fan Club of loyal readers. It’s an easy way to keep people connected with newly published Hubs. You can build your own Fan Club and join the Fan Clubs of fellow Hubbers.
Membership in a Hubber’s Fan Club provides your readers with:
- Email notification whenever you publish a new Hub, along with a link and short excerpt.
- The ability to leave fan mail. Once you’ve approved the fan mail, it will be displayed on your Author’s Profile page.
- Learn about your favorite fellow Hubbers. When you go to the My Account page, you’ll see a My Fan Clubs tab. There you’ll find your favorite Hubbers, along with data on how many fans they have, favorite Hubbers, HubScores, and the date and link of their most recent Hubs.
You can invite people to join your Fan Club by clicking on “Invite people to join your Fan Club” link on the profile page.
How do I join a Hubber's fan club?
There are two ways to become a fan:
- On a Hub, you can click on the “Join (author’s name) Fan Club” link in the About the Author box on the right.
- On the Hubber’s profile page, you can click on the “Join (author’s name) Fan Club” link.
You can invite other people to join your favorite Hubber’s Fan Club while you’re signing up to be a fan by clicking.
What are Requests? What can I ask?
Requests allow you to ask other Hubbers to answer a question for you in the form of a Hub. You can request a specific Hubber to field your request. When a Hubber has published a Hub answering your request, you can receive an email notifying you.
You can ask almost anything you like, provided it’s not adult, obscene or in any other way in contradiction with our Terms of Use. Keep your request short and specific. Good examples include:
- When is a good time to visit Vietnam and why?
- Where’s the best place to buy a used guitar?
Please note that requests are not for asking others for their opinion("What is your favorite...") or for very simple questions ("What is a...").
- If you need help using HubPages, please do not make a request. Visit our Help Forum instead.
- If you're curious about other Hubbers' opinions (like what they like to do for fun), please visit our Hubber's Hangout instead.
What are Hub Groups?
As write more Hubs, you’ll eventually want to organize them so your reader can easily navigate through all your work. Hub Groups is the tool that can help you organize your Hubs and make navigation easy.
Start by creating a group that includes Hubs that share a common trait. Follow the steps below to make your group.
- Add New Group: To create a group, click on “Add New Group” button and name the group. You can choose if you want the name to appear on the drop-down box.
- Edit Hub Group: Click “Edit” and you can rename the group, or change its appearance status on the drop-down box.
- Delete Hub Groups: Click “Delete” to remove the group. This will not delete any Hubs that are part of the group. They will automatically be moved to the “Orphan Hubs” group that appears at the bottom of the page. (See example at left.)
After you’ve finished, a box will be displayed on the page of any Hub that is part of groups. Inside the box is the title of the Hub you’re currently at, followed by an arrow. By clicking on the area, you can see all the related Hubs in the group. You have the option of including a name for the Group that appears in the box.
Do you have any banners or widgets for HubPages that I can embed in my blog or website?
We do! We have a nice assortment on our banners and badges page. Pick whichever you like, and simply copy and paste the code below it into your blog or Website. You can even embed them into your MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Bebo or other social community site profile. Remember, you can also insert your URL tracker into the embed link in order to earn a lifetime referral bonus.
Who owns the content that I post on HubPages?
The content is entirely yours. We simple provide the technology to support it. You may add a Creative Commons license to your work if you feel it’s necessary.
What do those little red and blue triangles mean?
In your Hub Traffic Statistics, you might have noticed small red and/or blue triangles next to some of your Hubs' titles. These simply mean that traffic to this particular Hub is trending upwards (red) or downward (blue). They simply give you a quick visual indication of how a Hub's traffic patterns are changing.
What is Hubtivity?
Hubtivity tracks all the activity on HubPages by you, the Hubbers you are a fan of, and the tags you're a fan of. New Hubs, new comments on Hubs or in the Forums, new requests, and related administrator actions, all show up in this feed.
You can change your settings to show exactly the types of site actions that you care to track by clicking the edit preferences link under Hubtivity Settings to the upper-right of the Hubtivity page.
If your Hubtivity is empty or you would like more things to show up, then we suggest joining other Hubbers' fan clubs (look for the link below the Hubber pic and bio in their Hubs, or on their Profile pages), or choose some favorite tags on your My Tag Fan Clubs page.
Making Money on HubPages
Can I make a living with HubPages "Royalties"?
We consider the program to be a nice bonus, but it should not be the main reason why you participate in HubPages. There are revenue generating opportunities with HubPages, but we are careful not to over-promise any results.
How does the program work?
The HubPages “Royalties” provides you with an easy way to take advantage of the Internet’s top ad revenue and commission generating tools.
- You can set up affiliate accounts with Google, eBay and Amazon.
- Google automatically displays ads in your Hub that are relevant to your topic.
- eBay and Amazon products can be featured in your Hub – you decide which products to highlight.
HubPages earns its revenue from these ads, so we split the impressions with our writers.
What are impressions?
Impressions are what drive revenue generation. An impression occurs whenever an ad appears on a Hub. HubPages earns its revenue from these ads, so we split the impressions with our writers.
How do impressions generate revenue on HubPages?
After you’ve joined the affiliate programs from eBay, Amazon and Google, ads for these three companies (and we’re looking to add more) appear on your Hubs. Any revenue generated during one of your impressions (a click-through with Google, an actual purchase with Amazon or eBay) is 100% yours.
HubPages splits the impressions with you in the following way:
- Your own Hubs: Hubbers receive 60% of total impressions.
- The HubPages Affiliate Program: You can refer new writers to HubPages and they become Hubbers within 30 days, you receive an additional 10% of their Hubs’ lifetime impressions.
- Traffic Referral Program: If you send traffic to any Hub, you’re entitled to either 9% or 12% of total impressions. You’ll receive 9% if the Hub you’ve referred people to already has impressions allocated to an Affiliate. If there are no Affiliates, you’ll receive 12% of the total impressions.
Whatever is left from the splits above goes to HubPages. Note that these splits apply only to HubPages and User Profile pages. On all other pages, such as a referral to a Tag page or the HubPages home page, you’ll receive 30% on a traffic referral, with HubPages getting the rest.
How do I sign-up for Google Adsense?
Getting signed up with AdSense is easy. Please follow these step-by-step instructions (Also includes a troubleshooting section if you're running into problems).
How do I get an Amazon affiliate ID?
You have to sign-up for the Amazon Associate program by visiting Amazon.com. Click here to go to the sign-up page.
You’ll be asked to fill out information about yourself, such as name, address, payment information. You’ll also be asked what your site – in this case, HubPages – is about. The entire process is very quick.
We then provide you with step by step instructions, including text that you’ll need to cut and paste into appropriate places. Once you’ve been assigned an ID, simply add it to your HubPages profile so you can begin earning commissions immediately.
How do I get an eBay affiliate ID?
Like the Amazon program, you’ll need to visit eBay to sign up for their affiliate program.
On April 1st 2008, eBay discontinued the old commission junction affiliate program and replaced it with a new in house offering. We are working on integrating with this new program and expect to have the work complete before the end of April. Until we complete this work, those of you that are new will just have to wait. Check back here or in the official announcements forum to determine when you can get started.
If you have questions about the impression sharing system, send us an email for further clarification.
How does the Traffic Referral program work?
You can drive traffic to the Hubs of other Hubbers and receive a percentage of the overall impressions. The traffic referral program works the following way:
- We start with Unique Trackers
Every HubPages account has its own default referral tracker – referred to as a Unique Tracker. You can create additional referral trackers as you organize your link campaigns.
- Use the Unique Tracker to link to someone’s Hub.
Before you can link, you must be signed in to HubPages. Then, when you’re at the Hub you want to link to, look at the bottom of the page (or click the green share it button). There will be two boxes marked “link to this page” and “email this page”. You can click on these links and choose the Unique Tracker you want to insert in the email, URL or HTML code we will generate for you. From that point, you can either send the mail, or cut and paste the URL link or HTML code and place it wherever you’d like.
- The Traffic Referrals is guaranteed to be yours for 120 minutes.
If someone clicks on your link to a specific Hub, you are entitled to the traffic referral impressions for 120 minutes. We set this limit because there may be multiple Hubbers referring people to a particular Hub. No other tracker can replace yours during that 120 minute period. This is called the ‘first dibs’ rule.
- We start with Unique Trackers
How do I check how much money I've made?
Revenue updates from Google, eBay (via Commission Junction) and Amazon can be checked via the links below. They house all the revenue numbers. Your revenue generation will not begin until you’ve: 1. Signed up for Adsense; and 2. Signed up as an eBay and Amazon affiliate and put your affiliate code into HubPages.
How do I track the performance of Google AdSense on HubPages?
The easiest way to keep track of your Adsense earnings on HubPages is to create a channel URL in your Google Adsense account. This will allow you to seperate your HubPages earnings from your other sites.1. Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense/
2. Click the Channels link below the AdSense Setup tab.
3. Choose the AdSense for content sub-tab and click the URL Channels link
4. Click Add new URL channel, and in the resulting text box, enter the URL that you would like to track.
5. Click Add channels.The new URL channel will begin tracking data almost immediately.
What is the Flagship Hubs Program?
The Flagship Hubs program is an elite program for the very best Hubbers. It grants $25 for the completion of a Hub that meets strict standards, and must be written on a preapproved topic. There is an additional $10 bonus if the Hub gets at least 10 visits from each of 10 non-HubPages sources within 30 days of publication.
The Flagship Hubs program is limited to Hubbers who have published at least 5 high-quality, non-promotional Hubs. You can read more information about the program here.
Account Administration
I'm not getting HubPages emails. How do I fix that?
You should safelist hubpages.com, which means you designate us as a trusted sender. That way, our emails will not get stuck in your spam filter or junk mail folder. You can safelist by following the instructions here.
How do I stop getting email from HubPages?
If you do not want to receive email communication from HubPages or other HubPages users, it is simple to adjust your email preferences. There are three options:
- Allow HubPages to contact you? - uncheck this if you do not want to receive the HubPages newsletter, or other non-essential communications from HubPages.
- Allow other users to contact you? - uncheck this if you do not want other HubPages users to contact you. This will remove the "contact [your username]" link from your profile page and Hubs
- Receive email from your favorite authors? - uncheck this if you don't want to be notified when Hubbers that you are a fan of publish a new Hub
In addition to the settings above there are a couple of other places where you may have indicated an email preference:
- Comments Capsules in the Comments Capsule you can configure whether you want to receive an email notification when you get a new comment. By default, the capsule is set to email you for each new comment.
- Hub Requests when you make a hub request, there is a checkbox that says "Email me when Hubs are published for this request". If you checked this when you made the request, you can prevent new emails by closing the Hub request.
Please note that you may still receive an email notice if an administrative action has been applied to one of your Hubs, Hub requests, or forum posts. There is no way to turn off these critical communications.
How do I close my account?
If you would like to deactivate your HubPages account please send an email from your registered email address to team@hubpages.com with the subject "Close my HubPages account".
If you would like to cancel/delete a different account (something other than HubPages), you've come to the wrong place. We are not affiliated with any other Website or company, and we can not help you.
How do I change my username?
You can not change your username. If you'd rather publish under a different username, you can simply abandon your old account, and create a new one.Can I monitor traffic with Google Analytics?
If you want to dig deeper into the traffic trends on your Hubs, you can track your pages on HubPages using Google Analytics. Simply sign up for an analytics account and then enter the UA- code they assign you on your HubPages Affiliate Settings page.
These are the settings we recommend that you use when you sign up. You can use a different time zone if you like, but the data we report at HubPages is based on Pacific Time.
Website's URL: hubpages.com/profile/hubpages
(use the URL to your profile, not ours!)
Account Name: HubPages
Time zone country or territory: United States
Time zone: (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time
Be warned that the page view and referer data from analytics is never going to match up precisely with what we report. The method they use to collect data is different, so you should expect small discrepancies.
Hub Rules
Generally speaking, what am I allowed to put into a hub?
All hubs have to meet the site content guidelines set forth in the Google AdSense Program Policy, in the HubPages terms of use, and detailed below.
Our objective with HubPages is to support authors that have the desire and intent to develop a readership on the HubPages site, and to contribute in a positive way to the HubPages community. If your intended use runs counter to this objective -- for instance, if you're sole purpose is to get back links for other sites or to promote or sell dubious products through your hubs -- then please stop using HubPages.
If you're hubs are flagged for violations, we generally will give you an opportunity to correct the problem and republish the hub. However, repeated violations will result in your account being closed and all your hubs being unpublished. If you are unsure if your hub meets our policies, we will be far more sympathetic if you contact us for clarification before publishing the hub.
I want to write about adult topics, what is allowed?
Adult content is not allowed. Below are some examples of prohibited adult content. This should not be interpreted as exhaustive list of what is prohibited. If you are unsure if your content is allowed, please contact us for a clarification before publishing your hub.
The following are not allowed:
- pornographic images
- links to adult or pornographic sites
- discussion or promotion of sexual aids or toys
- detailed descriptions of sexual acts or practices
- excessive profanity
Am I allowed to create hubs about gambling?
Hubs that promote or link to sites that offer or promote gambling for money are not allowed. Discussions of gambling rules, strategies, or events are generally all right. If you are unsure if your gambling related hub is ok, please contact us for clarification before publishing your hub.My hub was flagged as substandard, what does that mean?
Substandard simply means that the quality of the hub does not live up to HubPages standards. Below are some common reasons that a hub may be flagged as substandard:
- "Test" or otherwise unfinished hubs
- Very little content
- Unoriginal or purely personal content
- Contributes nothing new in a heavily saturated topic
- Many broken links or links to low quality sites
- Links with deceptive or inaccurate link text
- Missing videos
My hub was flagged as overly promotional, what does that mean?
Purely promotional offers and Hubs designed only to promote other sites or businesses are not allowed. In particular, the following actions are likely to get your hubs flagged:
- linking repeatedly to the same site within a hub or across many hubs
- including links to a page that contains largely the same content as your hub
- linking to products or services unrelated to a Hub's content
- including more than 2 links to any one domain
- short "teasers" with links to "read more" at another site
- including promotional links on content that is unoriginal (i.e. not exclusive to HubPages); promotional links can only be included on content that is exclusive to HubPages
Please note that promotional links are links that you have any interest in promoting (your blog, your Website, affiliate offers, etc.). Links to well-known Web resources which you don't have any personal interest in (like Wikipedia, news sites, encyclopedias, open directories, etc.) are exempt from this limitation.
My hub was flagged as deceptively tagged or titled, what does that mean?
The title and tags of your hub must accurately represent the contents of the hub.
The standard a chosen tag must live up to is "Would a fan of this tag be interested in your hub?" -- if not, do use that tag. In particular, tagging your hub with a lot of very general tags, such as 'travel', 'entertainment', 'food', and 'music' when your hub is not specifically about these topics is liable to get you into trouble.
My hub has been flagged for duplicate content, what does that mean?
The hub seems to have text that is either copied from or to a large number of other sites, and has incurred a HubScore penalty as a result.
If your Hub is truly original or simply quotes another Web page in a reasonable manner, please request a review of the hub by clicking on "learn more" at the top of the hub. An exception is typically granted only when quoting is done to a minimum, or some commonly-used, public domain, or historical phrases have triggered the duplicate content detector. If your hub has been certified as original by the administrator it will appear at the top of the hub. Once certified as original no HubScore penalty will be applied.
Why don't you allow hubs in languages other than English?
At our current size we don't have the resources to properly create or administer a HubPages site in other languages. We hope to be able to offer our services in other languages in the future.
What does commercial mean?
Commercial hubs are required to have an ad level setting of High. Your hub is considered to be commercial if it meets any of these conditions.
- it is monetized through a non-hubpages affiliate mechanism
- it contains links to other commercial sites
- it promotes a for profit business, especially a business that you have an interest in
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