How HubPages Works

It's an easy way to publish your thoughts, stories, articles and even recipes. You don't have to worry about the design and layout, you just bring the words. The tools are provided. At no cost. Yes, that's right. HubPages is free.

It's not only free, it is built in such a way that you, the content provider, can make money from it.

Rewarding not only having the opportunity to publish quickly and easily in a community environment fuelled by 14,000 other Hub authors to an online audience numbering in the millions (over 2.4 million unique visitors per month), but it's financially rewarding as well.

Browse and upload images. Type (or copy and paste from a wordprocessor document) your words. Click and drag to organize the layout.

HubPages is designed to be easy. Try it and find out for yourself how true that statement is.

HubPages Inc had three objectives to supply to its users:

- Easiest tools for hub creation.

- Easiest way to build traffic through powerful under-the-hood search engine optimization.

- Easiest way to collect royalties on published content.

Discover for yourself how well they delivered on those promised.

HubPages provides the webspace, the tools, and even a community so you can build quality content filled pages, without having to worry about the design, the upload and the upkeep.

The community is a bonus. It's a thriving hot bed of likeminded individuals who are also building their own network of pages with the same focus on quality.

And search engines love a Hub like site. They can regularly send their spiders and bots to index the site and find fresh new pages of unique content.

Choose a topic, research it, pick some appropriate products (from Amazon and Ebay) and publish.

HubPages don't promise you the ability to make a living from "Royalties". But they do provide you with the right tools and there are ample opportunities in which you can use HubPages as an online revenue stream. No guarantees for you, no guarantees for me. But I'm here giving it a shot because I can see the long term benefit of utilising the site.

The HubPages “Royalties” provides you with an easy way to take advantage of the Internet’s top ad revenue and commission generating tools.

Through HubPages you can easily set up affiliate accounts with Google, eBay and Amazon. Or use your own if you've already got them.

Google automatically displays ads in your Hub that are relevant to your topic.

eBay and Amazon products can be featured in your Hub. Choose the products which best complement the content of your page.

If you don't have a Google Adsense Account you can easily sign up for it straight after you've registered a HubPages account.Though it is best to have a bunch of good quality hubs before you do so.

Pageviews or "impressions" are split between the author (you) and HubPages Inc.

A pageview is each time a visitor views your page. Each pageview is a chance for the visitor to click on an Adsense Ad (which is pay per click) or click on an Amazon or Ebay Ad (which is pay per sale).

So "Pageviews = Potential Revenue".

Which of course means an important ingredient other than having a page with good content and quality advertising is "traffic" (visitors coming to your page). But we'll discuss that soon.

HubPages Inc use their share of the potential revenue to keep HubPages in business. You can use your share for whatever you please.

HubPages splits the impressions with you in the following way:

1. Your own Hubs: Hubbers receive 60% of total impressions.

2. 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.

3. 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 you refer visitors?

We cover it in this chapter: How HubPage Tracking Works

1) If someone signs up for a HubPages account via your referral link, you get 10% of their pageviews for the life of their hubs. That doesn't take away from their own pageviews, HubPages Inc graciously give up an extra 10% of their share to you for spreading the word and getting others to join up.

2) You can refer other peoples Hubs and get a cut of the pageviews. 9% or 12% depending on whether there's an signup referrer involved getting a 10% cut of the pageviews. This cut comes again from HubPages Inc's share of the pageviews. So it's a win/win situation when you promote or link to a fellow Hub Authors page. Their article gets exposure and you get a reward for sending them traffic.

I am drafting a more detailed report on how referrals work and how to set up tracking codes. I'll link to it from here so check back later.

There are various ways to promote your hubs.

There are also a few ways that you should not.

1) Don't spam.

Spamming isn't just emails in your inbox that you haven't requested. Or only automated programs used to register and flood forums and guestbooks with links to dubious sites. It's also normal people who try to promote their own websites. Usually by making excited postings to forums and social bookmarking sites without thought of the long term active members of such sites.

The consequences of spamming are numerous and varied. Bottom line is you don't want to find out what those consequences are. See www.squidoo.com/spamming for more information.

2) Social networking. Don't bombard social networking and social bookmarking sites. Used thoughtfully they can provide valuable backlinks and a trickle of traffic. It's up to the members of those sites whether or not your site/page is cool or useful. And if they think it's exceptional you will be rewarded with a large surge of traffic. Which will eventually, probably sooner than later, peter out. Be sure not to oversell your site or overpromise. Be honest in your descriptions.

For a list of 150+ social bookmarking sites see www.squidoo.com/socialbookmarkingsites

3) The guys from HubPages Inc have written a couple of must-read articles: Getting More Traffic to Your Hubs and The Long Tail of Search Traffic

4) Read and Learn. There are a lot of good books available at Amazon, your local book seller and even at your library. I figure that if a publisher is willing to take a gamble bringing an authors book to print then it's probably got a lot of useful information in there. It may very well be information you find somewhere online for free, but where would you start? But a book by an accomplished author is all right there in your hands.

5) I'm drafting a very long and exhaustive report which will be available free and online after it's finished. In the meantime start publishing original and unique content rich hubs so you've got something good to promote.

Sign up for HubPages now... and start earning while you continue learning.

You know how it works, you've signed up, now lets get behind the wheel!