Hubpages Ad Program- A Beginners Perspective
Welcome to Hubpages, a site that offers the average person the ability to write and publish content on the Internet without having to worry about purchasing a web domain or designing their own website. it also offers an established site that helps bring search and community traffic to what you write, right from the beginning. Many of the people that write here, including me, do so with some hope that they will be able to make some money from their writing. I like Hubpages because it lets me write what I want to write about, it's just a bonus that I might get some money out of it.
The typical user here uses Adsense, then maybe some variation of Amazon and Ebay links. Hubpages just recently opened up their new Hubpages Ad Program to all users. Like many other newer writers, I asked and researched on the forum if it would be worth enrolling in the program. I decided to enroll in the program after about a day and thought I would share some of my initial observations for those of you that haven't decided if you should enroll.
Getting Signed Up
To get signed up for the Hubpages Ad Program you will first need a Google Adsense account and a Paypal account. You will also need to provide some tax information as part of the sign up. I know some people are cautious about giving away social security numbers on the Internet, which is wise. Hubpages states that they use encryption to make your information as secure as possible.
Now, when you are signed into hubpages, click on "My Account" in the top right hand corner of the page, then you will see a list with all of your Hubs, at the top of that is a tab that says "Earnings." In the Earnings tab, you will see "Affiliate Settings," from here you can sign up for Adsense, Hubpage Ad Program, Amazon and Ebay affiliate programs. Make sure you sign up for an Adsense Account first if you are going to do the Hubpages Ad Program, if you already have it, you are a step ahead.
Now follow step by step instructions toenroll in the Hubpages Ad Program. It will ask you to associate your Paypal account and enter tax information. Once you have entered all of your information you can enable your account at anytime. I signed up for everything, then waited before enabling it. It only took me a couple days to decide to enable the Hubpages Ad Program, once you do it is a simple click to get it started.
What do you think of the Hubpages Ad Program?
Initial Observations
I'm not going to say that the Hubpages Ad Program has made me rich, because it hasn't. I'm writing this more to give you an idea of what to excpect when you first switch, especially as a newer contributor to Hubpages.
My Adsense earning so far have been pretty low, I have only received a couple clicks this month, and maybe a few pennies from impressions. I noticed with the Hubpages Ad Program that I appeared to be getting more income from impressions. I haven't had a click from it yet, but I have been averaging around a penny per impression. That may not seem like much, but getting more income from impressions will definitely increase income in the long run, especially once I start getting clicks along with it.
The Bottom Line
After only about a week with the Hubpages Ad Program I am excited about what it will do for me. My eCPM for the Hubpages Ad Program is signifcantly higher than Google's Adesnse program. If you are on the fence about enabling the new program, give it a try. You will likely see a drop in your Adsense earnings, but watch your eCPM, I would imagine you will see an improvement.
If you tend to get a lot of views, but not a lot of clicks, it looks like the Hubpages Ad Program will reward those views and impressions more than Adsense does. You can also disable the Hubpages Ad Program at any time, or resume it, so if you want to take a break from it to compare it with Adsense. Let me know your experiences with the Hubpages Ad Program in the comment section below.
Update- 09/11/2011
I first posted this Hub in April and it is now early in September 2011. I have had a little more time to evaluate the Hubpages ad program. I have not been impressed with it as time has gone on. It isn't necessarily that much worse than Adsense, after all, my eCPM is still higher using the HP program than on Adsense.
The biggest disappointment is that the eCPM has dropped to almost half of what it was for the first month or so that I was using the program. So now, not only have my views been down, like many others are stating for around that time, but I am getting fewer impressions and making less on each impression that I get.
I'm now having a hard time deciding whether or not I want to disable the HP program for awhile and see how that affects my earnings. After all, a single click from Adsense can often beat several days worth of earnings from the HP program.
I would love to hear any additional comments that you have. What have you noticed about your own earnings over the last couple months? Do you have the same opinion about the program, or has it changed?
Comments
I'm glad to see you wrote a discussion on this topic as a Hub. Hopefully the comments will flow in and we'll see how other Hubbers are doing. So far I see the same results as you. A penny per impression. Maybe less actually. But we get paid for impressions, unlike Adsense.
My AdSense income seems to be reduced by the same amount I am getting from the HP Ad Program. I can't know this for sure unless I discontinued the Ad Program and then watched to see if AdSense went up by that same amount. But I'm not going to do that as I don't like making too many changes to quickly. The stats would get all meaningless. I'll give it more time to see what happens.
As for your Hub, great work! I voted up.
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Thank you for reading Glenn, while I did get a few pennies for impressions from Adsense, they were very few and far between. I also noticed a lot of people said that their Adsense dropped, but very few in the forums mentioned whether or not the Hubpages program made up for it.
I'm definitely interested to hear more people's opinions on the subject so that we can get a better understanding of how it is working for the general Hubpages population.
My experiences so far have been similar.
Still, it is very early still.
I certainly see good potential here, for us to earn as well as for us hubbers to collectively be a prime source of targeted exposure to bring in even more advertisers.
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DDS, thanks for reading and it's interesting that you have had a similar experience, you're right, time will tell.
I am making a lot more with the Hubpages Ad Program than I did with Google AdSense. The good thing about the Hubpages Ad Program is that it encourages you to write hubs that get a lot a traffic. The more traffic, the more earnings. Google AdSense was much more of a gamble. Even a good hub with a lot of traffic might earn little or nothing, if none of that traffic turned into clicks.
So far I like the Hubpages Ad Program, but I can see how if you wrote a hub that had high pay per click keywords in it, you might actually do better with Google AdSense, if you got some clicks. But that's a big if, since it's a lot easier to get someone to read your hub than to get them to click on an ad. My clickthrough ratio with Google AdSense was very disappointing.
I have not yet created my first hub. Instead I spent the last few weeks working through my plan for developing an income stream sufficient to allow me to retire in another decade.
I have a half-dozen major areas that I will write about. And from what I have read so far I need to create one quality article per week for the rest of my life. I also need to open accounts elsewhere and cross-link between them. In addition, I should find affiliate programs as well.
Very informative, Adventure Colorad. I just set up the Hubpages Ad Program on my hubs. I'm curious, though, is there a specific day of the month (after someone reaches the $50 threshold) that a person gets paid? I don't see any information other than "once a month."
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Veritis, that sounds like quite the plan you have, good luck and get started writing!
futonfraggle, I don't believe there is a specific date for when they will pay out, it has to do with how long it takes to get everything added up and ready. It will most likely be towards the end of the following month. For example, if you reach the payout threshold in May, you will most likely get paid at the end of June.
My first hub is published. I have a second well underway and have solid ideas for six more. I am enjoying this so much I even stopped playing World of Warcraft.
It takes me about 8 hours to research and write one hub. I am considering writing two per week instead of one.
There is so much to learn. How do I research keywords, for example? How do I backlink? How do I find affiliate programs?
All in due time.
wen hubpages ad program earnings added to paypal? tell me pls?
Thank you for sharing your info about this, Adventure Colorad. My experience is about the same. For the newbies, I hope they come to understand that you really don't start getting any payout until you build up a big body of work. I have 70 hubs, and still have not reached payout. But I don't have my own blog and HP makes it easy to write on any topic. Thanks again, we are all wondering about the changes!
I'm trying to figure out why out of 200 visits to my hubs last month I have less than 10 hubpages ads impressions, and another 20 for adsense. It's just weird.
Thanks for sharing.
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I just made an update at the end of this article, if you haven't stopped by in a while, make sure you read my recent thoughts and let us know what you think about the HP ad program now!
Hello everyone, my adsense application got rejected 3 times already, because insufficient content, has any one gone through the same issue ? and How to create a better hub to be accepted for adsense program, I have seen same results when my adsense was active (1 cent per impression or little less) i believe the key to a successful hubs is to optimize the hub for keywords, outbound links, inbound links etc ... Then you will start to see the good traffic coming in, there fore you make big money. and at that point i believe adsense will make you much more money. If any one need a Seo optimization software, please contact me @ ussa191@live.com You will skyrocket your traffic easily
Question: Can a husband and wife team use the same Google and gmail address for Adsense? I have made such a muck up with me signing up for adsense, with my own Google account and I do not want to make it even more complicated by another gmail address, because I sign in with my Facebook link and that works for me.
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I believe that you would be able to. You can use your adsense information to sign up at multiple websites. Your earnings would be combined into one account and you would get one payment when you reach the threshold.
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