What is Hubpages - Write Articles, Build Links, Drive Traffic, Earn Income

Before I started writing on Hubpages, I spent hours researching about Hubpages, if you landed on this page, you are like I was 8 months ago when I was looking for the hubpages scam. I had worked quite hard on building a website for my husband who owns a small private dental office.

One morning, I received a phone call from a large search engine optimization company (SEO), they wanted me to hire them to manage my online presence for $800 month. Their service included updating my business listings such as google places and drive traffic to my website, they explained to me that the more clicks to my site, the more my site will rank on the search engines. Their services would include 2 articles a week on hubpages. The fee was more than I expected to pay and I decided to check this thing out for myself.

I opened an account the first day I visited Hubpages because it's free and it would allow me to post links within each article to a particular website. I wrote my first dental article on how to choose a good dentist and I linked related subject matters to my husband's website. Each article allows for 2 links to one specific website "URL". I continued writing dental related articles, I made sure and discussed issues that were relevant and important to the general public, answered questions and provided ideas that would only be known by someone from within the industry.

I had plenty to write about but in order to get new fresh ideas, I visited articles written by others, some were good, some were bad, and hubpages allows you to vote on them, while I was visiting other articles, other writers were visiting mine, I was quite excited when I received the first comment from someone that found my article helpful.

Building links to my dental website really helped drive traffic to important subject matters within our website pages, it really boosted our ranking on google places, we maintain the first page position at all times, the information is always fresh and interesting within the website and it relates to the links coming in from Hubpages, this is considered "organic", something Google and other search engines love to see. I was quite satisfied at this point and couldn't ask for more, until I started noticing other writers have links to Amazon, Ebay and Google ads that show up on their articles, I read a few articles about this subject and found that you could actually earn some money from these links within the articles, how cool is that, drive traffic to your website and earn extra money, it sounds too good to be true, I figured, it's not costing me anything but time, and I'm already writing articles, I'll test this thing out.

I visited the earnings section under "my account" on Hubpages and realized that Hubpages makes it so easy to setup the various affiliate programs, this allows you as the writer to become an affiliate of not just some fly by night company but you're talking the big guns, Google, Amazon and Ebay, the user friendly interface allows you to configure an account with each one including their own Hubpages Ad Program.

How Brilliant, we as writers provide Hubpages fresh content, which intern gives Google relevant areas to post their advertising, but Hubpages isn't selfish, they share the profit. As an article writer, any earnings from Amazon, Ebay or the Hubpages Ad Program is 100% yours to keep. The Google Analytics tool allows Google to crawl each article you write and allow it to be more visible when people are searching.

My goal when I started this whole thing was to just build links, when i first saw $.10 of earnings in my account I must've jumped out of my seat, my husband thought I was nuts, "I've never seen you so excited about a dime", but it is quite exciting to see yourself rewarded for good work, besides the hubpages community is very supportive, a lot of traffic comes from web searches but many of the visitors to the articles are from within hubpages. As I wrote more articles and diversified the subjects I write about, I've seen my earnings increase. I am not quiting my day job anytime soon, but it's deffinately rewarding to be able to earn extra income 24/7, while we sleep, the web and web searches do not.

Anyone that loves to write can join Hubpages, all you have to do is sign up. Don't wait like I did, setup your affiliate accounts right away:

1. Google Adsense (allows google to place ads in your articles)
2. Amazon (allows you to place advertisements from Amazon and earn 100%)
3. Ebay (allows you to place advertisements from Amazon and earn 100%)
4. Hubpages Ad Program (allows you to earn 100% of the earnings)
5. Google Analytics (allows google to crawl or index your articles for more views and you monitor the traffic)

Hubpages has a wonderful learning center for new beginners, as a platform Hubpages is quite user friendly, they make it easy by providing all the tools necessary to publish articles, setup accounts and earn income.

Although Hubpages provides all the tools, you must put those tools to work, I will list general rules I personally follow when writing articles:

1. I choose to write articles I'm passionate about, passion stands out even in writing
2. I choose keyword rich titles that would be used for searches regarding the subject I'm writing about.
3. I make sure my article is tagged properly, those tags are your golden goose, but make sure and stay within limits, remember the term "more is less". Use tags for things discussed specifically in your article.
4. I always add an Amazon and an Ebay link for a few items relating to my article
5. I always end each article exactly how it began, Google loves to see a complete story, try to fit the title as the last paragraph in the article
6. I make sure and spell check each article and read it to see if it makes sense. A well written article will thrive, a reader will loose interest if you don't use proper grammar or spelling
7. I use photographs relating to the subject and capture the audience when they visit my articles
8. I visit, read and comment on other articles, if you support the community, you will also be supported.
9. After I publish each hub, I make sure and share it with my friends and family via email, Facebook, I also submit each article to Reddit, StumbleUpon and Digg. All you need to do is click on the Share button below your article. This will help drive traffic to your article, which will drive traffic to your website and to the links that earn you money.

The choices are limitless, I've written articles about How to properly brush your teeth, since I'm a mother of triplets, I enjoy writing about subjects relating to everyday experiences such as my article what to expect when you're expecting multiples and recipes for odd dishes such as Hummus. Most importantly enjoy what you do and you will succeed.

I have come to truly enjoy writing, sharing and earning on Hubpages. Remember, there's no cost involved in setting up an account, so go ahead and try it for yourself, whether you're looking to just write articles, build links, drive traffic to your website or earn extra money. Hubpages allows you to do them all in one user friendly interface. Good Luck!