That's great Jodah,
I've come back to HP after a time away, and it's really the only site that pays you. Even if there is a slow month, soon you would get paid every other month if you couldn't get your numbers up to the payout. But now that the summer is over (at least in the U.S.) usually the traffic picks up.
I never got an Amazon payment, my topics aren't easy to use with products. Don't worry about that so much, there are so many rules against promotional hubs anyway. It feels good, doesn't it?