What is the earning potential of HubPages?

1. 59

   Skidayposted 8 years ago

   Hi,
   
   I've signed up and am ready to start making hubs in my specialised subject, but I was wondering what the earning potential of hubbig (if that's a word) actually is. I realise it all depends on how attractive your pages are and how good they are etc, but what are people actually earning? I am not doing this for mercenary reasons, but if I am going to put many long hours of effort creating good hubs, I would like to know in advance if it is worth it. If I spend a week creating a good hub to then earn $2 a month it would not be worth it.
   
   I'm not daft enough to think I'll be earning £000s a month, but I can't see any guidance on the possible returns.
   
   Thanks
   
   Andrew

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   1. 91

      VirginiaLynneposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      It really depends on whether you end up writing in an area that people are interested in reading and whether you are able to write the very best pages on the Internet in that area.  My advice is to spend the time to learn all that HubPages has in the learning center.

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   2. 95

      Solarasposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      You won't find a guide on earnings here, unless it is badly out of date. I totally understand your desire to know, but rules that have after the Panda crash have made Adsense and HP earnings mysterious.
      
      It will depend on your niche.  Some have higher advertising potential than others.  Skiing can have big money behind it, especially if you are discussing resorts in Aspen etc.  I mention that since Ski is in your name. 
      
      If you don't yet have an Adsense account you will need about 20-25 1000+ word  articles to get one.  And Adsense will want to see them out there for a while - 2-3 months at least.  You can't earn without an Adsense account.
      
      If you are writing about skiing and can give expert advice on the best equipment, slopes and resorts, and no one else is writing good articles in your arena, you can do well.  Check with fellow Hubber - Wrylilt for hubs on how to earn on Hubpages. She is very generous with her advice and successful here.
      
      If skiing is your niche - and you don't yet have any articles, you may want to go with a name like "Ski Resorts" or "Ski Essentials" to capitalize on that SEO from your subdomain.
      
      Best of Luck!

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         passionatelearnrposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I got approved after 10 hubs.I don't think 20-25 hubs are needed to get adsense approval.

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         1. 95

            Solarasposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Congrats!!

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      Rock_njposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      If you want to make money, my advice is to write about topics that have a lot of interest on the Internet, especially ones that are not well covered, so people searching for them will find your Hubs.  Also, make sure you an Amazon ad or two in Hubs.  Beyond the HubPages Ad Program (which is a good earnings base), selling items on Amazon can increase your earnings.  I would say you could buy a good meal for two each month with the money you earn here.  As far as paying rent, probably not, unless you went hog wild writing many Hubs and did everything right.

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   4. 54

      paradigm searchposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Payout every month, but it's a long road.

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2. 72

   relacheposted 8 years ago

   If you have no Hubs, your earning potential is zero.
   
   And if you'd read the rules, you'd know that site users are not allowed to disclose their earnings.
   
   The average site user makes somewhere between $2-$4 for every thousand impressions, although your mileage may vary.

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3. 88

   NateB11posted 8 years ago

   As Relache said, we can't disclose what our earnings are, so it's a bit of a difficult question to answer. But I can say that you either must be good at getting traffic or good at selling things through Amazon or eBay,  to make money here. To get traffic you have to be able to apply some form of SEO; that is, know what people are looking for online and whether your Hubs have a chance of being at the top of the search results in the search engine. Or you have to know what people will buy and write articles that reflect, very specifically, those products, in some way.
   
   And if you are pretty good at SEO you can get a monthly payment with as few as 20 or 30 Hubs. If the SEO isn't all that good or you just want to earn more, volume is important.
   
   The other alternative that I've heard about but is not something I'm all that good at so I don't know too much about it, is promoting your Hubs in some way, typically through social media.
   
   Short answer, if I'm not too late, is that yes you can earn money here at HP.

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4. 89

   WryLiltposted 8 years ago

   It's nice hobby money but will likely never be enough to call good regular money.
   
   However it's a great place to start your online journey and learn about traffic and SEO before starting your own website/s (where earning potential is unlimited once you know what you're doing.)

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5. 84

   firstcookbookladyposted 8 years ago

   do you mean... what subjects produce more income and traffic and therefore more money in your bucket? --You have to examine your own interests and go from there. Is there something that you spend money on, excessively? Write about that. If you are willing to invest 'big dollars' in something, others may too. If you know what you are talking about, write your words in conversation form and share your knowledge. Ask your reader questions through the poll mode to get feedback. Good luck. May the bucket of money drop in your paypal.

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6. 59

   Skidayposted 8 years ago

   That was an impressive number of helpful replies, thank you all. As was pointed out, the rules don't allow you to reveal your earnings, but I did get a jist of it. About 7 years ago I made a ski advice film called "How To Survive Your First Ski Holiday" which drew upon my many years teaching skiing (mostly beginners) in Austria, giving lots of general advice about going skiing for the first time. The problem was that the cost of advertising always exceeded the revenues from sales. So whilst the advice was all good advice and still remains just as relevant today I gave up on trying to sell the DVDs and I thought that was the end of it. Then recently I found HubPages and I thought, well since everything is all written and filmed why not try this route? The problem I found with my film was that most people who go for a ski holiday for the first time don't realise that they need any advice (any more then they think they need advice for a beach holiday) so they didn't want to splash out £15 for a DVD, but they might be more likely to do an internet search for advice. I assume that, although everything is filmed, the best thing to do would be to present the script in print so that search engines can find lots of content, as well as embedding the film in chapter sections. There are a few other subjects I could also write on, but the ski film would be quite a large ready made HP piece.

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   1. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      If you have a good specialist subject and can write a good amount of material on it, then I would certainly NOT recommend putting that material on HubPages.
      
      HubPages is a fun place to learn how to write online, but it does have its drawbacks. The big one, for a specialist subject, is that it's very difficult for your readers to follow you from one Hub to the next, and it's not possible to build up a loyal audience of readers ("followers" on HubPages are just other writers). 
      
      If you have a reasonable amount of material to write about skiing (say, 20,000 or 30,000 words), then I would strongly recommend you start your own blog.  Split your skiing script up into bite-sized pieces each covering a different aspect. 
      
      You could do it on Blogger.com, which is free:  you can put Adsense advertising on it, and sell Amazon or other affiliate products just like HubPages. 
      There is a learning curve to blogging but over time, you stand to make more income from a blog than from writing on article writing sites.  One tip:  think of "Labels" as Categories, and have a "Labels" menu in the sidebar so readers can easily browse all your posts by category.  No one is going to browse them by month so an Archives menu is a waste of time! 
      
      Another big snag with HubPages is that your material WILL be stolen and used on other websites, with no acknowledgment to you.

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      1. 89

         WryLiltposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Completely agree. With your own website you have the option to easily build up social media followers, an email list and test different types of advertising to maximise return. You can't do any of those things properly on Hubpages.
         
         However if your content is on heaps of unrelated topics and gets lots of traffic with low conversion, then Hupages is a fantastic place to make money from it.

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      2. 59

         Skidayposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Well I wasn't expecting that reply. Thanks for the tip. Perhaps I will try a blogger site. Thanks
         
         It's funny, I've got people following me already and I haven't written a single hub yet!

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            Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            That's because following is all about Hubbers networking with each other.  You sound interesting, so other Hubbers are signing up so they'll be notified when you write something.   There are also Hubbers who follow everyone on principle, just to get followed back - they will probably never read a thing you write!

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      3. 83

         ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Marisa, once again you are right. Everyone who's serious about this should be eventually thinking of creating their own sites.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Something else you might want to consider is putting the info you have to offer into an E book.  It generally costs nothing to do this, and if your book takes off, you can make a considerable amount of money with it.
      
      Sounds like you have a good mix of writing ability, experience and knowledge.  I will say, though, that unless you want to earn a lot of money and would rather just earn some, writing here at HP might work for you.
      
      This is what I do with my own niche.  I don't make a ton of money, but I enjoy writing and my niche, have made many friends here and have learned a great deal about online writing.
      
      If you have not done online writing in the past, this is the perfect place for learning it.  You will do a lot of work for a long time and earn practically nothing, but eventually (and I mean maybe a year or more) you can start earning.
      
      I made my first payout after 6 months but only randomly after that until I found my way.  Now I make it every month, have had 326,000 people read my work  and continue to learn.  For me, it has been worth every effort. 
      
      However, if money is what you are after, a blog or ebook may work for you.  I tried both, and both fell flat!

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7. 81

   Mark Ewbieposted 8 years ago

   I am not any good at marketing but you have a product to sell.  That immediately places you above those trying to make a few cents out of crappy Adsense advertising.
   
   Write selective pieces on very specific areas of your chosen subject.  Always add the video on as a buying opportunity. 
   
   Lots of pages about different aspects. That is lots of FREE advertising right there.  Google might send you some visits.  Ski places might link to them.  Costs nothing to try it.
   
   Experiment with Amazon ads - that ski stuff is expensive!
   
   Look at the competition but sell your honest knowledge and story in a truthful and accessible manner.
   
   It might work.

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8. 72

   relacheposted 8 years ago

   Before you attempt to sell anything, very carefully read the page below, especially regarding what HubPages calls "overly-promotional."
   
   http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/publishing-standards

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   1. 83

      ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Wrylit, I recently saw something you had written about developing more traffic on Twitter. Would you mind sharing a little of what you plan to do? You were so ahead of the curve on Pinterest.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I will be interested to see what WryLilt says - but generally, Twitter (like Facebook) is of value only if you have a specialist subject, where you can build a following of people interested in that subject.
         
         Unless you are a really brilliant writer, it's very difficult to build a following of people who genuinely want to read everything you write regardless of subject.  You'll get plenty of followers who just want to promote their own stuff or play mutual promotion games, but they have no real value.

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            WryLiltposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            In January this year, I decided I was going to make sense of Twitter, as it had been a social platform I avoided. I had 1,200 followers after 3+ years.
            
            Now, I have almost 17,000 followers and they're very niche in terms of my subjects of interest: Abuse, Parenting, Writing and Interesting Thinkers. On my pregnancy website Twitter, I'm about to reach 6,000 followers.
            
            Jeff Bullas said in a recent podcast that most people go on Twitter for an average 20 mins a day, so tweets get lost easily and he tweets every 15 mins, to cover a wider range of viewers. To do that, obviously, you need automation.
            
            To get my followers, I used Tweepi, to follow the followers of people who were in a similar niche to me.
            
            To connect with them I do a variety of things.
            
            - Use automation to some degree. Especially on my website twitter. I use "Revive Old Post" and "Edgar".
            - Apply the 1/10 rule, particularly on my personal account. I post a lot of thoughts, whinges, ironic situations etc. - You can see what I mean if you look at @SusannahBirch. I am a journalist, so I am used to saying things in the fewest words possible, but it still takes some practice to strip down to 140 chars. That said it's GREAT practice for your other writing, as you learn not to waffle and bore your readers!
            - Cross platform. Basically, if I see something interesting on Facebook, Google Plus etc, I'll go tweet it on Twitter. A lot of content goes viral on a single platform, but isn't seen on others.
            - Use Empire Avenue. Any tweet I want to get lots of eyes on, I buy a mission on EA for about 5,000,000 eaves (the site's like a virtual stock market/bank so after some time building, it's easy to get that much even daily). Those missions will usually get me about 50-60 retweets.
            - On my main account I tweet when I feel like it. 2-3 times a day. I actually very rarely reply to people, as many tweets get 2-10 replies each. I just "favorite" them. I'm more likely to chat to anyone of interest via direct message. This way I don't fill my Twitter profile with boring stuff. I also try to include the question in the reply, so the reply itself is easy to understand to others and also retweetable. "I think the way to fix [problem] is..." etc.
            -Post images. Particularly when I post an article I want to get eyes on. Why? Images catch more views in the stream AND they go into your "images library" in the profile sidebar. So even when the tweet gets buried, visitors to your profile often go through your images and retweet things from there.
            -Use your pinned post! Anyone stalking your profile sees that first, so it'll get the most engagements.
            
            I don't know if any of that helped, but hopefully something there does!

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9. 83

   ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago

   Wrylit, Thank you so much. This is extremely helpful. You are so generous with your advice.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      You'll notice how Wry keeps a separate Twitter account for her main specialisation and also has just a few very specific niches for her other Twitter account.  That's very important if you want it to work, and why it's very hard for Hubbers who don't have specific niches to benefit from Twitter.

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    ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago

    That's a good point Marisa. I think the niche angle is what is working.

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    paradigmsearchposted 8 years ago

    "What is the earning potential of HubPages?"
    
    For each hub...
    
    "You've got to know when to hold 'em
    Know when to fold 'em
    Know when to walk away
    Know when to run"

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