I've sat on this question for a few hours now, not really knowing how to word it.... but the question's festering away, so I'll ask it anyway.
This morning, while reading people's hubs, I found one person had stated in his hub that companies were using comments to get their company an inbound link ... and he would delete those ... but would accept payment in exchange for a link in his hubs. He then stated his rates.
Now, I don't have a problem with that at all. In fact, I'd like to do something myself (where appropriate), but a bit less "in your face" maybe
So ... is it actually against hubpages' policy to do this?
I don't think it is. I can't see anything wrong in what the guy's done. So - are you aware of any policy which would directly prohibit doing this?
If there are no objections, I can think of about 2% of my hubs that this might be appropriate for. I am talking a small paragraph, within a large/natural/proper article... I am not talking about blatant, in your face, dedicated advertising the hub for cash.
Anybody who does hub for cash, I'd appreciate a PM regarding how that's going for you ... because I'm sure you don't want to broadcast it here
Thanking you in anticipation of an interesting debate... and hopefully a definitive answer by the end.
All the best.
... over to you guys....
Just a quick "qualification"... say you'd written a very long hub all about knitting, and included in there some yarn suppliers.... if it would be acceptable at the end to say "If you're a yarn supplier and want to be included......it'll cost ya!"
Google has made it plain that they dislike paid links. However, "nofollow" links are fine.
I have no idea how HP feels, but you absolutely could do that on your own site with "nofollow". I do a large Consultants List that way. That happens to be free, but it could just as well be paid.
You and me are on the same track. There is quite a movement going on and only a few here are taking advantage with it.
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Sell-Links-On-Hubpages
Ditto what PCUnix said. Google has made it very clear that paid links are fine AS LONG AS they are NoFollow and do not pass any PR. Hubbers that engage in this practice may see short-term gain, but can hurt HP and the other hubbers in the long-term.
Here's the info directly from Google.
Google are really after people who pay outsourcers to put in 100 links/day every day ... for a month. I am talking about the random odd one or two here or there, which is a different thing entirely.
From here you can see that AdSense publishers are required to adhere to the webmaster quality guidelines, which say: Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. On the link schemes page, one of the examples of a link scheme they provide is Buying or selling links that pass PageRank.
Based on this, I would say that selling the random odd one or two is a violation of the AdSense policy. Whether you will be caught or not is another question, but I'd recommend against it.
When it comes to buying and selling links it is against the Google ToS, but the truth is pretty much everyone does something to inflate their ranking positions.
As to selling no-follow links, you have to ask yourself what the benefit would be of people buying them?
Given this thread, I just looking at one of my hubs that has a page one placement, and in some cases the first result on the page, for six variations of the search term on Google and also page one returns on Yahoo and Bing for half of the search terms.
Is this the type of hubs you would attempt to market?
And if I am interpreting this correctly, you are talking about outgoing links placed in the body of the article?
by Shadesbreath 15 years ago
I'm working on a hub that accesses certain government websites and other organizations. Each has a home page, and then branching pages with more specific information (Duh, I know, bear with me)...So, say I list the home page as a link. But then, on a subordinate page there are several...
by Sondra Rochelle 10 years ago
Someone recently stated that there are limits to how much you can link to your own hubs. Does anybody know the limitations?
by BenjaminB 14 years ago
I find it hilarious that Hubpages pushes the concept of helping new Hubbers yet my Hub which has had very good reception by the community has been flagged for being both overly promotional and substandard.I had 5 social bookmarking links,and 2 other links to free tools absolutely related to the...
by kschang 14 years ago
When one gets the message "overly promotional", one often does NOT see the links that are pointing to the same place. Is there some way to pop up the "offending links" similar to the way a dead link is highlighted in PINK? Or is that giving too much of a tool to abusers? Or...
by Has_aWayWithWords 15 years ago
I have had a hub flagged for overly promotional, I had one embedded link in my text and then I had the same link with a description in a link capsule..I thought the overly promotional was MORE than 2 links to the same domain or a link and RSS to same domain
by Glenda Goddard 10 years ago
Is there a way to restore our traffic after this Panda update?
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |