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Hubpages Income - The Real Story

Hubpages Income
Hubpages is one of the best places to come and write on the internet without outlying any of your own money.
It's free to join Hubpages today.
You have the opportunity to make money by sending traffic to your hubs and sharing the potential ad revenue with Hubpages. This happens in one of two ways; Google Adsense or the Hubpages Adprogram. It's important to remember that you will still need a Google Adsense account to participate in either potential income stream.

How You Earn Money on Hubpages
1. You monetize your hubs with Google Adsense.
You split the ad impressions with Hubpages 60/40. This means that sixty percent of the time the page will load your Google Adsense code and the other forty percent of the time Hubpages will display their ad code. This doesn't mean you'll get sixty percent of the income. It's almost impossible to tell what percent of the income you will get as Hubpages don't disclose their earnings from individual hubbers.
However, you only get income when someone clicks on your ad code. It doesn't matter how many times your pages are viewed as it's all about clicks and click values. Of course, more page views increases the chances of someone clicking.
There's no way to tell how much you will earn each month from Adsense or from account to account. It's down to what you've written about, how many clicks you get and the values of those clicks. That can vary significantly from month to month.
2. You monetize your hubs with the Hubpages Ad Program.
This means all the ads on the page, bar one, shows Hubpages ad code. They then decide what to pay you on a "cost per mille" basis, otherwise known as CPM. Basically you get paid a certain value per thousand impressions. You don't get paid the CPM on total views. Instead, the CPM only applies to sixty percent of your total page views. (This will be made clearer in this article later when we use actual figures to show you exactly what this means.)
CPM values vary from account to account and day to day as Hubpages decides what your CPM will be for each day you participate on the Hubpages Adprogram. It's not very transparent and there's little to no way to know how Hubpages calculates your CPM. Remember you are not paid for clicks on any of these ads. All the clicks are credited to Hubpages one hundred percent of the time.
You are only paid for clicks on a single ad unit located at the very bottom of the page, underneath the comments on the right. Again this ad is split 60/40 with Hubpages. If you are on the Adprogram then the income from this ad unit is unlikely to add significantly to your bottom line as the reader has to scroll past at least four other ads before they get to the one you are paid directly for.

Write About Anything You Want (within reason)
As mentioned above, it's virtually impossible to say with any kind of certainty how many views you would need to make XXX amount a month from activating Google Adsense on your hubs. For this reason, we can only do this accurately with hubbers who chose to implement the Hubpages Adprogram.
When people first hear of Hubpages they wonder if it's a scam or fake or some kind of dodgy deal. They can't believe that someone will pay them to write articles about whatever they want to write about. It doesn't matter if it's about belly button fluff, as long as it's written well and hasn't been copied from elsewhere on the internet. Although why you'd copy an article about belly fluff is a little bizarre, but I have seen stranger things... Anyway, you can get paid for writing articles, but before you rush out and think it's going to make you rich please think again.

How Many Page Views Do You Need to Make a Decent Income on Hubpages?
The purpose of this article is to give new and potential hubbers a reality check, so they aren't disappointed down the line after writing numerous articles and wondering why they are no closer to that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
In order to calculate how many views you need to make a decent income on hubpages there are a few maths skills we need to implement. I have made the maths as simple as possible. A lot of hubbers struggle understanding how their income is calculated or even what they have to do to achieve a decent income level. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you'll know exactly what goals and targets you need to make a decent level of income from Hubpages.
The first step is understanding your CPM. You can find this in your Earnings Report. CPM's seem to fluctuate between $1 and $7, according to what people have said in various threads in the forum and in the questions and answers section. It's hard to specify exactly what the range is as you are not supposed to share your CPM value. You can lose your Google Adsense account for this and also Hubpages tends to delete these kinds of comments very quickly.
Are You Towards the Lower, Middle or Higher End of the CPM scale?
So if your CPM is let's say $2 (just to make the figures really easy) then for every 1,000 impressions you'd receive $2. For 2,000 impressions you'd receive $4. However, if your CPM was $5 then for every 1,000 impressions you'd receive $5. For 2,000 impressions you'd receive $10. This shows you how important the CPM value and the number of impressions are in determining your income and success on Hubpages.
It's important to understand the difference between total views and total impressions. Total views are how many times your hubs have been viewed. Impressions are how many times your ad code was shown on the page, which is sixty percent of the time. So if you need 1,000 impressions to make $2 then you actually need 1666.66667 views (1,000/0.60 = 1666.66667)
If you want to make $1,000 a month from Hubpages then the table below will help you to set traffic targets so you know what to aim for. If we assume that every month has 30 days it will make the calculations easier, we just have to figure out how to make $34 a day ($1,000/30 = 33.3)
Daily Hubpages Income Goal
| CPM
| Daily Impressions Needed
| Daily Views Needed
|
---|---|---|---|
$33.30
| $2
| 16650
| 27750
|
$33.30
| $3
| 11100
| 18500
|
$33.30
| $4
| 8325
| 13875
|
$33.30
| $5
| 6660
| 11100
|
$33.30
| $6
| 5550
| 9250
|
$33.30
| $7
| 4757
| 7929
|
Yes you read that right. If your CPM is $2 then you need over 27,750 daily views to your hubs to make $33.30 a day, in order to make $1,000 a month. However, if your CPM is $7 then you only need 7929 views to make the same amount of money. That's almost a difference of twenty thousand views! This drives home the point about how important the CPM is in determining your success rate on Hubpages.
If you extrapolate this data out and show how many views you need a week, a month or a year, the differences become staggering. It becomes even clearer the task that lies ahead for hubbers with low CPM values.
Monthly Hubpages Income Goal
| CPM
| Monthly Impressions Needed
| Monthly Views Needed
|
---|---|---|---|
$1000
| $2
| 499500
| 832500
|
$1000
| $3
| 333000
| 555000
|
$1000
| $4
| 249750
| 416250
|
$1000
| $5
| 199800
| 333000
|
$1000
| $6
| 166500
| 277500
|
$1000
| $7
| 142710
| 237870
|
Yearly HubPages Income Goal
| CPM
| Yearly Impressions Needed
| Yearly Views Needed
|
---|---|---|---|
$12000
| $2
| 6 million
| 9.9 million
|
$12000
| $3
| 4 million
| 6.7 million
|
$12000
| $4
| 3 million
| 5 million
|
$12000
| $5
| 2.4 million
| 4 million
|
$12000
| $6
| 2 million
| 3.3 million
|
$12000
| $7
| 1.7 million
| 2.9 million
|

Is it Possible to Earn a Decent Income on Hubpages?
Well I guess by now you should have your answer on whether it's possible to earn a decent income on Hubpages with the Hubpages Adprogram.
$12,000 a year may seem a lot for writing online, but for a normal full time job this would not be a lot of money. Is it likely that you'd make this kind of money from Hubpages within your first year? It's highly unlikely as my poll shows on my Hubpages experiment for 2012. Most hubbers struggle to get their first paycheck, let alone $1,000 a month consistently.
Most hubbers don't get anywhere near these type of traffic figures, and if they do it's over a span of years.
Although this hub doesn't go into how many hubs would be required to sustain these levels of traffic, it's understandable that more than a handful would be required. If I take one of the most successful hubs I have written that averages around 500 views a day then that would be approximately 180,000 views a year. On this basis I would need less than 100 hubs. Unfortunately, it's more realistic that most hubs I have written average less than 100 views a day. Some only get a handful a month if I am lucky.
If I average out the number of views I currently have (which is 670,000) against the number of hubs I have (86), then on average each hub gets 7,800 views a year (670,000/86 = 7,800. You can figure out the average on your own account so you can get accurate figures for yourself and know how many hubs you'll need on average). If we use my average hub views as an example, then we can roughly calculate how many hubs I'd need to write to meet the yearly traffic target.
Writing hubs that bring in thousands of views is part luck and part strategy or experimentation. Not every hub you write is going to hit the traffic jackpot. In fact, the majority of them will be slow burners that take a while to reach their peak traffic stream. Some will wither and die and never see a decent stream of foot traffic.
CPM
| Yearly Views Needed
| Number of Hubs Needed
|
---|---|---|
$2
| 9.9 million
| 1269
|
$3
| 6.7 million
| 858
|
$4
| 5 million
| 641
|
$5
| 4 million
| 512
|
$6
| 3.3 million
| 423
|
$7
| 2.9 million
| 371
|
From the table above, I'd have to write at least 3 hubs a day in order to get anywhere close to achieving $1,000 a month from Hubpages.
If you have a high CPM on Hubpages then your chances of reaching a decent level of income are drastically improved.
It's important to note this is just a rough figure based on my average. I should mention that people who have high CPM's tend to write in certain areas or niches and this can result in higher advertizing revenue or income potential tends, but also tends to lead to increased competition. So it could be that those with higher CPM's may not average as much traffic per article. Each account will again differ on the basis of keywords chosen to target etc.
In an ideal word, we'd like to find niches or topics that have high traffic, low competition and high CPM's.
After reading this hub, you should have a better understanding of what's achievable on Hubpages and also the kind of goals you'll have to set and achieve in order to make the income you desire.
Good luck and let us know how you get on!
Comments
Thanks for this valuable information!
Very informative!
wowww.valuable information.now i can figure out how much hubs i need to make decent amount of money.
A well-researched hub!
Great knowledge shared about CPM. NEVER paid it much attention before!
Thank you for this fantastic article !
Thank you very much, very useful and inspiring to me
It's great to make $5 at every 1000 views, but at first I have to make 1000 views/ day, and then wait.
Good info. Very enlightening.
Thank you for that excellent article. I never knew how we earned money if it was not for clicks. When I signed up for Hub pages I was looking for a way to promote and market our books, including my own. I then never knew you could get paid for article writing. I'm now just a year with Hubpages and I leaned more about writing than ever before. I've sold my novels due to hubpages and made made friends who I value more than what I might get paid in the years to come.
I thought that updating our posts and linking them through blogs,websites and other means might make a difference over the years, but writing a hub every day I will never manage.
@Lauryallan thanks for the info..
So you mean to say google ads pay based on clicks and hubpage adprogram based on views? Is it better to opt only for hubpage adprogram?
I am learnring, and this helps.
You made me understand things that used to be just puzzles to me and I have just ignored. You have also clearly outlined with your tables the impact of traffic. You have just refined my goals for me. Thank you.
I bet this hub gets like 1k views per day haha, but good insight. 3 hubs a day is pretty reasonable if you don't work. Could knock those out in the mornings. I wonder how people are making money with Amazon affiliate on here. Do you do hubs around product niches? That's still a mystery to me.
great info for newbies trying to get their heads round this, thanks
Thanks for putting all this together. It's helpful.
Excellent info for a Squid learning Hub. I think I'd better accelerate my blog portfolio.
I have to read this again for. It to all sink in. Making money does seem to be a daunting task. Many thanks for this hub.
Thank you for the very informative article.
Thank you for the very detailed rundown and explanations. It was very eye opening to read.
Inch by inch, I'm beginning to understand monetizing hubs more and more. It's complicated, but worth understanding, and I appreciate the information on this page. Thanks!
Thank you for taking the time to write up such a clear and detailed explanation!
I sure have a lot to learn and will be returning this page, many times. Thank you
Thank you !
I've voted this up and am "following" you now :)
Thank you for this detailed look at earning here at HubPages. I'll be curious to see how my seasoned lenses do here.
I've gotten extremely curious about the possibility of having a decent flow of income from Hubpages, and this article managed to satisfy this curiosity without a gap of knowledge. At first, I thought having an income of even $2000 a month was possible... but after seeing the values that you have posted and the values that I have recently found out through my acceptance into the AdSense program, I realized how "impossible" it is. Thanks for the enlightenment, Lauryallan.
Valerie p Dais Thanks for the info on Amazon affiliate and AdSense. I think I will have to do some more research
Pretty amazing information, I'd only just signed with Squidoo (nothing published but pending) with the vision of being paid for my efforts. With the knowledge that nothing comes for 'FREE', profit sharing I thought was a fare trade. However, after reading your HUB, it's pretty clear that things are not that clear with HP. It's pretty obvious HP is a nice little money spinner for the owner/s...I have no problem with that...what I do have a problem with, is that it took a person like (yourself) to spell it out for people like me. Like sweet, not everyone on HP or other similar sites are here to make money, but just enjoy sharing. When things get cloudy or things are not disclosed to the end user, sorry but that's dodgy in my book, so for that reason I'll be going back to 'Blogger' till I find other sites to use. Yes I've heard of 'Word Press' but that sounds a bit complicated haa I'm a simple guy really just looking to supplement my income on-line, put food on the proverbial table. Many thanks for the information, your commitment to detail and the way you've written it so easy to understand, HP should put you on their payroll...awsum job...PEACE...
Very informative hub and one that really held my interest. Thanks for offering this vital information for Hubbers!
Catherine, I used text links to insert my Amazon affiliate code. I sold enough to get 6-7% instead of the 4.5% I would have with the Squidoo Amazon modules.
HP lets you insert your Amazon code in the dashboard, and then you're automatically using your own link in the HP capsules. The only thing I don't know is whether you can still do that with Adsense turned on.
Valerie, what does that mean "I used my own account for amazon sales?"
Awesome hub! I'll definitely be referring back to it from time to time. Thanks for the information! Believe me it's much appreciated!
On my Squidoo articles, my income was usually about half from the advertising revenues and half from Amazon sales (I used my own account). So it's possible to make a good deal more than this, though of course Amazon sales are impossible to predict for somebody else.
Where do I find he CPM number for a hub?
Wow, that's a complicated equation...thanks for writing this.
I just started. I earned one penny my first day with one hub and 17 views. I'll try a few more hubs and see how it all works out.
Lauryallan...It was very considerate and generous of your time Laury, to write this extremely informative hub explaining in such clear detail how our online income is determined.
Coming in to HP, I knew so very little and I have hustled to learn the ropes. I'm still far from being as knowledgeable as you, for instance, but thanks to people like you, willing to educate, I can keep learning.
UP+++
Thanks so much for sharing this! I like to see data on these things sometimes, so having the tables laid out before me was extremely helpful. I am new to this site but have written for several others and always wondered how these things worked.
I just looked at my earnings--Ironically, I made $33.47 yesterday with about 11,000 views (I get more on weekdays because of the topics I write on). I don't usually pay attention to CPM but I think mine is around $6 most of the time, so that would tie in very well with your calculations. I also noticed that I'm now just a 3 commentator ( was up to 8 at one point) but that is because I generally spend all my time writing Hubs and not doing other things on the site.
Interesting Hub--this follows pretty closely to my own experience. The one thing I think you need to add is time. I've been on HubPages almost 3 years and have just over 2.5 million views with about 300 Hubs. I expect to make about $8,000 this year, maybe more., mostly through HubPages earnings with a bit from Google AdSense and more from Amazon. I have a couple of article groupings which seem to have filled a niche market and which are evergreen, so I think this will be pretty stable. I was also writing copy for Interact Media for a while and could make about $400 a month with that. However, I finally decided that HubPages was a better long term income. I have another "real" job too and a family, so I am focusing on writing for HubPages. I think that if a person keeps on writing, and treats this as a business, writing more of what seems to get traffic, then they can earn money. If you just want to write what you like, you probably won't. My favorite Hub topics are not getting much traffic.
Every one on internet wants to make money though their efforts. Me too. Ad Sense is a great income generation source. But what I could see from this hub information, it is hard to get substantial income on any platform. Of course 'Rome is not built in one day'
A very useful and informative hub. No rose-tinted glasses here, just stark reality - and I thank you for it.
Lauryallen,
This was very interesting. I had never paid attention to CPM because I did not know what it meant, now I will have to pay more attention to it. I see that it takes a lot to make $33-34 but even the HP minimum per mo. is fine with me. I have both HP ads & AdSense and I have learned that I make more with HP. You keep up with your experiments.
Kevin
Helpful but your statistics makes me frightened. I don't have this much patience and energy. I have very limited time too to spare for all these great tasks. Anyhow finding pleasure with my average going. Thank you for educating us with some convincing data.
A great eye-opening piece! thanks, voted up!
Wow, this really puts things in perspective. I'm lucky to make pay out every month, but it looks like if I try writing more, it may be more lucrative. Hubpages is definitely passive income, but its well worth it if you put the time in. A lot of time....
Informative with great data for an example. Voted up.
Thank you for the great hub. It puts every thing here into perspective. I, as with all of you love writing and expressing one's self through these means. Whether opinion pieces or factual. It truly is the most original way of doing so. Plus, do not forget to enjoy yourselves..
Very inspiring hub. I got new motivation after reading this hub. I believe that we can achieve the goal you mentioned above with hard work. Thanks for sharing with us. Voted up :-)
Prasetio
I just saw this hub today and found it very interesting and helpful. I started writing hubs about a year ago and am still learning. Thanks much!
Very, very helpful and full of detailed information. Thanks so much for sharing this. As a newbie, this is a learning experience.
yes, very informative. I like the honesty. But if you're in it for the money, get a part time job. If you're in because you love to write, hey how 'bout a little money for coffee. lol . Peace. Kawi.
Probably the best advice I've seen about monetizing the HubPages experience yet! Will definitely be referring to it again. Vote up & shared!
Hi Lauryallan,
A very well explained hub on what can be double dutch to new and existing hubbers. Your simplified examples are easy to comprehend and takes some of the mystery out of earning and the importance of CPM. Thanks for this, I learnt some really useful tips and pointers. Voted Up, Useful, Interesting and Shared.
Hi Lauryallan
You have explained each point in a very simple manner. Easy for beginners to know more about hubpages. Excellent hub.
What an amazing hub. I love people who use real numbers. It makes it so realistic and relative. Great hub! Voted up.
Thanks Lauryallan - extremely informative writing - this is a major eye-opener for me, as quite a new member. I never hoped for Hubpages to do more than add a bit to my income as a painter but this makes that seem like a pipe dream! I too would like to see an updated list of recent success stories...Have voted up, useful and interesting.
Hi guys , nice informative and encouraging post , thanks for u r article
I for one would love to see an updated list of 2013 success stories. Seems I need to do some research on Long Tail Keywords!
Thanks Lauryallan, Transparency certainly enables people and helps to give them a greater understanding of what is required to become successful on Hubpages.
I think you are right, it definitely takes a lot of time, effort and skill to get it right. Some would say you make your own luck, the jury is out on that one.
I have a google account but my problem is how to link it to my hubs.
This has been the best explanation of how earning money on Hubpages really works. I now understand what my CPM means and thanks to you, can actually check mine against a chart! Nevertheless I can't help wondering whether the effort one puts into Hubpages will ever result in anything much more than pocket money twice a year. Thanks for a really excellent explanation. Voted up.
Very informative, thanks for sharing!! :)
Useful hub. But it seems you need to mention about one more important point.That is- submitting our hub URLs to search engines. I did not know of that for a long time- more than a year of starting my hubbing. Then a co hubber told me how to do that. Then I started submitting my hubs to SEs.There are certain tricks about that also. After doing thaat, I got more traffic.But even now, I have much less income per day than what you suggest. The reason may be that, I am not after popular topics. I neither take pains to search for key words.But these are all to be done, if one wants to earn a livelihood by online writing.
I wrote a hub about how to earn $1000 a month. According to your figures, it still comes out the same for me. I need to write a lot more hubs than I have. Too bad all the articles we write don't come up as #1 in Google.
Great hub, voted up and shared. The sad part is after reading this, I almost want to Google belly button fluff. LOL!!!!
oh.. I thought so, thank you. well iv'e been trying to have one but I can't verify my old google account so now I am trying to create a new one instead.
oh, sorry If i did not specify, anyway it is the ad code that you mentioned above. by the way thank you for the reply :)
hello, Im a new member of the community, Im just asking about those code how can i get one?
Reality check! Thanks for spelling it all out so clearly, great hub! I especially liked being able to see the charts, they really put the facts and figures into perspective. Voted Up
HubPages has changed so much over the last year or so that nothing can be relied upon anymore. Don't expect a straight answer from the staff minions--as you know if you read their comments on the forums. This used to be an honest site until they hired some "spinners" about a year or go and now you can't believe anything they say anymore. Sad but true. Sorry, I don't like it either, but there it is.
This is a very informative hub. Thanks for keeping it real. Your stats show that, while there is no way to guarantee any amount of income with certainty, it is possible to make $1,000 per month, assuming we get the right amount of traffic.
Thanks for spelling it out so clearly. Now I don't feel so bad about not cranking out the hubs lately. I really need to look at HubPages as a hobby, and not as potential income.
Hi Lauryallan,
Great informative hub with really interesting stats you have worked out for us! Thanks very much for doing that, it is difficult to get your head around all the facts and figures. Earning online here is a slow process but as a new writer I have been expecting it. Yes it would be great to earn $1ooo a month here but realistic, not for awhile that's for sure. Many thanks again, Vu, useful, Interesting and pinned!
Hi Lauryallan. Thank you for this hub so full of helpful content. I shall save it for reference.
Voted up and all / Following.
Graham.
Interesting Hub. A nice reality check for experienced beginners like me on HubPages. Voted Up and Useful.
Thanks much, Laury, for your helpful critique and kind offer.
Follow-up to my earlier comment: The Jane Fonda 1969 movie THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY? was one of the most depressing movies ever. It's about a dance marathon contest at a town in the USA during the Depression. In hopes of getting the prize of $100 (or $1,000 or whatever the amount), the contestants dance for most of the hours of every day for weeks in a small city dance hall. It's very grueling, and most contestants soon give up. Management uses gimmicks to keep up enthusiasm and hope. When one contestant dies of a heart attack on the dance floor, his partner keeps dancing with the body for the brief time remaining till a break is allowed. Another contestant has a nervous breakdown. Finally, the winners are the last couple still standing. Then they find out that the management is subtracting a big chunk of money for a long list of goods and services from their prize money, leaving almost nothing.
Of course the Depression was long ago, before our time, and has naught to do with hubbing.
I've been actively writing hubs for circa 15 months and, working several hours per day, I am at 30-some hubs, and I still have negligible traffic, am still making only $2 or $3 per month, and am still far from my first payout. I use the Google Keyword Tool; I choose evergreen topics; I write articles within the recommended length of 500 to 1500 words; I write related hubs that I can group; I jazz up my hubs with photos, videos, polls, quizzes, tables, links, etc.; I include a summary; I keep my capsules short; I write reasonably well -- all to no avail. I am a slow writer, so I thought my lack of traffic and income was due to my having written half or less the number of hubs that most hubbers write in the same amount of time. But a commenter above reports still no traffic or income after 70 hubs. You gave an excellent critique of his hubs, but even so, his experience has added to my feeling of discouragement. My novel isn't selling. Job hunting achieves nothing. Hubbing achieves nothing.
Not having other options, I'll keep trying.
I tried Demand Studios, but each of the few articles I wrote took me days to write instead of the expected hour or two, with most of that time being research. At least at HubPages, a hub keeps making income for the author long after it is published.
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