CREATIVE - EDUCATION

BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND WRITING

HUBPAGES TUTORIALS AND COMMUNITY

TRAVEL AND PLACES

https://www.glennstok.com/articles/writing-on-the-hubpages-platform.php

I have been writing on HubPages since 2009. In those ten years, I've learned a lot about creating articles that bring in continuous monthly income long after being published, and I'll tell you about it.

HubPages is not a blogging site. They only accept magazine style articles. That means content that stands on its own merit to attract organic traffic.

Writers earn revenue from ads. HubPages uses several methods to monetize our articles, and I'll explain the methods later below.

Quality Content and Organic Traffic

I find organic traffic to be a goldmine because there are always additional readers looking for answers to things online. They do a Google search, and they find articles that answer their questions.

Google is very tough on quality. They rank based on view duration - the length of time readers remain on the page - which is an indicator of quality. But they also rank on spelling and grammar, in addition to the author's expertise and authority.

HubPages has algorithms that use internal quality metrics to tell when articles have use of grammar and other criteria for stellar quality.

Publishing Articles in Niche Sites

HubPages has done well, growing over the years, mainly because they recognize the importance of giving Google what they want. For that reason, they created 29 niche sites where only the highest quality stellar Hubs are published.

Articles are called Hubs on HubPages, so you'll notice me referring to them either way.

When we publish a new Hub, it first resides on the home domain. Then within a few days to a week, if the algorithm detects stellar quality, the editors review it. If approved, they move it to the appropriate niche site.

That helps with ranking because Google does not like content farms. Articles that are combined with unrelated content get little recognition for organic search traffic. It's important to keep related content together under a single domain. That's why HubPages has 29 individual domain names in their network.

Articles that are poor quality remain on the home site. They are still published, but may not make much money.

In 2012 Google introduced the Pander algorithm, which killed most content farms. HubPages was hurt too. I saw my income drop to half. But they quickly took matters into their own hands. They creating various niche sites, for the best articles, so that Google would recognize the intent of each domain and rank them accordingly.

We all discovered that when articles reside with other content of the same subject on a single website, they rank better in search engines. It helps Google determine the subject matter and index it properly.

Monetization and Payout

Articles are monetized by several methods:

HubPages uses AdSense, a Google advertising media, to place ads on our articles.

In addition, HubPages had developed two methods to increase ad revenue: Header Bidding and Exchange Bidding Dynamic Allocation (EBDA). Both ways allow advertisers to bid on ad space. The highest bidder gets the space on our articles.

We can also place Amazon ads on our articles, but only when the item is totally related to the subject of the article. In addition, it needs to be clear to the reader that the author uses the product. That avoids placing ads that seem spammy, which is another thing Google frowns upon.

The income from all the methods above is shared 60% for authors and 40% for HubPages. The money is distributed to authors at the end of the following month after posting. Amazon residuals are paid out the end of the second month since Amazon delays payment to account for possible returns.

Professional Editors at Your Service

If you write on HubPages, you agree to allow them to edit your content. But they don't make major rewrites.

Editors occasionally review high-quality articles for possible improvement. The theory is that it's worth the cost of paying professional editors to enhance Hubs that are already doing well. It brings them up another notch, so to say. When they see something that needs attention, they edit it to comply with HubPages' standards for the network sites.

That has happened to me a few times, and it has always helped increase search traffic. Most of the edits are to fix errors with title capitalization, to make complex sentences simpler to read or to add subtitles to help readers who like to scan.

I have always been grateful when they edited any of my articles. Having professional editors examine our content is a great benefit. The improvements the editors make, although minor, help increase Google ranking. That brings more revenue for me and well as for HubPages. The changes I see that they make also helps me improve my writing with other content. It's a win-win for all of us.

Originally published on January 29, 2019.