How to Make Money on HubPages

HubPages offers you a lot of ways to make money. They want you to succeed. The more prosperous you are, the more profitable they are. By having successful authors, more visitors come to their site. The more positive feedback they get from their customers, the more subscribers will join. That being said, it is also a numbers game. They are not betting on a few author to make them profitable, but lots of authors making them small sums of money. They have given you the tools, but it is up to you to maximize their potential.

AdSense is Google's advertising system. Ads are placed on your article based on keywords. Ideally they will be related to the article you are writing. This may take time as more people visit your article and give Google more information to analyze. The ads may also be tailored to the reader’s web browsing history. These ads can be text, images or videos. If people click on an ad, then the revenue is shared between you and Google. How much money you make per click is dependent on how much the advertisers pay to have their ad displayed. The actual percentage split by Google is a well-guarded secret but their payouts far exceed others advertisers. One estimate puts Google's payout at 70-80%.

You must first have an AdSense account so that you can link it to your Hubpages account. (The process of getting accepted to AdSense takes about a week. You may want to try to apply before signing up and publishing your first article. However, AdSense needs to review your work, so you will need content for them to review such as your own personal website.) Hubpages displays your ads 60% of the time and place their ads in the other 40%. This is done by a random computer calculation. It may appear sketchy but I have made money through AdSense by this method. Also, Hubpages would lose more money than they could gain if they did not abide by this rule.

The Amazon Affiliate Program is one of the largest on the internet. It is a great program and can be very profitable. How much you make is dependent on what you sell and how much. You make a percentage for each item sold through your affiliate link and that percentage increases the more products you sell.

You can display Amazon product in your article by using the Amazon capsule. You will want to choose products that are relevant to your topic. You do not want to flood your article with products. Your goal is to write a great article that will attract readers. Too many products will look like you are just trying to sell things to make money. Place these carefully selected products at the appropriate location. Your articles should be broken up into sections to allow for relevant pictures and products to be placed next to them. This is your Amazon Affiliate link and your profits are based on the Amazon Affiliate Programs terms and conditions. You will want to check their policies because they may change.

*HubPages has included Amazon into their service and you no longer need an individual account. I have made more on Hubpages' Amazon, than I did using my own account on their site.

*Below is a chart that breaks down Amazon Affiliate Program Percentages as of January 2013

E-bay works much like Amazon. The more people who bid on things through links from your site the higher your percentage will be. Since a lot of eBay products are sold by bidding and not immediately purchased they base this formula on quality of traffic instead of number of sales. How many people who follow your link, place bids and how often do they come back to bid on their site in the future. This percentage is a lot more complicated to work out and there is not an easy to follow chart like Amazon.

Any product you place should always be relevant to the article you are writing and close in proximity to what is being discussed specifically. With eBay it can be more difficult to find precise products. Here you will want to search different words and phrases. Then preview the results, this is where a thesaurus will be useful. Choose the word that came up with the best selection of products related to what you were looking for.

Hints:

• When dealing with dated items try different combinations. If a product is specifically from 1962 you may want to try 1962, (1962), “1962” and see what works best. For comics (1962) is usually the most effective search.
• When dealing with words with special characters, DROP THEM. Spiderman offers better results than Spider-Man or Spiderman’s, even though they are grammatically correct.

You can refer people to HubPages and receive a small percentage from their page views. This percentage comes from HubPages profits NOT the person who subscribes. Don't worry; it is not a pyramid scheme or anything. This is HubPages way of encouraging you to bring more users to their site.

You get a generic tracking number. (Mine is 3mwze4gyata3x) or can create your own (GeekdomReferral) and if people click on the link to signup or you send it out for people to use then you get a small percentage from their page views.

To either find this number or create your own:

• Go to My Account.
• On the top row click Earnings.
• On the left, at the bottom of the black box click Referral Trackers.
• At the bottom of the page you can create a unique tracking token or use the one that is automatically generated for you. All you have to do is cut and paste.

*I have not sent this referral to anyone I know. Although I have recommended HubPages to 3 people, I did it because I liked the site and not to make money. I do not want to give the slightest impression that I was using them to make money. For that reason I can't vouch for making money from referrals. This is my first use of the referral link.

Clicks / Views are going to be the most important part of making money on HubPages.

It might not be the biggest source of income but it will be constant. How much you get paid per click fluctuates but appears to be around 50% to 25% of a penny. Basically ever 2 to 4 clicks gets you about 1¢. Again this changes, but this is the pattern I have noticed on my account. You are going to need thousands of clicks daily to make any real money this way.
HubPages is all about HubScores. You need to write articles with high HubScores so that it appears higher on their searches and also looks good when people are doing their initial glance at what to read. Somethings are out of your control like the number of people who leave comments or how well it is received by the readers. If you continually publish well written articles on topics that people are interested in "comments" and "vote up"s will follow. What you do have control over with your HubScore is the automatic calculations that the people at HubPages have entered into the computer. As Shakespeare has said in several of his plays, "words, words words". HubPages loves to count words. Make sure your article has at least 500 words. You will also want to take advantage of pictures, videos and all the other cool capsules they give you to play with. The amazon and eBay capsules don't count and could end up hurting you by making the hub appear overly promotional.

Beyond your HubScore Keywords are going to be very important. Keywords are the words that people put into a search engine to find what they are looking for. You will want to use words related to your topic that do not appear in your title but a lot of people use in their search. To help me in my search for good keywords I use "Google Adwords keyword tool". When you type in a word it shows you how many times that word is searched, how many sites use it as a Keyword, and other related words that might be relevant. You will want to use a word that has a high monthly search number but low competition amongst other web pages. NEVER underestimate the power of a good old thesaurus. Although HubPages has removed the tag feature, you should still use keywords in your article description and hub itself.

It is important to be active in the HubPages' community. Most of your pageviews, especially when an article is first published, will be from fellow hubbers. Don't just follow hubbers or comment on articles in the hopes that they will return the favor. Find hubbers you have a shared interest with and enjoy reading their articles. If you read an article that you like, make sure to compliment the author in a sincere and unique manner. Maybe you have additional information that you think the author of the article or readers might be interested to know. Be on the lookout to positively share or contribute to the conversations. HubPages is a wonderful community of writers with a variety of interest. Join the community and good things will happen.

Here is the thing about pageviews. Not only are you getting these fractions of a cent but the more people who visit your page and read through your entire article the better your chance of having someone click an ad or product link. Most people will not click these links. It is a number game and you have to get people to your article. Publicizing is the key to attracting people outside of HubPages to see your writing. You have to reach outside HubPages if you want to make money.

Facebook: Love or Hate, you can't deny the power of Facebook. With over half a billion profiles they have a huge audience. Yes, you can send out ONE quick post letting your friends and family know what you have just done, but if you are serious about writing or some other "business" set up a business account where you talk and promote your work. Create a profile that people join because they want to support or keep up with your work. Do not use your personal Facebook page to inundate your "friends" with spam promoting your stuff. It will annoy them and if you want to make money you can't rely on your small group of friends. This is how self-publishing companies make money not individuals.

Twitter: I do not get Twitter. I couldn't care less what Ashton Kutcher is having for lunch or where Justin Bieber is hanging out. However it is an excellent marketing tool. Use it as a way to update people on your work. Post what you have done, updates about past work, related topics to your work, and retweet fellow Twitter users stuff. I may not understand why Twitter is so popular, but I have seen its power in action. My brother in-law is able to wield this tool with amazing effectiveness.

Google+: In an attempt to take on social networking Google created Google+. Whether they are able to compete with Facebook is anybodies guess, but they are another social site that can be used to promote your work.

Website: Creating a website is going to be more work and cost money. The other ways mentioned have all been free to use and take almost no time to implement. A website domain name needs to be purchased, but there are several free domain hosting sites. I went with a pay for hosting site because you get more control and personalization over the look and feel of your website. This is where you can let your creativity shine and make following your work and career a more interactive experience for your fans. It is also a way to get more links heading to your work.

Pinterest: For images, Pinterest is a great place to promote your hub. When you Pin a hub, the first image will appear in your board along with a link to your article. Choosing interesting and unique pictures for the first image of your article can be very effective.

Other Sites: This list could go on and on with other ways to promote your hub online. That is a whole other Hub in itself. Reddit and Tumblr are popular sharing sites now, Digg and Myspace were popular, and I am sure that there will be other sites to pop up in the future. It is important to stay on top of the ever changing internet sharing/marketing trends.

*In the age of the Internet it is comforting to know that you control your website domain name. There is big business in buying domain names and then selling them to companies and people or holding them for a different purpose. Whitehouse.gov is the official government site because .com was already bought and made into a porn site.

You will get paid by Hubpages through PayPal when you reach the $50.00 minimum.

Other payouts will differ from each company and depend on which form of payment you choose.