HubPages Review by Geekdom

I just received my 1 Year Accolade from Hubpages and it seemed like an appropriate time to write my review of the site. If you are looking into joining Hubpages, I encourage you to read more people's reviews before making your decision. Be sure to not only read hubbers' opinions, but also outside assessments as well. Hubbers will probably have more positive feelings and a better perspective on Hubpages' features, since they are actively using this website. Outside reviews will likely vary drastically in their opinions and have different attitudes.

If you want to write, then Hubpages is a great place to do it. Unlike Suite101, your articles are yours. I am a big advocate of owning your artistic creations. You can write on anything you want, which gives you a lot of creative license. There are enough Hubbers (A Hubber is what you call people who write hub articles.) that you will be able to find a community of people with similar interests. The edit features are simple, so you do not have to worry about "designing" your page's look and can focus on your writing, not webdesign. Unlike other sites, you can talk about your outside work on Hubpages. Of course, this is to be done within reason. Hubpages is not a place to shamelessly self promote. It is a place to write about the things that interest you and many of your outside projects are going to be things you are passionate about.

Simple is the word best used to describe the edit page. This comes with advantages and disadvantages. Because of this simplicity, there is not a lot you can do to make your page standout on the Internet appearance wise. For example, pictures can either be placed center or to the right. You can't move a picture to the left. Your text size, color and font options are also very limited. This seems insignificant, but when dealing with appearances, this is a huge issue and can make things dull for internet browsers who are not looking at Hubpages specifically.

However, the amount of things you can add to your article are more than sufficient to make your page pop. These capsules are easy to insert into whatever order you need. The basic things that any good Internet article needs like text, photos, links, videos and tables are all there. They also have some fun additions like map, quizzes and polls. These can help make your writing both dynamic and interactive. The capsules that allow you to make money like Amazon and eBay are also present and easy to use, but we will get to that in the next section.

All the tools you need to make money are given to you.

AdSense: You link your AdSense account to your Hubpage account. They then show your ads 60% of the time and put their ads in 40% of the time. It is a random selection to when these ads appear in your articles. This system is different from many other writing site I have researched. Most split their income with you. I have made adSense money from this process and can only assume they are being fair. Plus, they would have more to lose if they did not honoring these rules.

Amazon: By displaying an Amazon product in your article, using the Amazon capsule, you are selling that product through your Amazon Affiliate Program Account. Again, your Amazon link appears 60% of the time and your profits are based on the Amazon Affiliate Programs terms and conditions. You make a percentage commission based on how much and what you sell each month. You will want to refer to Amazon for the actually numbers.

eBay: By displaying an eBay product in your article, using the eBay capsule, you are selling that product through an eBay Affiliate Program Account. This eBay link is through HubPages, so you split the profits. You do not have an individual/separate account with eBay. The profits are based on the eBay Affiliate Programs terms and conditions.

Clicks: Hubpages has lots of deal with advertisers and they get paid through clicks. You will also get paid through clicks, but this is a tiny number and you will need hundreds of clicks to get any noticeable amount of money. To give you an idea, I had 500 hits in one day and it amounted to a little over one U.S. dollar.

Referrals: You can also refer people to Hubpages. You get a generic tracking number. (Mine is3mwze4gyata3x) 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. This comes from Hubpages profits NOT the person who subscribes. That had me worried at first too.

Hubpages is very automated. Much like the simplicity of the edit page, this comes with advantages and disadvantages. The automation allows for fast results. Hubs get published instantly and violations are caught quickly. The down side is that there is a lot of non-detailed feedback and the scores, which Hubpages is big on, are not accurately measuring what they are supposed to be measuring.

HubScore: HubScores are supposed to rate how good an article is. However, with the automatic formula this is not the case. It measures how many people are reading the article. Transformers had a lot of people see it, but it is universally recognized as a terrible film. It measures how many words the author used, but not how well it is written. Green Eggs and Ham used 50 different words in a story that was only 702 words long. Green Eggs and Ham is better than a lot of novels at 70,000 to 150,00 words. It also measures comments, pictures and how many people vote it up, but these are all just numbers a computer crunches. HubScores are not representative of how "good" an article is.

HubberScore: Again, this automated process is not a reliable resource for how "good" an author is. This score is a better representation of how active the person is in the Hubpages community. Do they write a lot of articles? (They don't have to be good articles.) Do they comment on a lot of post? Do they answer questions on a regular basis? Do they follow lots of different Hubbers?

*All scores are out of a 100.

When doing my research the nofollow link was the thing that raised the most concern with me. The rel="nofollow" lets search engines know that this page/link should not be searched or listed in their results. How each search engine handles this code is different.

Theoretically the rel="nofollow" code is used to fight spam. However, with Hubpages it is used when HubScores fall below a certain number or there is a long period of no views on an article. I do not agree with the Hubber score because this is a penalty for not being an active member rather than fighting spam. Your profile and articles are separate, so just because your profile gets this code does not mean your articles will. A “good” article is over 500 words and will have some pictures or videos included.

The nofollow policy is my biggest complaint about HubPages. This can get very frustrating and does not accomplish what it is trying to do. Rather, it discourages writers and is basically deleting your article and killing any chance it has of finding a future audience. Some articles float around the web for years before they are discovered.

Although this system needs work, it should not scare you away from Hubpages. It is their answer to making sure people put up quality content and stay active members. Every website whether it be Suite101, Squidoo or the hundreds of other sites out there will try to moderate the content on their server.

Getting help has always been extremely easy for me. When I have been unable to find the answers I needed on the website, a member of the Hubpages staff has gotten back to me within 24 hours. If you need help faster, you can post a question on the feed and people will answer your questions quickly. This is where Hubpages encouraging active members really pays off. People jump at the chance to help answer questions. Trying to find your answers on one of HubPages static information pages is rather difficult. The information you do find, is usually vague and unhelpful.

The Hubpage community has been the biggest draw for me. They are helpful, encouraging and engaged. Almost all of my articles have received some form of feedback and as a writer it feels good to know that somebody is reading your work. Most comment sections on the Internet are a place for people to crack jokes, spam or be overly critical. On Hubpages, you have a group of writers with similar interest who support and give well thought out responses.

As stated early, my biggest complaint is the deindexing policy of HubPages.

The things that has made me consider leaving HubPages on several occasions is its constant changing in policies and features. While change in the dynamic area of the internet is essential, many of HubPages’ updates were just frustrating. They took away multiple ebay capsules and made the ones on the right display in a larger image. This ruined the formatting in around 80 of my published articles. It also took away a huge source of my income. Ebay was very profitable for me until these changes occurred. Hubpages took away the RSS Feed and Google+, instead of adding more ways for people to share our articles quickly.

Inconsistency have plagued my experience with HubPages. It can be discouraging to write an article and be given two different pieces of information. At the time of writing this review, HubPages is pushing their “Editors Choice” award. A large majority of my hubs have been awarded this accolade. Interestingly enough, two of these articles that are being “honored” were originally deemed substandard by the computer algorithm. Glad I didn’t delete them.

Hubpages is a great site for people to write about what they enjoy. It gives you a creative outlet to both practice your writing skills and express yourself. You have the potential to make money, but that is a bonus and not the main draw.

Although if you have read "Rich Dad Poor Dad" then this is what Robert T. Kiyosaki was talking about with having your money work for you. Once you have written an article you can let it go and have it do the work for you.

I hope this review was helpful and that you join this wonderful community. If not, there are lots of sites similar to Hubpages and I am sure you will be able to find one that fits your needs.

If you decided to join, below is my referral link…. just in case. :)

GeekdomReferral