There are plenty of online writing sites that you can join promising the chance to earn extra income. Some of them are legitimate while others promise fortunes that really don’t amount to anything. One of the better sites that I have found to earn decent passive income on is HubPages.
HubPages is an established site. It is free to join and offers its members the opportunity to earn income from articles they publish. Writers, or Hubbers as they are commonly referred to can publish articles (also called Hubs) on any topic they are interested in. As Hubs become published a writer then has the opportunity to earn passive income from a variety of sources.
Ways to Make Money Publishing Hubs
There are several ways to make money on HubPages. Once you have a free account with them adding the following revenue streams to your published content is actually very simple.
- AdSense – Writers can earn pay per click (PPC) income by linking an AdSense account to their HubPages account. The nice thing is that once the accounts are linked there is no need to place the ads in any Hub going forward. Earnings can be viewed by logging into your AdSense account.
- Kontera – Kontera accounts can also be linked to your HubPages account to earn additional pay per click income. You have the option of setting up both AdSense and Kontera advertisements on your published Hubs.
- Amazon – Have an Amazon Associates account? Amazon capsules can be added to any Hub that you publish allowing you to earn affiliate income. This can be a great additional revenue stream coming from your content.
- eBay – Another source of potential income that can be earned from your Hubs is linking your eBay Partner Network account. Similar to an Amazon account, eBay capsules can be added directly to your content.
Other Benefits of Using HubPages
Besides earning extra income each month HubPages offers a few other benefits to its members.
First of all it is free to join so writers are only investing the amount of time they put into writing and publishing content. The barriers to entry for earning income from your Hubs is almost non-existent. If you tried to start a niche website instead of using HubPages you would have start up costs which include paying for a domain name and web hosting account. There are no costs at all for writing and publishing content on HubPages.
Another benefit of opening an account is the research that a published Hub can provide. Let’s say you are thinking of starting a niche website to earn additional income, but are unsure of the keywords you are planning to target. Before spending any money or investing time building your site you could publish a couple Hubs with similar keywords and see how they rank. Content from your Hubs is almost sure to rank much faster in search engines than your own new website.
Hubbers also have the freedom to write on multiple topics as opposed to building their own sites. If you enjoy sports and cooking you could write Hubs on both topics. It would not be as easy to write about these same topics on your own site and have much success because you would be mixing keywords.
My HubPages Experience
I have been a Hubber for a little over 18 months now and have made almost $300 from my articles. While this amount may not seem all too significant I continue to earn passive income each month from content I wrote over a year ago. Just last month I almost reached $50 in HubPages income, most of which came from these same older articles. As months and months go by I have witnessed a greater increase in this income which is almost all passive after my initial time investment.
To date I have spent about 35 – 40 hours writing and publishing content to HubPages since joining. That comes out to be about $7.50 per hour for my work. As each month goes by I should see my earnings per hour increase while the amount of time I spend writing for the site to remain constant or even decrease.
The bottom line is that I have found success making money from writing Hubs. It is a great way to help diversify your income streams, is free to join, and offers several side benefits to building your own niche website. I plan to continue writing Hubs with the goal of earning at least a $100 per month in residual income.
Final Thoughts
Will HubPages make you rich? Can you quit your day job from publishing Hubs? The answer is probably not. However, if you spend a couple hours every month writing and publishing Hubs you can quickly build a nice passive income stream that can help to supplement your current income.
There are no guarantees when you use a site like HubPages to earn extra income. The site could go down. They could change the way Hubbers generate income. There are a number of things that could go wrong. However, I believe the potential to make decent income is there and HubPages is a tool I will be using to help build my personal wealth.
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John Schroeder is a personal finance blogger who enjoys writing about passive income, debt-free living, and financial independence. He also enjoys sharing his experiences in raising a family on a single income, while his wife stays home with their two children. Aside from writing about money, he is an avid runner and enjoys spending time outdoors with his kids.
I’ve considered doing a little more with Hubpages, but I wonder with so many articles there, what are the chances of mine being seen?
Any ideas? Thanks.
@Emily – There are plenty of keywords that you can still target and make good money on. With an Alexa ranking of #174 there is a great chance of having your articles get seen.
With the big change to Google Algorithm on 2/24, I wonder how some of these sites will fare. So far, I heard HubPages got hit hard.
@Pinyo – I was concerned about HubPages and a few other of these sites. To be honest, I have not seen a lot of changes yet from my articles, but I am keeping a close eye on things.