Getting Feedback, Readers, and Money with HubPages

When I began my career as a journalist, the only way to make money writing articles was to get an assignment with or to sell an essay to a print publication, such as a newspaper or magazine. These days opportunities abound online for writers wanting to make a bit of money—especially if you want to write about your interests and make an investment in time.

That’s right. Write the articles first and then wait to get paid. It’s not exactly writing for free because the likelihood is that you will, indeed, earn money from your work. It’s a bit more like write about what you love and the money will follow–as well as a web presence and author platform.

For example, you could write for HubPages. I have to admit, I started a Hub several years ago and knew nothing about HubPages. Someone just suggested I do so. And I did. I wrote something and went away and never went back. Then I ran into Jason Menayan, director of marketing at HubPages, while attending BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Los Angeles last year. He explained to me exactly how HubPages work—and how writers can make money with Hubs. I decided it was time to spread the word.

Why? Because I’m all for writers finding ways to earn a living with their writing (me included), and HubPages gives you just one more way to earn a paycheck. Jason makes money every month off his Hubs, and so can you.  Today, he’s going to tell you how.

Feedback, Readers, and Money: The Three Things HubPages Offers Talented Non-Fiction Writers
By Jason Menayan

Have you heard of HubPages? If you haven’t, you’re in ever-shrinking company these days. Over 25 million people the world over visit HubPages every month, and we’re consistently among the top 70 sites in the world in terms of our U.S. traffic. Who are these visitors, and why are they coming to HubPages? They’re primarily information seekers, and they’re mostly finding HubPages articles (what we call “Hubs”) through search engines. The reason so many of them are coming to our site is that the quality of many of our Hubs is simply better than what’s found elsewhere online.

Over 200,000 people have published over 1.2 million Hubs over the past six years for many reasons, but what might be relevant to a professional online writer can be distilled into three things: feedback, readers, and money. First, exceptionally high-quality Hubs, especially those enhanced with relevant pictures, data tables, maps, and other rich media, tend to get noticed by our large community of active users. Interested readers will offer their thoughts, ask questions, and often add supplementary information in the form of comments. Such comments can encourage you to flesh out certain parts of your Hubs, or inspire you to write another Hub on a tangential topic.

Second, consistent publishing on HubPages, and interaction with other writers on the site, can lead to growing readership. It is not unusual for established writers on HubPages to have upwards of 2,000 followers on the site, who are notified when you publish a new Hub. Your most dedicated followers are most likely to read and respond to your work, and check out any other profiles you have on other sites. They’re also able to share your Hubs with their followers, and see your status updates.

Third, a large trove of informative, exceptionally high-quality Hubs has the capacity to pull in substantial traffic from search engines, the sort of traffic that translates into significant earnings via Google AdSense and our HubPages Ad Programs. Our success stories page profiles 14 authors who have seen their persistence and attention to quality translate into consistent revenue, even when they take breaks from writing on the site. I’ve personally earned over $16,000 on the 157 Hubs I’ve published, and earn fairly regularly between $550-700 a month.

An additional benefit of publishing on HubPages is that you own your own content and are free to unpublish and even delete Hubs you’ve published on our site. You can keep your Hubs up on HubPages as long as they perform well for you.

We all know that establishing a powerful online presence these days requires multiple places where clients and readers can find you, check out your work, and interact with you. With the ability to enjoy consistent readership and the feedback that that brings, along with meaningful potential earnings, HubPages should be considered by talented nonfiction writers looking to broaden their online footprint.

How to get started: Signup is easy and absolutely free. Please visit our signup page to create an account and begin writing.

About the Author

Jason Menayan is the Director of Marketing at HubPages. Prior to his work at HubPages, Jason was a technical producer at CNET’s Shopper.com, a Peace Corps volunteer in Poland, and managing producer of education portal WorldWideLearn.com. Jason publishes on HubPages under the username livelonger.