I Published 100 Articles on HubPages: Here’s My Honest Thoughts

The good, the bad and the ugly

We all love Medium, right? But it’s far from the only publishing game in town. There’s Vocal.Media, Substack (yuck), Ghost, and good old WordPress, just to name a few places where you can find an audience (and make a bit of cash) writing and publishing online. There’s also an often little forgotten site called HubPages.

I’ve been writing on HubPages since around 2019. And while I haven’t been all that consistent there, I have uploaded a decent amount of words to the site, about 103 articles to be exact.

But reflecting on my success (or lack thereof) there, I thought now would be a good time to take a deep dive look at the platform and share what I like, what I don’t like, and whether I’d recommend it to others.

Before we begin, though, I want to make clear that I have nothing invested in whether you choose to check out HubPages or not. You won’t find any affiliate links here, and I don’t “work” for the site in any manner beyond publishing there. What follows will simply be my honest, unfiltered opinion.

WTF is HubPages, and how does it work?

At first glance, you might be fooled into thinking that HubPages is a Medium clone. But you’d be mistaken.

For starters, HubPages is much older than Medium, having started back in 2006. So if anyone is cloning anyone, it’s Medium cloning HubPages (spoiler: they’re not).

Also, it’s vital to understand that HubPages has a different business model to Medium, earning money through ads instead of memberships. We’ll get into the pros and cons of that in a moment, but essentially, the goal with HubPages is to attract external traffic instead of internal users. That means SEO and social media are key to success.

Another important thing to understand is the role of the HubPage “niche sites.” These are kind of similar to platforms on Medium (or “communities” on Vocal), only they’re owned by HubPages directly, and each has a specific, well, “niche.” I won’t name them all, but a few examples include ReelRundown (film and television), Turbofuture (tech), Wander Wisdom (travel), and PetHelpful (can you guess?). I don’t know who comes up with these names, but the rest are equally wacky.

Getting onto these niche sites is the goal for anyone writing on HubPages, as the main site brings in little-to-no traffic. However, the process can be confusing as you can’t submit to these niche sites directly. Instead, you first need to publish your article on HubPages, wait for the editors to approve and ‘feature’ your piece, and then submit (sometimes the process is automatic) the article to the chosen site. Then, it gets checked over by another editor, who may accept, decline, or suggest further edits.

Understandably, this process can take a while, but it does mean there’s a fairly decent minimum quality level on the niche sites.

Okay, but can you really make money with HubPages?

Let’s be honest, you probably clicked on this article wanting to know if you can make money with HubPages. Well, that, or because you’re one of my regular stalkers (know that I appreciate you).

The good news is that, yes, you can make money with HubPages. Not thousands, but some people are making a few hundred dollars a month with the platform. And the one big upside of HubPages is that, unlike Medium, you can can in my view build a much more solid passive income. But we’ll get into that later.

But how does it compare with Medium? Well, it all depends on your strategy.

The main disadvantage of Medium is that you can’t earn on external views, which can limit your earning potential. Only a few months ago, I had the experience of waking up to see an article on Medium bringing in thousands of views thanks to a random share on the FlipBoard. It was my first taste of “virality” on the platform, but it didn’t mean diddly squat in terms of income because the views were external. Poor me.

On the flip side, though, the earning potential on Medium is still much higher, so long as members are the ones doing the reading.

I’m not in the business of sharing my earnings, but for comparison, my most popular HubPages article (if you’re curious, it was this random piece about fun Linux terminal apps, of all things) and most popular Medium article (this piece about minimalism) come in at around the 20k views mark. Not only did the Medium article earn 20x what the HubPage article earned, but it earned more than all 103 of my HubPage articles put together.

Is that a humblebrag or kind of pathetic? Who knows?

The point is, the earning potential on Medium is definitely higher. And if you’re articles are being boosted? There’s usually no competition in terms of income.

That said, viral moments can’t be counted on when it comes to writing online. And I would say that my average HubPage article has a good chance of earning more than a non-boosted Medium article over its lifetime. And if you have a strong social media following (unlike me) or SEO skills? Then there’s still real potential to make good money through HubPages, so long as you’re not expecting overnight success or to make thousands a month.

Hubpages: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Okay, now we’ve covered some of the basics, let’s get a bit more in-depth about what I like, dislike and sometimes hate about HubPages:

Good: Platform is Evergreen-Friendly

Writing on places like Medium can feel like banishing your articles into the void sometimes. Sure, your follower count goes up, and maybe you build a small, loyal audience over time. But ultimately, most of us here are only ever as successful as our last article. And in my experience, even boosted stories are as dead as a dodo within a few days.

Only once has one of my stories “returned from the dead” on here. I guess the ever-mysterious algorithm decided it quite liked what it saw and decided to give it a second run around. But generally, this is not the place for ‘evergreen’ writing (that’s writing that gets steady views over time, in case you were wondering).

HubPages is the complete opposite. Often, articles seem dead on arrival there. But, if you can place well on Google, they can turn into workhorses for you in the long run. Well, maybe more like work donkeys, but I digress.

I have articles I wrote years ago up on Hubpages that, to my amazement, are still getting dozens, if not hundreds of views a month. And well, that adds up over time once you’ve published a lot of articles.

Helping matters is the fact that the HubPage editors regularly review and edit articles to keep them relevant. Occasionally, that means one of your articles might get flagged or even kicked off a site. But overall, I see these reviews as a positive.

Of course, nothing is ever truly “evergreen” online — new articles appear on the web and outrank you, Google changes its algorithm, and the general health of sites fluctuates. But unlike Medium stories, if you look after your ‘hubs,’ your hubs will look after you in the long run.

Good: Accumulative earnings

Because of the focus on evergreen articles, writing for HubPages works like compounding interest. An article might only earn, say, a dollar a month (hopefully more). But generally speaking, it’s probably going to earn you around the same the following month as well. Add another hundred articles, and you can see that can start to look pretty nice for you.

Basically, if you’re willing to put in the effort long-term you can build a decent passive income. As a bonus, you don’t have to stick to a niche like you would with a WordPress blog.

Well, that’s how it works in theory, anyway. In reality, HubPage traffic has been on a steady decline over the last decade. And I think I know why…

Ugly: The ads

By far, my main point of contention with HubPages is the ads. Sure, that’s how you earn money on the site, and so I suppose I should be thankful for them. But let me tell you now: you’ve never seen a page more riddled with ads than a HubPage article in your life.

Ironically, I don’t see the ads because I use an adblocker. But I know they’re there, and I cringe at the thought of them. They never used to be so bad, but the last time I looked at the site with my adblocker turned off, my computer had a damn asthma attack.

To put it bluntly, the ads have gotten so awful that I often feel bad sending people to something I wrote there. It’s just too embarrassing. And that is understandably counterproductive to the whole external views things.

If the situation was different, I would feel compelled to dedicate more time to the platform, even if I earned a little less. But as things stand, I think of writing for HubPages in the way I think of writing for freelance clients. I hold myself to a set of personal standards (no, really, I do have them), but I don’t feel the same attachment I do to my Medium stories or my personal blog.

I know I keep bringing up earnings in this article, but hopefully now you get the impression as to why. Whereas on Medium I write not only to earn, but to express ideas, reach audiences and “network” (and I write on my blog to do all of those things without monetary motive), HubPages is primarily a place to earn a little extra money.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy writing for HubPages, but I’m not going to put an impassioned 2000-word essay on sociological issues there anytime soon. If nothing, just because it would look too ugly.

Bad: Ancient and confusing interface

I recently had a conversation with fellow Medium writer, Adrian CDTPPW, about his recent venture into the world of HubPages. That conversation was basically the inspiration for this article, but it also cut straight to some of the issues new users face with the platform.

As Adrian mentioned to me, he disliked the interface and didn’t understand how to make comments or upvote. And it’s no wonder he didn’t because the truth is that HubPages doesn’t actually let you do either of those things, though the interface would have you believe otherwise.

I’ll spare you the history lesson here, but HubPages was bought by a company called the Maven Group (who later rebranded as “The Arena Group”) a few years back. Since then, the new company has made a lot of sweeping changes, including adding more ads and, controversially, removing the ability to make comments on the main site and most (I’m told not all) niche sites.

The problem is that they never really changed the interface to reflect these changes. Actually, as far as I can tell, the interface hasn’t changed since 2006! There’s even a link on the main page that takes you to the “HubPages blog” that hasn’t been updated since I arrived in 2019.

What this means is that the site looks like it’s trapped in a time capsule. At best, it looks a little amateurish. At worst, it gives the impression that the new company is only interested in extracting as much money as it can without investing back into the platform. Arguably, they’re like the internet equivalent of a landlord who never visits or pays for work on a property, but keeps upping the rent.

I should probably shut up now, though, in case said landlord finds out I’ve been talking smack and evicts me…

The Good and Bad: The community

Again, there are no comments anymore, so you can’t interact with fellow writers. You can follow other writers, but this doesn’t have any benefit outside of their articles appearing on your feed. In other words, you can’t build a “tribe” or audience there in the way you can with Medium or a newsletter.

There is one place you can interact with writers, and that’s the forums, the link to which is so tucked away that many probably don’t realize they exist.

If I had to describe these forums in a word, I would say that they are… interesting.

On the one hand, there’s a subset of dedicated writers there who are doing everything they can to keep the community spirit of the place alive, often organizing challenges and promoting each other’s work. They make the place bearable for sure.

Beyond that, there’s a lot of spambots. You’ll also find an alarming amount of political arguments. Actually, it seems like there are a bunch of HubPage “creators” who only use the platform to argue about their terrible political viewpoints.

Again, I don’t want to step on the toes of all the friendly and supportive writers there, but if you’re looking for a writing community, there are probably better places to look. Like, you know, here on Medium (don’t forget to clap, comment and highlight this article everyone!).

The Good: Variation of niches

One final thing worth mentioning is that HubPages makes a good home for certain niches and types of writing that I think are underrepresented on other platforms. Want to write about garden plants? There’s a HubPage site for that. Want to talk about some spooky Halloween tales? There’s a HubPage site for that. Want to talk about the meaning behind your new tattoos? You get the idea.

Style-wise, I find that whereas Medium is great for personal stories or opinion pieces, HubPages is better suited for how-to guides, listicles, and informative articles. That’s not to say there isn’t a place for poetry or personal essays, but from what I hear they don’t get much traction.

Would I recommend HubPages?

Despite its flaws, I have a soft spot for HubPages, if only because it was one of the first places that made me realize my writing has value. And no, I don’t just mean monetary value.

But would I advise others to use the platform? Well, it depends on what you’re looking for.

Looking to build an audience or a home for your latest heartfelt personal essay? Then honestly, I don’t think HubPages is the place to do that. But then, maybe you don’t have quite the same aversion to ads that me and my laptop do (computer says “buuurggghhhh”).

But if you want to build a passive income, get to grips with writing online, or throw up a quick and fun listicle? I say go for it. After all, it’s not like you have anything to lose, except maybe your time. And who doesn’t like making a little extra cash for writing about random subjects on the internet?

You read this 2,000-word-plus-long article, so you’re already invested, I guess.

Personally, I think of Hubpages as a place where I produce “content” and Medium as a place where I upload “writing.” I don’t know if that distinction makes much sense, but that’s the best way I can think of putting my feelings about the place.

On the bright side, the ads remove any pesky perfectionism I have. It also gives me a place to be a bit more experimental with the subject matters I tackle while ensuring I don’t put all my eggs into one basket platform-wise.

And yeah, the extra income is nice.

Final thoughts and links

There is no way Medium is going to boost this article. With that in mind, I suppose I would be remiss not to end here with some shameless self-promotion. So, for what will probably be the only time I do this, here are some things I wrote on HubPages that I’m semi-proud of for you to check out (with apologies regarding the ads). And yes, the subject matters are both weird and random:

Want to be a writer for Read or Die? Check out the link below: