HubPages, Good Or Bad? Why Join?

If you want to share ideas, advice, or opinions about, pretty much, any topic, HubPages is a very good place to start.

What is good about HubPages?

1. HubPages allows you to earn money from your ideas through Google Adsense, Amazon, eBay, and others.
2. HubPages hosts your articles for free. With HubPages, you don't have to pay or worry about web hosting and web design. There is no approval process, so once you publish your article, it is available to the public.
3. HubPages is frequently crawled by Google. Articles created on HubPages get quickly indexed, and start appearing on Google, often within the day. The most that an article of mine has taken to appear on Google is 2-3 days.
4. HubPages has a simple, user-friendly interface for writing up your ideas. You don't need to have any html, or web design expertise.
5. HubPages is run by an efficient team who is very responsive to user questions and suggestions.
6. HubPages has a wonderful community. There are many active members on HubPages who know a lot about website promotion, and design. Many of them are even willing to share this expertise for free. There are also many good writers, who know a lot about a large range of topics, so it is not too difficult to find a group of people to help critique, and improve your article. There is even a message board for posting your articles to get input from other writers. I learnt a lot about site promotion, and writing, from the HubPages community.
7. HubPages has many interesting community activities. There is HubNuggets where a set of high quality articles are chosen every week, and members get to vote on which ones they like best. The top five are featured in the weekly HubPages newsletter, that is sent to all members. There is also HubMob where a new topic is put forth every week, and many members participate by writing articles on the shared topic. These activities help new members hook up with the existing community.
8. HubPages is an interesting place to be. There is always something happening in the Forums, or some interesting discussion going on around an article. There are so many colorful and engaging personalities on HubPages, you will have a hard time tearing yourself away from the Forums to go work on your article. 

What is bad about HubPages?

1. HubPages articles do not start off with a Google ranking. This is in contrast to other article sites, for example, eZine, which gives articles a good Google ranking from the outset.
2. HubPages authors only own 60% of the total advertisements on their articles. A click on an author owned advertisement will generate revenue for the author, while a click on the other 40% of advertisements will generate revenue for HubPages.
3. HubPages does little to help authors promote their content. It is mostly up to the individual authors to drive traffic to their own articles.
4. HubPages only allows an article to have a maximum of two links from the same domain.
5. HubPages controls how advertisements appear and where they appear in your article. You also do not have the ability to enter html code.

Why Join HubPages?

1. HubPages has very low startup costs. No web expertise is needed, and the service is free.
2. HubPages is a good place to start learning about how to make money online.
3. HubPages can provide you with backlinks to help drive traffic to your other sites.

HubPages is a good starting point. Once you begin to learn more about online marketing and site promotion, you can start to venture forth into other writing platforms, that perhaps give you greater flexibility in the design, and layout of content and advertising. But even then, the HubPages community is always a valuable source of expertise, and HubPages is always useful as a source of traffic.Join HubPages.

This post is by Sephy Shake

Sephy has a PhD in Computer Science and She used to work at Accenture Technology Labs where her work was featured in many technology publications. She is now happily retired with her two dogs.