Why I Won’t Be Writing On HubPages Anymore

I’ve been on HubPages for way too long. In fact, I’ve been on HubPages for over 10 years. I started with them a few years after I started writing online. It seemed like a great way to get on an established website, write, and earn some money from my writing. But, along the way, there have been some issues that have caused me to not want to write on HubPages, especially lately. So, I won’t be writing for them anymore. In fact, I’m taking down some of my most popular articles and moving them to other sites where they will be more appreciated and I can work with them the way I want to.

I Have Almost Always Focused On My Websites More Than HubPages

Over the years, I’ve realized that working on my own websites is much more beneficial than writing for HubPages. I did spend a few solid months only writing for HubPages, but I quickly realized that I was writing for someone else, just like I was doing with my freelance writing, and it would be more beneficial for me to write for my own blogs and websites in the long run.

I had a ton of articles on HubPages at one point but took almost all of them down and put them on other sites that I’ve had over the years.

If you are debating whether to write for HubPages or create your own website, I would say that you should create your own website. It allows you total control over your articles and the comments.

The biggest downside to focusing on your own sites as opposed to HubPages is that it may take longer for your content to be found and start earning money, but I have found to be not much of an issue compared with all the issues I have had with HubPages over the years.

Here are my main concerns with HubPages.

They Took Away AdSense Earnings

On HubPages, you earn money through their ad program and Amazon (a percentage), and they used to allow you to earn money through AdSense. But, that option disappeared recently, and it really ticks me off.

I was earning some decent money from those articles with AdSense. Nothing spectacular, but at least something that made my writing on that site worthwhile. Then. one day, AdSense informed me that my earnings were being affected on certain sites (all to do with HubPages) and if I didn’t fix things I would lose out on revenue.

Turns out there was nothing I could do. HubPages just took AdSense off our accounts and I have no control over that.

Now, I guess HubPages gets all the AdSense earnings? I have no idea. I couldn’t find an answer to my question. But the fact that it’s gone is very frustrating.

Also, I have been earning less on their ad program, yet my articles haven’t decreased in traffic. It just doesn’t sit well with me.

They Are Always Editing My Articles

I have taken off quite a few of my articles from HubPages already, but I left some of the more popular ones up because they were established articles that were earning me some money still.

HubPages doesn’t let you put any links in your articles that may serve you in any way, even if it’s just a link to your blog post that correlates to the topic at hand. I’ve noticed that they call your links ‘spammy’ even though they are not spam.

How offensive is that?

Here is an email that I got this past week that was the final straw for me.

Listen, that is an article that I wrote and if I want to link to something that I think will benefit the readers, then I want to be able to do that. It’s not spam. It’s an article that can help the reader learn more about the topic at hand!

Also, why remove a link to your own site? It was related to the topic of the article and provided more information, so it’s worthwhile. Plus, it was a good article that I linked to on HubPages. I wouldn’t link to crap.

Beyond their link issues, they are constantly going into my articles and editing things that don’t need to be edited by their ‘professional editors’.

For instance, once they changed a word I used to something less familiar. I can’t remember what it was now, but it was similar to using ‘caveat’ instead of ‘warning’.  It was unnecessary and didn’t fit into the tone of my article.

I’ve had them add whole paragraphs, put in links to other ‘high quality’ articles on their sites, and delete whole paragraphs that I deemed necessary to the article.

I would say that this is the biggest reason I will never write for HubPages again. It’s almost as if my articles are not good enough for their site and their ‘professional editors’ need to come along and fix all the ‘crap’ that I wrote. Yet, these ‘crappy articles’ were receiving a lot of traffic and a ton of questions, so I just don’t get it.

I Still Have No Idea How To Contact HubPages

I’ve been using HubPages for over 10 years and I still don’t know how to contact them. I’ve obviously tried over the years, but they make it so hard to contact them that I give up after trying for too long. It’s a waste of my time.

They do not have a contact page. At least, I’ve never found one. I always get led back to the forum for answers, which doesn’t have any of the answers I want.

I couldn’t even figure out why AdSense got taken off when I noticed it because I couldn’t contact them and there were no real answers in the forum.

Maybe I just never put in enough effort to figure it out, but, honestly, contacting a site shouldn’t take that much effort to figure out.

Going Through Comments Is Annoying

HubPages seems to want everything to be absolutely perfect, including their comments. If a comment in the Q&A section doesn’t have perfect spelling and grammar, they won’t publish it.

On one of my articles, I was getting at least one question per day, and usually, the people asking the questions didn’t have perfect grammar or spelling. That meant that I needed to correct the question’s spelling and grammar before I could answer the question. And if I didn’t correct it perfectly, or answer in perfect grammar, then I got an email telling me that the comment and answer were not published.

What a waste of time.

As much as I want to answer questions, I don’t want to spend hours upon hours trying to fix spelling and grammar so that I can answer it. And, I can say that I did spend hours of my time doing that. I had over 2400 comments on one of my articles and I had to go through almost every one of those to fix spelling and grammar errors.

The Only Good Thing About HubPages

They paid on time every month. I think there was only one month where payments were late and that was because of something out of their control. Other than that, they did pay on the 28th of every month.

I’d Rather Write For Myself

The bottom line is that I would rather write for myself than HubPages. Maybe some people have a good experience with HubPages, but between the reduced earnings, edits to your articles, and Q&A issues, it’s not worth my time.

I would rather create my own website, write articles that are in my tone, link to whatever pages I want to link to, and answer questions without having to worry about them being unpublished.