The Best Site for Making Money Online Is Relative: a Comparison of Wizzley and Hubpages

In getting started you should write online for the best site, and concentrate on establishing yourself there.  Afterwards, you might want a limited number of articles on a second site. 

I started on Squidoo.  Then, I added Zujava.  Shortly after I started with Zujava the site lost its Amazon affiliate program.  It lasted a short time thereafter, then all authors were told to save their work before the site went down.  At least we had an honorable person leading it who kept the site going for about a month so we could retrieve our work.

About the same time Squidoo was having its own problems.  Again, we had time to take things down and post the articles elsewhere.  But, instead of just shutting down Squidoo sold itself to Hubpages, and we could allow our articles to automatically be transferred as an option.  I had over three hundred articles, and it seemed easiest to allow a transfer.  I did have to update them over a few months, and some were not worth updating, especially the ones I wrote very early before I developed as a writer f articles. 

I had been reading the forum at Zujava, and the owner was recommending Wizzley.  I looked into Wizzley, and liked what I was seeing, so I joined. 

Well, I will let you decide after you see how each will help you earn money from home online.  To help you with the decision I will discuss how these sites make money for their writers.  Then I will address some questions you should ask before making a decision.

Hubpages has Amazon as an affiliate program.  There are two options for using it.  You can opt to use Hubpages’ Amazon affiliate program, or you are allowed to enter your own Amazon affiliate code.  If you are unable to obtain your own Amazon account, you might opt to take Hubpages up on the option to use their account.  Even of you have your own account you might want to use their account, simply because they have so many sales that the percentage you are given goes up.  But, until you reach $50 in your account you get nothing.   Your own Amazon account will pay at $10.

Wizzley has Amazon opportunities as well, but you will need your own account.  At first your affiliate code is active fifty percent of the time.  As you publish articles this increases to fifty-five, and finally sixty percent.  This is how staying more active with one site can bring you up to a higher level of earning.  The bumps in how often your code is active are at fifty and one hundred articles.

But, with Hubpages Amazon is your main affiliate.  Wizzley offers Viglink and Zazzle.  And Viglink has Ebay as one of the affiliates that it includes.  Hubpages recently eliminated Ebay, a major problem for those writing on collectibles where new products fill the fields as old ones sell.  The same percent of time as with Amazon, the other affiliate programs will be for your account.

This may seem for some of you to favor Hubpages, but read on before coming to a conclusion.  

Hubpages will place eight ads on your articles.  If you have your own Adsense account you will have one of these ads, the one at the bottom of the page.  If a reader stops half way through, your ad just as well not be there.  There is a small, and I mean small, payment from shared revenue from the other seven ads.

Wizzley allows you to choose between Adsense and Chitiks ads, whichever is best for you.  Again the ads point to your account fifty, fifty-five, or sixty percent of the time, based on the number of articles published.  But, you are not just getting the bottom ad.  Having visible ads is worth more than having an obscure ad point to your account every time someone clicks on the article.

I am doing much better on Wizzley than Hubpages with traffic.  I get some action on just about all of my articles every week, and StumbleUpon gives my articles a very nice boost when I first publish.  I just added an article that is one of my best on Hubpages to StumbleUpon to check if this would happen there, and the answer is it did not.  I am unimpressed with five hits in hours.

Here is where Wizzley is really an excellent choice.  Wizzley has rules, but they are stable, and you can easily read them.  You are allowed one affiliate link per fifty words, and the word count must be at least four hundred per article.  So, if your article is acceptable, even if it is short, you get the ability to place a minimum of eight affiliate links.

Hubpages claims the same, but will remove an article for too many links even if they are few in number.  The rules for Hubpages are like a moving target, and it is not possible to read the rules once and know an article is fine because it follows the rules. 

The real problem with Hubpages is an article can be unfeatured, which means it is not likely to be found, for poor traffic.  Seasonal articles, including holiday articles, are too often unfeatured during the months they are effectively dormant.  Yes, they can be resubmitted, but can go from published and featured to unfeatured, then unpublished when an attempt is made to revive them.  How can an article be fine, then with added words or removal of affiliate links become unworthy of being published.   Wizzley has yet to take any of my articles down for traffic, nor unpublish any article because it was improved.

There are three questions you need to ask.  What are the earning opportunities?  What kind of traffic can an article be expected to get?  And, the one not often asked, but the most important question of all, how much time and effort is this article going to consume?  On Hubpages, trying to update, guessing at what is going to help, then repeating if the article fails, even after it initially reached published status, expends time I can devote to adding more articles to my total.  I like to evaluate time spent per dollar earned, and here I give a resounding vote to Wizzley.   

So, why do I still have material on Hubpages?  It takes time to deindex articles and move them.  And, until my account slowly grows to the $50 threshold for payment I plan to allow it to accrue passive income.

Should you make the same decision?  Well, if you do not have your own Amazon affiliate account, and cannot get one, Hubpages might be more appealing to you.  This was my problem when my state insisted in nexus, which means affiliates were considered to be enough of a presence in the state that Amazon would required to collect taxes.  Now that Amazon collects taxes I am once again an Amazon affiliate.  I believe Maine is still having problems with Amazon, and internationally others can be in similar positions.  As I said, it is an individual thing.   But, looking at just one thing like having higher Amazon payments per sale is not the way to make a decision, you must know how often a sale will be made.  This article is to give you an insight into the real differences.  I hope you find the right fit for you.

This article contains links to affiliate programs from some or all of Amazon, Zazzle, Viglink, and Ebay through Viglink, and Adsense advertising.  These must use cookies to allow for proper crediting.

The introduction image is allowed by an affiliate program.