DevHub.Com Offers Free Platform for Building and Monetizing Websites

Fresh for February 2009, Evo Media Group launched DevHub, a free website platform which offers users the ability to, at first, create up to ten websites-- within minutes. Complete with hosting, tools and monetizing capabilities, users with even the most limited programming or website experience can create a site, and perhaps cash in.

Currently in limited BETA phase, DevHub allows users to sign up for free, and add up to ten websites to host for free on DevHub.com. With a neat and clean layout, the site is user-friendly and guides new users right through the process. The first step is adding the websites. When a user enters the URL, they are also prompted to write a description. What's pretty amazing is the DevHub generates a default website layout, so immediately there is a site available for all to see (of course, you must change the nameserver to make sure your URL is now hosted by DevHub.)

BUILDING

The tools at DevHub.com are actually so intuitive that they choose colors, layouts and fonts-- and products and content- all based on the provided keywords. The name of the site becomes a basic text logo, but an image an be uploaded in its place. Because of the auto-populate feature, when you go to edit your first site, you will see that it was been prepopulated, but it's all able to be changed. As of this writing, there are four themed layouts and four font sets. Colors and number of columns can be changed for all of them, and in addition, column width can be manipulated, too.

There is a default homepage, and users can create other pages if they so desire, which are navigated through by tabs. When a new page is added, a new tab is added as well. Pages can be custom (like articles), or be prepopulated using set ideas from DevHub.com, which correspond to content partners, such as: news, products, podcasts, videos, photos, jobs, property listings and local directory. Google Adsense widgets are also available for placement anywhere.

Those who have used other widget-based platforms, such as Webstore by Amazon, will be familiar with the drag and drop technology. Users can easily move around product boxes, news headlines and more-- while specifying how many headlines or products are show, as well as overwriting default keywords to make sure the right type of items or content show up.

DevHub.com also allows for custom content by way of an text and HTML widgets, affiliate code widgets and photos. So, while sites are very template-based, they can be manipulated to look different.

Right now, the limit is ten sites, however the DevHub.com FAQ explains that if a user's first ten sites are unique and performing, they will add more sites to your profile. This means that if you add ten sites and they are the default, DevHub is not likely to approve extra sites.

INTERFACE

The user-interface is very user-friendly, and at this writing, very basic. There's not much you can customize, therefore the learning curve is really low. Basically, DevHub is a very easy platform to build, edit and manage. For help, there is a brief FAQ section, with a user community on the way.

EARNING

DevHub.com users can make money on pay-per-click ads, through purchases made through DevHub's affiliate partners like Amazon.com and several comparison shopping engines, as well as any personal affiliate links that the user may add to the site. DevHub.com does not promise to make people rich online, merely it offers a user-friendly platform for users to take their stab at monetizing a website. Per the FAQ at this writing, users will get paid once they hit a threshold of $100.

REPORTING /ANALYZING

DevHub.com offers a reporting panel to show traffic and earnings. As of now, it does not show where traffic is coming from, what keywords were used, and what specific links earned money. However, users can still measure the success of individual sites and determine which sites to delete so they can try something new.

Overall, DevHub.com offers a great web-based tool for people looking to start a website with a limited budget, resources and knowledge. Now in the BETA phase, the platform is sure to continue to offer more tools and resources and add new monetizing partners.

A SIDEBAR: AC USER REVIEWS DEVHUB.COM

This AC writer signed up to play with a few unused domain names she had to try it out. The above information was written based on my own experiences with DevHub.com this week- but didn't want to interject my opinion throughout the whole article.

I feel cutting edge that I signed up at this early, early stage! Within the last two days, I actually saw new additions to the user dashboard. For instance, "current page settings" is now called "current page SEO," which is a lot more descriptive. So, you can tell it's in BETA, with the developers adding new features, changing things around for the better.

Okay. I did make ten sites and did have some fun doing it. One example is www.adultlearnerbooks.com and another is www.coolstuffforiphone.com You can view these as examples of how the content and products are given based on the type of site it is. I found the site to be extremely easy to use. With some fiddling around, and using a graphics program to make a logo for each of the sites, they may not look half bad. I added some unique SEO content to the landing the pages to help draw traffic to the site, and made it clear that I was not selling anything, nor was I responsible for the content, but merely a "hub" for information relation to the specific topic. (I didn't want them to come across "link farm-y."

I can't really comment on earning potential because it will be different for everyone, and also that my sites are only a few days old. However, I did earned $.57 in two days- got three clicks on three different sites. Not sure how the traffic got to the sites since I just posted them all, but we'll see how things go. The domain names were sitting there, so I was tempted by the ease of DevHub.com to see what could happen. I have nothing to lose, right?

Can you really make money with DevHub.com? I work in e-commerce full-time by day, so I know that it's not just about having a website. You need traffic too. If done right, I feel people could earn some extra bucks with DevHub.com, as well as find a cost-effective way to build a personal website-- as you can turn off all the widgets and just make original pages, too.

If you have a domain name and five minutes, give DevHub.com a shot!