It's still a good method, but since Hubpages closed the apprenticeship program you'll have to tweak it to get the cash from another direction. Create a few sharp looking Hubpages to establish your portfolio (as per the OP), but then advertise you'll create a page for others for $6-10 or whatever. Or set up a Fiverr gig for this (last I looked, there were only 2-3 people selling Hubpage creation services). Or outsource---charge $15 as a freelancer for the job, then get the $5 Fiverr person to create the page.