How I Made Money Writing on HubPages - Year One

Wow, so two of my Hubpages milestones have just passed. One year of constant publishing and community interaction plus a total of 100 hubs published.

The little number next to my name to the right will reveal that I have been registered for 16 months up to the point of this hub being published, in fact, i have been attempting to find the time to write this commemorative hub for a month now. The 100 hub milestone seemed to be the spur I needed.

There is no way on earth I would have stayed motivated and focused on expanding one aspect of my presence as a writer and online marketer without the constant support and enjoyment I have gained here at HubPages. Writing online, web design, online marketing and basically just working from home can be really solitary activities, it can get boring , it can get tedious and it can seem sometimes like the effort isnt worth the return.

That isnt true here at Hubpages, between comments, emails and forums, writers can really help each other in everything form personal questions to promotion and I have really come to appreciate it.

Where else can I say I have increased my traffic and revenue  200% this month and get anything but a blank stare?

So Thank You everyone, I appreciate your involvement, suggestions and comments and all of it has really help me to focus on my goals, and have fun doing it!

As the title suggests, I hope to impart realistically what one can expect in income from a moderate involvement in the Hubpages publishing Platform.

Many of us come from very different backgrounds in regards to motivations and technical/online proficiency.

Less than 3 years ago I would have had no idea what an RSS feed is, I couldnt tell you how to insert anchor text and a computer virus would have made me buy a new computer (In fact, It did)..Now,I do in fact make a full time income using nothing but online sources. I actually hate computers, am still a terrible typer and would prefer to be out in the sun, than in front of a computer. Computer Geek is not an apt description.

What skills did I come to the online marketing/HubPages world with?

• 1998 - Built AOL Home Pages - using html which I copied or retyped string by string from HTML for dummies. Spent a few weeks doing it and forgot all about it, wasnt my computer, didnt have my own internet
  
• 2002 - Library research assistant - used library database search to assist students in research - learned search commands , boolean text etc.
• 2003- Graphic Artist - as a Graphic Artist for a small Print Shop, began to use Google Images for reference material - if it wasnt during work hours, I NEVER touched a computer.
• 2004 - helped build (funding and planning) a free wifi network for a Community development company - never actually used the wifi myself.
• 2006- got my first computer!
• 2007- Began to develop MySpace pages to reconnect with friends after a move and promote my art and the art and music of friends.
• 2007 - Became addicted to eBay and actually achieved PowerSeller status - became rather good at product searches and price comparisons.
  

The point? Im no more a computer whiz or savant than your average soccer mom or retired person. As technology as become more a part of everyones life I have been sucked in also, but I certainly dont have a head start. If I can make web sites and write articles for affiliate and freelance income, anybody can.

In that short history, you will see no mention of affiliate marketing or writing. I was previously an editor and columnist for Community Newspaper and staff writer for a small Arts Magazine, writing was a passion but never considered a viable income opportunity. I did (and do) run a off-line Graphic Design and Guerrilla marketing company, where I try to make jobs for the creative individuals in the world who lack a business sense (rather common combo). After beginning to see the trends and norms in the small subset of the internet world that MySpace represented I decided to bring my business online.

While developing my pages and approach - Fine Arts meets Business marketing - I began to wonder about the fembots that often graced Myspace and why do these annoying pop ups exist?

I found Commission Junction and affiliate marketing was opened up to me. I incorporated my affiliate opportunities into my eBay customer base and saw small profits ...this was very exciting!

My affiliate focus was only on eBay related products and I started writing articles for a now unpublished site that shared the different tricks and experiences I had with dropshipping, paypal, ebay etc. One of the articles began to see thousands of viewers a week and I scrambled to figure out why and how I could continue the trend.

I read something about using Yahoo Answers to attract customers to my site, While answering a question I saw a competing answer..it was terrible, it was wrong and the link led to Hubpages..I read the article and thought , why would anyone bother trying to attract traffic to this crap?

I had casually scanned the 30DC course and had seen references to Hubpages and realized that I also had an account at hubpages. After some research I figured I would give it a try as it seemed like an easier way to make good looking pages. One plus I recognized, is that I wouldnt be pigeonholed to a topic like I was on my own blog.

I only published 5 articles in the two months leading up to 2009, but one of them about how to set up your firefox for internet marketing purposes was really popular, it got featured, i got tons of comments and fun conversation and hundreds of viewers a day. I figured this was how it was supposed to work!

As an aside, that article although receiving tons of hub traffic and social traffic from my myspace and even some trickle through from still very popular ebay blog, never made a cent..or at least nothing worth mentioning.

Which leads me to HubPages Insight #1

Social Traffic has no direct monetary value - not all traffic is equal!

If your asking questions about FaceBook and MySpace and Digg and emailing links to your friends, you are barking up the wrong  tree.  HubPages traffic is also social traffic, i enjoy this traffic! it personalized my experiences ...but dont ever make the association that all traffic is equal and for gods sake stop trying to come up with devious ways to link your hubs in the forums

Hubpages is the BEST venue overall for online writers:

I write for EVERY online platform that I know about. Only Hubpages enjoys the authority and almost immediate indexing that makes it so special. If you just are looking to be read and communicate with your writing than the hubpages social community is without compare. if you want to make money online from your writing than the closest you can find to "set and forget" is Hubpages. Between the quality control standards and the interlinking done by the site automatically you have a huge headstart in your placement and authority compared to self publishing or spam filled wastelands like Associated content.

All the information you need to optimize your pages, gain traffic, learn keyword research and develop your own websites is FREE to be found here at Hubpages. I personally recommend this platform to many people i work with as great place to train and learn in how to write for money online and be a successful affiliate marketer.

As part of my 2010 plan I graphed and plotted all my online efforts. I measured which topics, sites and campaigns were performing the best, which could improve and which were best forgotten.

Across all my campaigns, my Hubpages efforts show the most improvement and the best return of investment. Theoretically, although I lose 40% of my income opportunities on the Big 3 affiliate programs that connected directly with HubPages, if I focused only on Hubpages I would see the fastest return in my investment. Keeping that in mind I have doubled my publishing here, by the end of March 2010, I will have published more hubs than I did in all of 2009.

Hubpages Insight #2

Identify what works for you and try to repeat the formula

If you see that a certain topic or keyword is much more successful than others. Jump on it! Write related hubs, create complementary blogs that backlink to the topic, write similar topics at other platforms. Dont miss a proven formula.

Does Hubpages make Money! Yes, Yes, yes......

As I tried to make clear above, Hubpages and directly related content for me is the easiest most dependable earner in my rather large portfolio of tried methods. I have a large social profile presence, super-twitter accounts, automated web sites and a liitle more than 50 domains at various stages of completion. HubPages comes out strong as the most bang for the time buck.

Im at a stage where direct income revealing is unwise. Plus many of my check writers dont allow it. But there is another reason they are not posted.

HubPages Insight #3

Learn to view your efforts in percentages and Analytics is your BEST friend

Use the graphical interfaces of your various networks to view your increases. Did your month to month traffic double? Yet your earnings remained the same. Why? Do certain topics show a higher conversion rate...write more of them. Percentages help at the beginning. If you are making .50 cents a day...that can be discouraging, another .50 cents a day isnt that encouraging...but thats actually a statistically huge jump! Anytime you can double your earning and or traffic, you have done something right!

So my years trends are laid out below: There are three very important changes you should make note of.

Between June and July, traffic doubled, by August it tripled. Yet, I wrote 0 hubs in June! and only 5 total between July and August?

November 09, shows a huge spike in all regards.

January 2010 sucked, yet was the second most active publishing period of the entire 16 months?

So why the huge jump in traffic in the July 09 period? I went through every single hub and I changed the titles to keyword focused, search engine targetted results.

My previous titles and even unfortunately the URL's were gambles, I still had the mindset I had gained from print journalism and even still repeated in online make money circles that a catchy title was very important...well i dont agree.

If you looked closely, you would also see that although earnings increased in those months they didnt increase exponentially with the traffic increase..earnings increase didnt occur until November, this was partly due to the shopping crowd rush - you will see a giant spike during Black friday week...but that wasnt it. During November I learned how to manipulate the adsense triggering here at hubpages via header titles. The keywords that bring your traffic do NOT have to be the same as those that trigger ads. I doubled my average per click revenue via this tweak.

Hubpages Insight #4

Revitalize old content - The Keyword tool is your income diviner

Rework old and under performing articles, use analytics to see what keywords are working for you and use the adwords keyword tool to tweak your hubs. You can simply run your publsihed URL through the tool to see the likely candidates.

This period July-November , was the first time I considered Adsense as a worthwhile revenue opportunity, previously I considered it a safeguard. As an affiliate marketer, I am and was accustomed to a $3 - $100 commission on my sales and leads. But, I was very pigeonholed into what I could write about. With adsense, I can ALMOST write about whatever i please and enjoy some level of profit. There is a way to truly optimize for adsense but clicks happen with any topic.

So why did traffic and earnings tank in January although it was a very productive publishing month?

There is a post holiday drop in online shopping, BUT Im not much of a product marketer. The drop can be associated with online traffic worldwide dropping, but, why arent my earnings and traffic bouncing up with all the new hubs published?

Easy, with all the small details of the google dance aside, it takes at least a month to see where your content is going to end up in the search engines. Plus since I spent more time writing, much less effort was put into promotions. The traffic and earnings spike Im seeing this March is directly related to my January activity.

HubPages insight #5

Live a month behind

Dont let your expectations discourage you. Nothing happens overnight. Anything that does has no meaning in your long term results. Remember, if your writing at hubpages and other places that allow for long term passive income generation, your in this for the long run.

HubPages Insight #1

• Social Traffic has no direct monetary value - not all traffic is equal!

Hubpages Insight #2

• Identify what works for you and try to repeat the formula

HubPages Insight #3

• Learn to view your efforts in percentages and Analytics is your BEST friend

Hubpages Insight #4

• Revitalize old content - The Keyword tool is your income diviner

HubPages insight #5

• Live a month behind

Hubpages insight #6

• Dont believe everything you read, know your sources and experiment for yourself

Hubpages insight #7

• Traffic is more about targetting than about levels, sure with every 1000 views you can expect 10-20 conversions. But the difference between how many convert to how many dont can have significant effects on your earnings, specifically in regards to adsense and ebay - as with both of them the value of your clicks will drop if send untargetted junk traffic to their programs. I would (and do) exchange broad traffic that doesnt convert for laser targetted traffic that does, i rather have 10 buyers than 10,000 tirekickers. If your getting a huge influx of traffic that isnt doing anything for you, figure out how to make them go away or how to convert or divert that traffic to a better location.
  

I mentioned know your sources as my final pretentious insight. Its really common here at Hubpages and across the online world, for people to attempt to make money by selling the system of how to make money. Here at hubpages you will see a new user in the community post their first 5 hubs on income generation and wealth and the next month they will be in the forums asking why they arent making money! Or, in the less devious but equally disturbing trend, you see users who have been online 3 months, who have spent  all their days asking for assistance, suddenly break out the make money from hubpages hub...that is usually just a poorly diluted version of the help they have received over the months.

99% of make money articles are the same info diluted a thousand times or are complete misinformation and tripe. This is 99% true.

Occasionally after a method has proven to work well for me, I will share...if you cared to check the progression and the publish dates with the bio and stats i have provided you will see that these small methods have worked in some way for me...and they never end with a "Buy this" link..lol

In short my progression is ebay seller with aff marketing tendencies

Online writer who uses various outlets

Maximize your content revenue

Content creator who is optimizing and promoting his content

Learn to write for Adsense

Full time online income generator  who now has time to focus primarily on passive projects

The Ultimate Writers Link Wheel tutorial

Although I said I wouldnt end with a buy this now, I will.

Throughout these hundred hubs there are a couple of products I believe in and I have stayed true to promoting only things I believe in. Sure the ebay and amazon feeds are keyword related, but if I took the time to type even a word about it than I believe in it.

Relating to The Mindset needed for success:

Napoleon Hills course on "Think and Grow Rich" is a timeless classic that should help you break away from the wage slave philosophy

Learn to value your time and focus on your successful actions. Also includes a basic affiliate marketing intro and sources for dropshipping

This man proved he can do what he says (he was showcased in the hubs blog) and I can personally attest that my efficiency online is increased by the methods suggested by The Keyword Academy.

The Keyword Academy: one buck for first months access

There are a few more hubs I want to highlight and two other books I believe in, but Im tired and I want to spend my Sunday relaxing, as a passive online marketer should!

Thank you everyone!

If your not already a Hubpages author, feel free to join up, its open to the public and its agreat and free resource to learn about how to make money online.