In April of 2009, I created my first hub on HubPages. I had solid success with my first few hubs and decided that I would try a larger experiment with them. That experiment started on May 7, 2009 and ended on June 7, 2009. Those of you who were around back then know that the experiment went quite well and earned about $475 during the test period.
One of the coolest things about creating web properties like hubs is the residual benefit. Naturally I see my earnings from HubPages each month and know exactly what’s going on with them. They are fairly stable and while there are natural peaks and valleys, my hubs have continued to produce very nicely. Since the date of my first hub’s completion (April 7, 2009) until today (February 11, 2010), my hubs have produced $4,003.43:
I know that these numbers aren’t enormous and in all honesty, I could have done a lot better with hubs if I had continued to work on them. I could have updated the hubs, let websites and other ‘hubbers’ know about them, and I certainly could have written some articles to help strengthen the hubs with links. I haven’t done that so it’s pretty dang cool how well the hubs have done. I noticed in my Adsense account that my hubs produced over $400 in January of this year and it’s been more than seven months since I set them up:
There are definitely a lot of ways out there that can be used to make money online. HubPages for me has been a pretty solid one. I have a total of 105 hubs which means that each one of them on average has produced $38.13. If I compare that to the amount of work that it took to set them up, it’s a pretty dang nice hourly wage. It will get more and more exciting to watch the earnings as more and more months pass by.
The Future of my 105 Hubs
I have a lot of stuff going on right now but I think it would be pretty cool to make an extra $20,000 or so from HubPages this year. There’s no question that it’s possible. I’m already on pace to make more than $6,000 in a 12 month period and in all honesty, I’ve put very little effort into it. I did all of my work on my HubPages within a 45 day period and almost all of that work was within a 30 period, working on the project for a couple hours per day.
I plan to create some more hubs and I also plan on doing some work to improve the ones I already have. I can update them with fresh content and I can work on getting a few links for them. Generally when I do this kind of thing I see things shake up quite a bit. The earnings will either start moving up immediately or they will fall for a month or so and will move up after that. Either way they will end up in a much better place than they are right now.
How to Succeed with HubPages
I’ve given a lot of advice on hubs in the past but wanted to give a little again. As is usually the case with this type of web property, picking keywords is crucial. You want to pick keywords that have decent volumes and CPCs with limited competition. The Massive Traffic 101 webinar can help you to learn what I’m talking about if it isn’t making sense to you right now.
Hubs are like any other web property, they require content and links to get traffic. If you create a premium reference article on a topic, it’s possible that it will attract a lot of links. There are obviously other methods that can be used to build links to your hubs, including article submission and trading. The amount you earn on hubs will be fairly proportionate to the amount of hubs you produce and the amount (and strength) of links pointing at your hubs. You will of course want to include the keywords you pick in the title of your hubs and in the text of the hubs.
How To Increase Your HubPages Earnings
1. Create more hubs. Simple math tells us that if I set up 100 more hubs that were designed around keywords that were as good as the first 200 that I set up, I could double my earnings. A lot of people never reach their potential because they aren’t willing to put in enough effort. Making money with the internet requires quite a bit of work, especially in the beginning. Learning how to use math to see how big you can take any online business can be extremely useful.
2. Work harder to promote your hubs. Linking to your hubs from blogs, or getting other web sites to link to them will help you to increase your earnings significantly. Most people who have HubPages never do anything to promote them and that leaves them a lot weaker than they could be. Those who do really well with hubs generally do the ‘behind the scenes’ work to improve the strength of their hubs.
Spread Your Effort Around
HubPages certainly isn’t the only method out there for making money. I have been working on a lot of different projects in the last year and my hubs have taken a back seat for the most part. I’m going to start putting some effort there but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be working 24/7 on them. There’s something really nice about working on your own site. It can be sold at some point and you of course get to keep 100% of the earnings. However, there are benefits to working on hubs as well. You start with more authority than you would on a new site so you can often earn more quickly (this doesn’t mean that you will earn more overall) with hubs. They are certainly worth putting some time into.
Those of you who have TKA Pro memberships can check out some threads I started about HubPages here:
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/forum/topic.php?id=802
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/forum/topic.php?id=1027
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/forum/topic.php?id=1203
http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/forum/topic.php?id=1321
Apologies that this is totally off topic of this thread but there is nowhere else to request technical assistance so I have resorted to browsing through article comments to try to find something recent. On recommendation from someone, I tried to sign up on 4/1/2010. I never got any account access information, but I have been charged. Since I don’t have account info, I need to make sure I don’t have a random account set up for which I will be charged again. And I would also like the initial charge to be reversed. Please contact me at the email attached to this response to get this resolved.
Hi Court!
Don’t you think that Squidoo is a better choice for this kind of making money?
I’ve seen far more TOP10 ranked Squidoo pages than HubPages. Recently I saw a Squidoo page with zero inlinks on position 2 for a nice keyword about netbooks. I think Squidoo has even more authority than HubPages and you can make money the same way like on HubPages.
Best Regards,
Filip
Hey Flip, I’ve tested Squidoo and have never been able to get the same results. Squidoo has poor site organization which leads to weaker lenses. This also causes most of their indexing problems.
Squidoo is a bust from my testing, but you have to go with what makes you money.
yeah if squidoo’s actually got indexed that might work. lol
Yeah, I haven’t seen too many lenses on page one, my self. Lately I haven’t seen too many hubs there either! I’ve got about 50 hubs to see how they would do, but I must say I only wish mine were doing that well! I guess I’m chasing tougher keywords, so if I want they to improve…it’s back to the link building!
Hi Jerry,
for hubs chasing tough keywords, it takes some time to see results on Google. You will get some initial traffic from hubpages (what I call first-wave traffic), then if you have used keywords properly your hub will rise in the rankings.
I have a couple of hubs on the first page for tough keywords. In one case, it took about 6 months for it to climb to the 2nd spot on page 1.
Hope that helps…
Michael
Court – What was your ROI for this? I take, even if you had someone do all of the writing for the hubs and then the back linking, at this point it would be well over 100%.
The cool part about this is, for someone who does their own writing, this is HUGE!!!
I put in a lot of work myself on the hubs Shawn but everything could have been outsourced for around $1000 – if a person wanted to do it that way. That would still be a ridiculous quadruple-up on your money.
Court,
Who would be the top 3 companies you would reccommend if you were to outsource making 100 HUB’s for $1,000.00?
I have a few new HUBs, and would like the help!
Thanks!
TextBroker.com is a writing service that I use to outsource articles. They have fair prices and can handle a lot of volume. There’s also TheContentAuthority.com – it was started by a TKA member and it sounds like they do a good job. I haven’t used TCA personally but the people in the forums talk highly of them.
I have been on hubpages for the last two years but only started writing actively on june 09, by then I had not learnt abbout keyword and many staff, I have seen some improvements both on traffic and earning
Nice George it sounds like you’re on the right track. Keyword selection is huge when it comes to HubPages – the better you take care of that aspect, the better your hubs will perform.
I remember this experiment from last year. Not too shabby of earnings for something that you essentially set and forget. Had you worked on something like this all year round, your earnings would’ve been around (Im guessing) the $15,000+ mark. Good stuff, thanks for keeping us updated.
I think that this is a great way for a newbie to start. I have been learning for the last month ever since i joined TKA, I’m in the typical circle of what do I start first and what is the best domain for my keywords. I feel comfortable about the program and finding my green keywords there are just so many to go after. So i decided after reading Cort’s article i’m going to get a hub page going tonight, just want to get comfortable with the writing of certain subjects and testing the waters with nothing to lose. This has become so addicting and I have only made 5 bucks into my adsense. From reading I think that there is plenty more room to be taken on the web. Cort has this down and thanks for sharing all you have learned, I will be keeping my subscription to this great service.
I am new to hub and i tried hard, but couldn’t place my article there. I also want to earn …someone help me please……
I have made quite a few hubs myself but I haven’t that the same sort of success as yourself.
However I would like to add that I am still fairly new to this making money online stuff and am still trying to work out how to pick the best keywords.
It is time consuming work but knowing that I am earning something each month keeps me motivated. I am happy to report that I am getting regular adsense payouts so I know I must be doing something right.
Hey Court, I am wondering about your linking on your hubs. In another blog post you said that most of your hubs have 1 link and others have 2. But in some forum threads and in your initial planning you talked about multiple ezines and directory links. What would you advise someone to do if they wanted to emulate your challenge?
In terms of difficulty, is a PR3 and PR4 SERP too tough? Should we focus on really low competition?
Last question: What about content quality. I write hubs that are 1000 words and cover my topic well. I write with wit and inject “personal insight” even though I know nothing about my hubs. Does this decrease my CTR and should I even worry about that?
Sorry this is a lot of questions. I really want to do a hub challenge soon and I think this will help me to get started. Thanks for everything Court!
I’ve got only a few hubs. I did a lot of research before choosing to go with Hubpages though. I used to belong to WealthyAffiliate, but those guys all recommend Squidoo lenses.
When I researched this. I came across a lot of numbers that suggested that although Squidoo enjoys more traffic than Hubpages, the traffic was mainly internal. Hubpages, on the other hand, seems to get more of it’s traffic from search engines.
My hubs all get indexed really fast. I haven’t even tried Squidoo, but every time I think about doing it and go to the site, I end up waiting for the page to load for like a minute. I keep thinking to myself, “This is annoying. If I don’t want to wait on this page to load, why would anyone else?”
This is interesting to me, simply for the fact that you can use these hubs to test conversion ratios for products that you are thinking about promoting. You can also test new niches!
I played a little with hub pages a while ago, but it didn’t pay out very well. Your experiment encouraged me, to put some more effort in it and – thanks to your info – do a few things differently this time. I am confident, that it will work much better this time. Thanks again!
I keep meaning to set aside some time to get some hubs up but I just haven’t had the time yet. This post has definitely inspired me to find the time and get them up now so I can start enjoying more passive income from them like you are.
I am being on hubpages from last one year. Have 60+ hubs so far. But still no success. Getting 4-5 bucks in a week. I am waiting for my cc to come to join the Members area. I am very eager to watch your vidio on Hubpages.
Well, the post is really the best on this laudable topic. I concur with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your next updates. Saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the great clarity in your writing. I will directly grab your rss feed to stay abreast of any updates. Admirable work and much success in your business enterprize!
I am glad to see remarkable success for Court and Thanx for sharing. Rgds
good idea – textbroker seems legit – i’ll give them a shot!
thanks bro.
How do I add channels in adsense and and assign them in my hubs profile, all it asked me for was my adsense id. No mention or option for channels
You can use URL channels – or you can use Google Analytics which would track each URL anyway!
I am sorry Court, but, I don’t believe this for one minute. I write for hub pages and on the average write one or two article a day. So I am already writing 30 hubs a month or more. I have never seen a $50 increase on those new articles.
I know I’m quite a bit late to the ‘challenge’ but once I finally made my way over to Hubpages, I became hooked. I’ve been there two weeks now, and have managed to put together 30 Hubs, most of which are keyword optimized(Sometimes I just write a Hub for myself and try to monetize it later. Keeps me sane).
The niche refinery tool has been instrumental in identifying quality keywords for my Hubs. I’m shooting for 50 then 100 Hubs, but for now I’m just linking to the 30 I have set up. Once I’ve cracked the RSS puzzle, things will move along nicely I think. Backlinking to these Hubs while not neglecting my Wordpress sites is a monumental task, but one worth pursuing.
Thanks for turning me onto Hubpages. After I’d put together a couple Squidoo lenses in the past, I’d pretty much sworn off the process, and figured Hubpages would be just as painful and fruitless. I couldn’t have been wronger(see if anybody catches that)
Oh yeah, I’m listed on Hubpages as author ‘Canklefish’ if anybody is interested in possibly critiquing my work. I won’t link to it here, maybe I’ll edit my profile link…
Thanks again
I am now trying to work on my new site so that i can at lease get a piece of the pie
I seem to make more money on squidoo, I mean its not huge amounts, maybe just about pays for a beer every so often lol
Great Test !
I have joined hubpages recently since I have heard that a lot of people are doing very well just using it.
At first, I thought why I would give out my content instead of using it on my websites.
After all, I decided to jump in. I didn’t take the trouble to write an article, I just used a PLR one. And guess what, in less than two days my article hit Google first page.
For me, that was unprecedented; I decided to take farther than that. The hardest thing is creating content especially in niches where I have no experience.
Can you give us a few hints on how you create content for your niche sites ?
Thanks for sharing this !
It is very inspiring article. It made me to think about this success from your guideline on writing on hubpages and I am learning how to get this idea work. I wish I could be like you. thanks for sharing this great teaching.
Great Collection of keywords
this can boost earnings
I think it’s fantastic way to make money. Whether the subject is of interest to you or not you give the reader what there looking for agree that the first step to that is your keyword search…Great article – really liked it
just downloading the ebook now…can’t wait to read it and get started..i will be happy if I get a fracture of the success you have had with it..thanks for sharing
I’m very interested to become a member here. I have read the free ebook you are giving. I am just wondering, is niche refinery already available for members?
Hi,
Tell also few tips for how and where to choose quality keywords.
i am web developer but not get in my salaray, as i saw in this post about making
money, this article motivate me to learn to be a SEO guy, rather to earn good money.
Tell also few tips for how to choose quality keywords.
Hey Guys
I have been on hubpages 6 months, have over 100 hubs. I could have done way better since joining up with the academy and hearing all this advice. Do you think hubpages is enough or should you a supersite/niche as well?
I have been writing on hubpages for a while now and there is merit in the keyword research for hubs.
However, even if you find a good keyword you also have to create backlinks and change titles and content if necessary.
I just started using hubpages a few weeks ago. It is real, and you can make money off of it. If your trying to make money on the side then I would def recommend it, but for a living no. Here is my hub, it is around average
http://hubpages.com/profile/HealthFreak31
This is what they look like and how they work
I’ve made a few hundred dollars on Hubpages so far – it’s a great place to get started in online money making.
Here’s my guide to making money from websites based on what I’ve learnt since ‘99:
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-make-money-by-making-a-website