What troubles me the most is that it’s blatantly obvious that some individuals aren’t seeing things clearly. They don’t want to accept the realities of being in business for themselves. There are a lot of core principles that are missing and I want to help as much as I can to fill in the gaps. To get this started, I want to explain a simple example:

Driving Around The Block

Driving around the block is super easy right? Assuming that you live on a square block, there really aren’t many steps that you need to follow to make it around the block:

1. Turn right out of your drive way.
2. Drive to the end of the block.
3. Turn right.
4. Drive one block.
5. Turn right.
6. Drive one block.
7. Turn right.
8. Drive one block.
9. Turn right.
10. Drive until you get back to your house.
11. Pull back into your drive way.

Seems to be very black and white, doesn’t it? Assuming that your goal is to make it all the way around the block, at what point in the process can you stop driving? Can you stop at the 3rd step? Can you stop at the 7th step? These questions are almost insulting, aren’t they? Everyone knows that you have to complete all of the steps before you’re going to make it back to your house.

HubPages As A Business

People don’t want to see their work with HubPages as a business. Frankly, it’s easier to see it as a hobby. If it’s a hobby, you don’t feel like a failure if it doesn’t work out. Once it mentally becomes a business, that all changes. Most people will feel like a loser if their business doesn’t become successful.

Anyone can increase their earnings on HubPages. However, most people won’t. This doesn’t mean that they can’t, it simply means that they won’t. They either won’t learn the necessary steps or they won’t follow through – they won’t complete the necessary tasks.

When we did the original HubPages experiment, quite a few people created hubs. Some people created a LOT of hubs. Some did really well with their hubs while many didn’t do well at all. The differences are easy to identify for people who understand what it takes to have success with the internet. People who don’t have this understanding seem to be totally mystified.

Steps For Creating Successful Hubs

1. Identify keyword phrases that have both solid potential for making money (decent search volume and advertiser cost-per-click) and reasonable competition (keyword phrases that have low PR sites currently ranking in Google).
2. Create a well written hub that covers the topic well, using the keyword phrase in the title of the hub.
3. Create or edit existing hubs to create links for your new hub. Getting links from other hubs that you own will help you to strengthen the hub you’re working on.
4. Promote your hub so that you can get links from other sites.

If you see this as a business, you will realize that you need to complete each of these steps to produce earnings from your hub. If you see it as a hobby you do some of these steps, however, you may be missing the knowledge required to complete all of them. Or, you might not WANT to do all of them.

If you know right now that you aren’t going to complete all of the above steps, don’t do anything. Any effort that you put in without completing the steps will be a complete waste of time.

When you have a business, you don’t make anything until you complete everything that has to be done. This unfortunately is completely contrary to the way we are trained to think. We are trained from the time we’re young to trade time for money. When you have a business, you work for free and you continue to work for free until everything is done. For some businesses this will require working for free for many years. Fortunately with hubs, it won’t take nearly that long.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read about people who have created a ton of hubs without completing all of the steps. What should they expect them to earn? Absolutely nothing. Thinking that they will earn something without completing the tasks is like thinking that you can drive around the block while doing only steps 1-5 of the above steps. It’s simply ludicrous. What happens when you don’t complete the steps is you don’t make it to where you want to go.

The funny thing about my work with HubPages is that it’s the exact same thing that I do on my own sites. I have to find solid keywords, create well written content, give that content links with my site, and promote that content so that I can gather links. If I don’t complete that work I won’t make a freaking thing.

I have spent a lot of time in my life mentoring others and can tell you that when people fail, it’s because they don’t complete what has to be done. At the end of the second block, they start to question whether they can really drive around the block. Even if they keep going, they won’t make it past the second turn.

The people who will simply execute what has to be done always seem to find success no matter what they try. If you aren’t getting better with your hub earnings or any other type of online earnings, go back to the basics. Figure out which step you aren’t executing properly and get better. Complete what has to be done and you’ll find that your earnings will increase significantly.

You NEVER want to use spun content. Don’t do it. You will get better, safer links if you use unique content to submit to other sites. Your risk is also significantly less if you use original, unique content.

People who believe that spun content is great will probably argue that it’s a huge time-save. This is only true if you’re looking at an extremely short time period. I don’t think you’re going to see residual value in those types of links. Google definitely has the technology to detect spun content and if they don’t, I know some programmers who could write something for them in about 10 minutes.

Sites like Text Broker are great if you need to do some outsourcing. You can get some high quality stuff there, at a good price. They can handle as much volume as you need. We all know that it takes a lot of writing to get anywhere, but there are legitimate methods that can be used to get it done.

2. Social traffic doesn’t pay. In 2007, I used about a trillion hours of my time trying to hit big Diggs and Stumbles. It wasn’t until 2008 that I decided to track the performance of the traffic I got from those sources. It turned into very little income.

3. People that own successful sites are regular people. I have always approached big bloggers and site owners with a lot of respect – too much respect. I assumed that I had nothing to add and for a while didn’t even try to make a splash. As it turns out, they are regular people who are motivated by the same things everyone else is motivated by. If you can add a unique perspective, there’s nothing they would like more than to publish one of your articles, on their site.

4. Google isn’t that complicated. They look for evidence that your site has respect from other sites, and they do this by looking at links. Your ability to get traffic from Google is a simple combination of the content you produce (the things you put up on your site) and people’s reaction to that content (the links pointed at your content).

5. Volume matters in a huge way. After I started to focus a LOT more on how much work I got done in a day, my results started to explode. Having more content always matters. This might mean you need to set up more sites or it might mean that you need to expand the ones you already have.

6. Outsourcing is also king. I’m pretty amazed at this point that I was able to make as much as I did in 2007 and 2008 without oursourcing. Frankly a lot of the work that needs to be done is really monotonous and it takes a ton of time. 2009 was the year that I started to focus hard on outsourcing and it’s no coincidence that I made many times more dollar bills than I had every made before.

7. Thinking doesn’t pay nearly as much as we wish it would. I have learned a lot about myself in the last few years and I’ve figured out that I’m a dreamer – that can be good or bad. I think big but I can waste a lot of time thinking. I’ve had to learn how to execute and I can tell you that it was hard for me. I’m still not as good at it as I need to be. Execution is crucial, much more crucial than ideas.

Hi. I made {website removed} according to your videos, and then left it for three
months. Now it’s making $40.00 a month. I was skeptical at first. But now I want
to see what can happen with my keywords that had more potential. My problem is,
I just read your article about posting daily – I haven’t touched the {site topic removed} site in
5 months. I’m working on the {site 2 topic removed} site now. I don’t understand how I could
keep writing about {site topic removed}, or any keyword that is technically
promising, but personally uninteresting. So, is it possible that daily posting
may not be necessary for every niche site? or should I not even develop a site
if I don’t plan on posting a blog everyday? Also, you have said that some
students make many many blogs, how do they keep up with them if they are posting
everyday? I’m sorry for writing so much! But THANK YOU your site has been so
helpful and I think what you do is awesome.

This is a question that a LOT of people wonder about. A lot of the problem is my fault because I have talked openly and in private about multiple approaches to internet marketing.

One option for making money is by creating niche websites. You pick a small topic and dominate that topic. It sounds like that’s the approach that’s being used by this reader.

Another entirely different option for making money online is creating authority blogs. I’ve talked about this approach a lot on CourtneyTuttle.com and I assume that this reader read a post about this topic there (or saw my 2010 goals post where I said that I was going to post six days per week on The Keyword Academy). Keep in mind that this is an entirely different approach.

How Often Do We Update Niche Sites?

I personally only update niche sites as needed. If there’s a major industry change within a topic, it usually calls for an update. For example, if I had a niche site about ‘different types of laser eye surgery’, I would want to keep it up to date. That means that I would need to update the site if a different type of laser eye surgery came into the picture.

Another reason that I would update a niche site is if it starts to slide in the rankings. If you’re sitting at #1 and your site is topically up to date, there really isn’t a reason to do any updating, in my opinion.

How Often Do We Update Blogs?

This approach is entirely different and needs to be approached differently. If you’re running a traditional blog, you’re trying to develop a following and posting regularly will really help with that. In my opinion, traditional blogging is a lot more difficult than many of the other options for making money online. You have to be more fully developed in your skillset and personality traits to pull it off.

If you are sold on being a traditional blogger, the more you update, the more success you will have. Most of the big bloggers that I know post multiple times per day and often post more than five times per day. If that doesn’t appeal to you I would probably pick a different approach like building niche sites or building informational sites where you don’t try to create a traditional blog following.

How crazy is that? It’s obviously a lot easier to produce a lot of money when the world is your marketplace.

Making money online is one of the most exciting things out there, but it’s also one of the hardest things to learn. There will be more money to be made in 2010 than ever. However, it will also be harder to learn. Why? Because there will be more and more garbage to sort through. There will be more crap blogs to read and more ebooks written by people who only know how to make money by selling ebooks. If you get sucked in by too many of these products, you will find it very difficult to get anywhere. You will find the information to be very contradictory and that will cause you to freeze up as you try to implement what you have learned.

If you would like for 2010 to be an awesome year for making money, this guide will serve as a road map. If you get off track, revisit the concepts presented here. They have helped me to create a lot of income for myself and have also helped me to avoid putting time into things that don’t pay off.

1. Follow your interests. I believe that one of the biggest reasons I have done well is that I have always either created sites that I was really passionate about, or have been able to get really interested in the topics I wanted to create sites about. I have made plenty of money with other types of sites (that I wasn’t as interested in) but my sites that have really flourished are that ones that I like the most.

2. Develop web real estate, aka build web sites. There are a lot of ways to make money online, but there’s only one that can provide you with near-residual income. Plan out sites, get them up, and start developing. If you want to produce in 2010 you need to start now. Income doesn’t appear overnight.

If you have already created some sites you’re ahead of the game. If they aren’t producing, move on to #3.

3. Research, research, research. Liking the topic of your websites can definitely help you to grow your income, but this won’t happen if there isn’t a market for the information/products your provide. Take a look at whether there are already sites that cover the topic you’re thinking about. If there are, it’s a good thing – it means that there’s probably money there and you’ll be able to emulate some of the things that those sites are doing.

Digging into your markets to discover additional keywords and subtopics is a hugely important aspect of the game we play. There are probably a lot of untapped traffic sources that you haven’t found, simply because you haven’t looked hard enough.

4. Help a lot of people. Your site will produce 100 times more if you want to really help people along the way. I get a lot of satisfaction out of knowing that what we’re doing here at The Keyword Academy helps people to produce real income. In our forum we have earnings badges that help us to see how our members are doing and there’s a huge payoff every time I see people with new badges (this is especially true when I see earnings badges pop up for members from third world countries). Since we really care about helping the people who use our site, it makes it a lot easier to market. Our members help us to get the word out because they know how much we can help the people they know.

If you’re only in it for the money, it’s going to be a lot harder for you. No matter what the topic of your site is, there will be people who have problems and questions. If you can figure out ways to provide them with solutions to those problems, you won’t have any trouble getting business or traffic.

5. Reduce your information intake. The people I know who make a lot of money online spend very little time reading blogs, watching videos, and interacting with their online pals. A certain degree of interaction is important for everyone, but money comes because of work. If you spend all of your time trying to learn, you aren’t getting much closer to actually producing income. In fact, you might be filling your mind with knowledge that will be detrimental to your success.

Don’t get me wrong, knowledge is very important. However, it can also become a huge addiction that can waste way too much time. Be wary of unproven sources of information.

6. Focus on volume. If your site provides information, provide a lot of information. If your site provides tools, provide a lot of useful tools. Creating more content will help you to increase your site’s traffic, especially if you’re creating keyword rich content. You may be trying to figure out why you have little traffic. A mental shift toward increasing volume can be extremely beneficial. A site that only has one keyword rich article would perform a lot better with 10. A site with 10 keyword rich articles would perform a lot better with 100. A site with 100 would perform a lot better with 1000.

Think about the people who would read your site and map out all of the information that they will need to accomplish their goals. In a lot of niches this will give you an unlimited supply of topics to cover.

Ask any real marketer and they will tell you that search traffic converts better than any type of traffic, for sales, clicks, and leads. In order to create that traffic you will need to do your research well and then create content based around your research. If you create more content, you can obviously plan on getting more search traffic. You should read our 100 blog posts experiment if you need further proof.

7. Squeeze the orange. In other words, think about how to get more from your existing traffic. Is there a product that you can create and sell? Can you upsell from that product? Can you sell more advertising? Can you use better placement on pay-per-click ads such as Adsense? Can you sell more affiliate product?

Some of the biggest gains I have been able to make in income in 2009 came with no traffic increase. Mark and I talk all the time about how we can get more out of our projects and when you have it on your mind, ideas will manifest themselves.

The experiment produced great results:

• During the first week, the experiment produced $371.98.
• During the second week, the experiment produced $678.62.
• During the third week, the experiment produced $780.40.
• During the last 9 days, the experiment produced $848.59.

That means that the grand total of the 30 days was $2,679.59:

Obviously I’m pretty happy about how well the experiment went. It goes to show that know which keywords to post about can go a long way.

Now that this experiment is said and done, I can offer some advice for people who are thinking about taking on a project like this. There are a few things that come to mind:

• Spend enough time on the research phase. Choosing the right keywords is key. If you have keywords that are too difficult, it will be pretty difficult to get amazing results. If you have worthless keywords, they won’t produce any income, even if they produce traffic (You can use the Adwords Tool to look at the prices advertisers are buying traffic for).
• Learn how to write well. I’m not saying that I’m a world class writer. I know that I’m not. However, I try hard to write posts that will give people the information that they are looking for. I can tell you that I get a lot of natural links because of that and it makes all the difference in the world. If you can learn how to write what people are looking for, you’ll be better off in the long run.
• Consider keywords when you write. I would still focus on writing what people are looking for, but it would be completely stupid to not include your keyword(s) in your writing. I try not to think about keyword density and that stuff – I simply make sure that my keywords can be found within my blog posts.
• Stretch yourself. Doing a lot of writing is difficult for anyone. However, volume is a key aspect of the game and the more content you have, the easier it is to get traffic.
• Continue to develop your sites. There are a lot of people out there who jump from site to site to site and there are some fundamental problems with that. In order to really get a site to perform well you have to continue to develop it over time. As time passes it starts to work in your favor, as long as you continue to develop. People usually quit before they get that far but if you can get there, you can make some pretty crazy things happen.

The biggest lesson that I learned through this experiment is that volume matters. It isn’t the only thing that matters, but it matters. It seems that most of us don’t push ourselves as much as we should to accomplish more and sometimes it takes a challenge or an experiment like this to get us to actually perform.

No matter what type of site you have, it will always help to get published. You gain exposure to groups of people that you don’t know, and you also get extra love from the search engines.

Last week I was notified by a good friend of mine (RT Cunningham) that he has a new site where people can publish their work. You can find the site at Posturown.com. The site was created with three purposes in mind:

• To help you establish yourself as an online authority in any topic you choose.
• To help you promote other relevant websites, including your own.
• To help you (and of course, RT) in making money with your articles — eventually.

If you’re interested in getting published on Posturown, I would highly recommend taking a look at the Author Requirements. Users are required to use original articles that cover topics that they know about. Content generators and spinners are prohibited.

Knowing RT, I can tell you that this will be a useful service. He cares a lot about quality control and that’s the most important aspect of this type of site. I’m really looking forward to seeing how well this site does. I think it’s going to be a winner and it will certainly help you to gain more exposure to your sites.

So far the posts I’ve written have made $1831 in three weeks.

I noticed some interesting things this week:

• People are linking to my posts. I’m not asking, it’s just happening. That’s what can happen if you really get into the mind of the searcher and deliver the information they’re looking for. This is obviously helping and is most likely responsible for a lot of the earnings increase this week.
• The earnings from posts varies wildly. One post will do really well one day and then won’t produce much for a few days. Sometimes I won’t be able to find the post at all for a few days. It will then come back and do really well again. A lot of people in the comments here as well as in the forums see this happen and freak out. They think that something it wrong. This always happens when you’re dealing with new posts – it doesn’t mean that something is wrong.

I have to laugh because I know that I’m going to get a new slug of comments asking how many ‘readers’ I had on the site before the experiment. It seems like the common explanation is that this money is being made because of existing traffic. This is frakkin hilarious because it shows me how little some people actually know about making money with Adsense. Guys, regular visitors do not click ads and never will. If you think I’m doing this because my ‘readers’ are clicking ads, you obviously don’t understand the game. Searchers are the ones who will click ads and if you want to get ad clicks, you have to draw the searchers.

As a side note, the site I’m working with had less than 10 readers before I started the experiment.

There are no tricks in how I’m reporting this stuff. I know how to find the right keywords and I understand how to write about them. If you’re wondering if I’m somehow leveraging my existing traffic to make this money let me put your mind at ease – I’m not. The traffic on this site is WAY up right now because of the addition of these new posts and it happens to be search traffic – the kind of traffic that clicks ads.

I’m a little surprised by how well this is going and at the same time I’m not. I’ve never added this much content based around solid keywords to a site before. Now that I’ve done this, I can’t figure out why this is the first time I’ve tried it. To me it’s pretty obvious that it would help any site but for some reason I hadn’t connected how much benefit I could get from this.

I think that some of you probably have the knowledge to pull something like this off and others need to learn more about keywords – how to find the right ones and how to target them well. There’s no way I could get these results without knowing what I know about keywords.

That brings the two week total to $1,050.60.

Why Most Bloggers Can’t Produce Results Like These

The more I read what bloggers have to say about making money online, the more frustrated I get. If you’re a blogger that isn’t getting results, I’m sorry but you probably either have no plan or you’re using a flawed one that makes no sense.

Most bloggers are the same people that buy lottery tickets hoping that luck will lead them to fortune. They follow A-listers or IM gurus believing every word they say with little understanding of how much they’re getting misled and ripped off. Buying lottery tickets is honestly a lot better business plan than listening to most IM gurus/bloggers. The odds of succeeding are about the same and the cost is a lot lower since many of you spend TONS of time using techniques that don’t work.

The barrier to entry with blogging is obviously very low. You can do it for free or you can choose to get your own domain and hosting for a whopping cost of less than $100 per year. Since you don’t really have to invest either way, you think that you don’t need a business plan.

I’m sure that some people are going to lace the comments of this post with f-words and uppercuts because no one wants to be told that what they’re doing is wrong. The only reason I’m saying anything is so that people can get better at blogging. If you don’t understand exactly how you are going to establish your site, I don’t understand how you think it’s going to happen.

A Plan That Actually Works

Many bloggers could establish their blogs and make money if they would simply learn how to write effectively about the right topics. Since they don’t know what the right topics are, it usually doesn’t matter how effective their writing is.

With my experiment, I am writing about topics that I know will be effective. I’m not writing posts to write them. I’m doing everything in my power to pick topics that are winners and that’s why this experiment is going so well.

When you pick topics to write about, you should be looking at your competition in Google. If you choose topics that have really strong competition, it’s obviously going to be a lot harder to do well. Since most bloggers write about the exact same topics as everyone else, they are going up against maximum competition. This is obviously a terrible plan in both the short and long terms.

You should also be looking at both the search volume and CPC of any topic or keyword that you’re thinking about writing about. You’ll get a lot better with this the more you do it. I’ve obviously done this a lot and I know what’s going to work and what isn’t. I firmly believe that you have to take as much of the luck out of the equation as possible and you do that by planning out your topics well.

I FINALLY have everything working in a way that will allow me to track earnings separately on the 100 blog posts and the experiment will start today! I’ll be updating you next Monday.