3 September 2009Hubpaging Up and Down the Block

I’ve spent the better part of my dwindling youth the last few weeks creating Hubpages. Can’t really say why I’m doing it. Nobody ever got rich building Hubpages. Least of all me. The king of the 2 cent click. I could probably spend my time better by building websites or blogs. Assuming I want to build anything in the first place. I usually find better things to do than write articles. Like the other night after supper I sat down to add some content to the ever expanding spamosphere. My daughter asked if I wanted to play soccer in the living room. That sure seemed like a better use of my time. I beat her 21-18 in case you were wondering. She slacks off – she receives no gifts. But then again I broke her 5 game win streak. Can’t have her thinking that I’m always lame.

Anyway, I’ve been adding to my Hubpages collection. Lots of random stuff. Trying to find good green keywords worthy of fertilizing. Some I build simply to create backlinks to other sites. But mostly I am trying to collect an Adsense click or two. And that is the thing about Hubpages and Adsense. You better be willing to take the pain. You may build 100 Hubpages and collect $5 for the day if you are lucky. Yea, there are some superstars out there but the reality for us little people is there is little glory in this clickdom.

Hubpages is a numbers game. 100 Hubpages might get you a couple hundred dollars a month. That ain’t no small change. But it will take a lot of work to get there. Don’t believe me, then have a read at Ben’s How to Make money Online With SEO site. He says:

Based off my experience, I’ve see the average article (say Hubpages) gets about 3 people a day of targeted traffic.  With 3 people a day, you may get 90 people a month per hub. 90 people a month times 100 = 9k. CTR is 5% and .50 per click sees you at $225 per month for 100 hubs or roughly $7.50 a day — exactly what I’ve stated you should expect before.  I’m being conservative with my estimate.

Now Ben has written something like 7.4 million Hubpages. He is simultaneously able to write articles with his left and right hands as well as both feet while dictating into Dragon Speaking. He’s a machine. No really. I think he is. I think HTMMWSEO is a rogue computer program. He (it) makes over $100 a day in Adsense income with Hubpages. That is ungodly.

If I can manage to get my daughter to bed I may one day see $100. I got excited the other day when I had a two week old Hubpage generate a tasty $1.67 on two clicks. I did something right with that one. Of course I had numerous generate a single penny. No shame in picking up a penny but I gotta find better words to use dammit.

I like building these sites. I have no idea if they will be sustainable over the long term. You don’t own the damn things of course. But they are free. It’s an easy model. It has a social aspect to it within Hubpages and they seem to go down well with Google for now. I’m targeting long tail keywords and getting ranked nicely in Google. I write 400-800 words per Hubpage. I post video, photos, RSS, news, Ebay and Amazon on the pages. Not all on one but a nice mix to liven the thing up.

I promote them with the usual suspects. BMD, BCD, AMA and TKA. That’s no BS. It seems to work ok to get them indexed by Google. Some Hubpages make an appearance in a couple of days and a few have taken over a week. No rhyme. No reason. No worries. They eventually show up.

Why am I circling back to Hubpages after year long drought? Obviously the challenge that everyone championed got me interested. Court making some dough. I thought it was a nice change of pace. Something different. Thinks are different than the last time I build these things. I know better how to do things to optimize the potential for success. I never considered Adsense before. I was just building for backlinks mostly.

100 Hubpages in 30 days was the original challenge. There was no use for me to accept that challenge because I knew I would fail. I’ve been plodding along at my own pace. Some days I build nothing. Other days I might build 3. It depends if I can find something that is relatively easy to write about and that has a chance of making money.

This is the laid back approach of Hubpage mastery. Ben and others can show you the manic majesty of the Hubpage binge. The point is that building these things can be more fun than trying to churn out 30 pages on the joys of earwax removal. One page might do and frankly even with 30 pages you might still only get a couple of clicks for Adsense glory, you know? And if you feel strongly about getting that gooey goodness out of your ear then write a few extra pages on Hubpages for free, ride their authority and determine via Analytics what waxy buildup keywords you should use for a self-hosted site. It’s the bomb for testing.

I gather a lot of people have moved on to the next thing. Some people built a few Hubpages for the challenge and after a week or so noted that their Huppage was either not yet ranked in Google or not making any clicks. So after about 20 Hubpages they moved on to the next TKA challenge. I’m still building Hubpages. I’m seeing my revenue increase slowly each day. I figure if I build 500 Hubpages I might make $1000 for the month. That will take a lot of work. A huge freakin’ ton. Hell it might take me until next summer. But next summer is going to come whether I write 500 pages or not. May as well give it a go. Especially since the field in front of me is clearing and the challengers have moved aside.

Post written by: Lost Ball in High Weeds