Doing Absolutely Nothing At HubPages For A Year: The Results

I can't believe it. When I retired my grand HubPages-style career last year for the greener pastures of urban serfdom (aka the "day job"), I adamantly declared to myself that I wouldn't let the allure of trickling pennies to ensnare me once again. And yet, against my questionably better judgement, I'm back again and writing this hub ... for mere pennies ... oh man. *hangs head*

The catalyst for my, uh, reawakening can be attributed to HubPages, coincidentally. In my absence, my account had apparently encountered two milestones. I thought I had turned off all HP-related correspondence, so the back-to-back arrival of two official HubPages notifications captured my attention. In one year, my neglected hubs had commanded the gaze of 10,000 pairs of eyes (making exception for the visually-impaired, androids, and cyclopes of course).

Three hundred and sixty-five days. Ten thousand page views. In addition to giving Captain Obvious a valid reason to fear employment, I'm capitalistic enough to realize that this HubPages thing is worth giving a second look.

"If I'm still here in 6 months, I will write an update to this hub and decide if HubPages is the right place for me." -mskills, First Month At HubPages From A Post-Panda Newbie

Basically, I lied. Right after publishing that last hub and responding to the initial deluge of hopelessly devoted fans and wannabe groupies, my attention was drawn towards more lucrative ventures (again, the day job). Forget checking back in six months. My bag was already in the trunk. The key already in the ignition. My mind's up had already been made. Alrighty, already.

The point of this, as I'm sure you're about to ask, is that I've positively done nothing to promote, bolster, prop up, or otherwise improve my hubs since my departure. If there was ever an ideal control subject for a typical HubPages newbie who started off with some iota of success only to turn around and toss it in the proverbial wastebasket, I would be that guy. Well, me and a couple other hundreds of thousands of similar sob stories, but who's counting?

Enough digressing. Please take a look over to the right. If you've perused the hub that my quotation was ripped from, you might be experiencing the same déjà vu that is haunting me. Eerily similar numbers arranged in a familiar way. A striking statement of verisimilitude , or just plain laziness? You be the judge.

Let us concentrate on the portion that you give an asterisk about: The Money. In 1 year, my 13 hubs have netted me a nice uneven $49.36 (all numbers in this hub have been converted to shorthand for your reading convenience). On average, this means that each hub has generated around $3.80. I'd estimate that I invested around 20 hours total into writing these 13 hubs, giving me an hourly rate of $2.47. Since this is the metric that I compare all of my financial endeavors by, all I can say is @*!#.

I know, I know: residual income. Let's say I continue doing what I'm best at (nothing), and double my earnings in the next 6 months. My hourly rate doubles while the invested time remains the same. Okay, a little better. Now what if I quadruple my earnings by this time next year while typing absolutely no characters whatsoever. The result is nearly $200 at a princely (in some countries, not mine) $10/hour. All of the sudden, this HubPages experience isn't looking so wasteful after all.

Since I've been away, Hubpages has apparently been pillaged and ravaged by mouth-frothing pandas and penguins. I honestly can't make much sense of the nomenclature Google deploys for its various marionette pirouettes, but the general consensus agrees that many keyword stuffers and amateur SEO black hats are dog paddling in their own tears. About time, I say.

My hubs, on the other hand, are frankly kicking asphalt. At least, that is what the pretty little graph provided by my HP account relates. Sure, my page views tanked once I made my retreat last year, but something has revitalized my hubs in the meantime. I recall listing time as the most important factor in succeeding at HubPages in my first month review. What a difference time has made ... for me, at least.

Unfortunately, I've conveniently left out some teensy, pesky facts that skew my results a bit. Even though I tidily averaged up my earnings per hub, the truth of the matter is that only 3 or 4 hubs are pulling their share of the load. Talking smack about a freelance writing website is good business (4,722 page views to date). Crapping on a 10+ year old videogame is not even worth 100 page views, apparently. Long story abridged, 4 hubs rope in 80% of my total traffic. Zounds.

Besides the surprise that my hubs are finally producing dimes instead of pennies, I'm perplexed that I'm still receiving comments and feedback. Originally, my goal was to respond to every comment, no matter how spammy or inane. Obviously, being absent for much of the time, I've failed. So I'd like to give a huge shout out to those who have so graciously chosen to devote (waste?) their time to my content instead of their own.

Another shocker: My follower base has nearly tripled in size. Why, I'm not exactly sure. No Hubtivity to speak of and no chance of reciprocity can be attributed to this phenomenon. I'm even fairly positive my family knows nothing of my mysterious, text-slinging alter ego. So, to those of you who stuck by me all this time, here's to more of whatever it is you liked about me in the first place.

Looking back over this, I now realize that you probably haven't learned anything useful. I'm mostly sure there was a helpful tip buried somewhere in it, but I've also been known to be wrong on occasion. The important thing to take away from all of this, other than the rest of your life, is that HubPages is akin to investing in the market. Start early, think long term, don't worry about knocking each investment out of the ballpark, and you're 99.99% more likely to see results than if you hadn't signed up in the first place.