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HubPages for Internet Marketing

Updated on February 25, 2011

Hubpages the New Squidoo?

I have seen some comments recently about using Squidoo and increasingly HubPages for Internet Marketing - there is more and more talk about HubPages in the Internet Marketing forums so I thought I would get in first.

Unfortunately most of the people who join HubPages for Internet marketing purposes get themselves banned in short order - why? They don't understand Hubpages and more importantly the Hubpages community. So if you would like to know how not to get your hubs flagged and yourself banned please keep reading. If you are already happy at HubPages but would like to make more money keep reading too - its a jungle out there you have to be careful!

Update: If you are interested in learning some real info on how to Make Real Money Online

Big teeth! Largest crocodile ever shot, Normanton, Australia Photo: Lissie
Big teeth! Largest crocodile ever shot, Normanton, Australia Photo: Lissie

Bloggerunleashed: The G-Rated Version

Internet Marketing - A Dodgy Industry !

I have attempted to make a full-time living on the Internet via Internet Marketing and have so far failed to make any significant money. I did a lot research though and read a lot of blogs and learnt a lot about SEO and backlinks and Google Page Rank and whole lot of other stuff I didn't know before.

I also found a huge amount of rubbish out there - just Google "make money online" if you don't believe me. A lot of people make money off other people's desperation to be self-employed and I find that despicable. It made me question the whole Internet marketing industry - some of which got in early and are now some of the "big names" who now make a fortune trading on those names selling "their secret" invariably selling information which either available for free or no longer works because the Internet moves on so quickly. Even worse every second person who decides to make an income online starts in the niche of - you guessed it - on-line marketing - so they charge people to sell stuff that doesn't even work for them!

So as a public service for anyone who is considering learning how to make a full-time income on the Internet: - please start with the 3 blogs listed to the right: these guys appear to be for real. They are very different they don' t always agree - but you can read and learn for FREE! And no none of them pay me anything.

Warning - bloggerunleased is a video blog and the language is anglo-saxon, I would say not for family consumption but most kids use that language - just not in front of their parents - so you have been warned!

What do I know about HubPages and Internet Marketing

So who the hell is Lissie and why should you read anything I write here? I've been on Hubpages since about Sept 2007. I have a consistently had a high author hubscore (this is important see below) and have made some income by writing in their Flagship Hub program where they pay authors for hubs written on a specific topic and to a specified standard. In a recent contest here my hubs were picked for the best fo the day. I believe that I have been reasonably successful on HubPages as an author, and it's my only site where my income goes up every month!

What is HubPages

It's similar but different from Squidoo. Like Squidoo it provides a platform where you can publish a webpage. They share revenue from Adsense, Amazon and Ebay sales.

Technically there are of course differences, Squidoo is the earlier site and HubPages was established presumably with a business plan to take Squidoo on in a similar market. If you are familiar with one getting up to speed on the other is not difficult.

There is however a very important difference: HubPages does not allow overally promotional hubs. That is if your hub is just an advertisement for another site/E-Book/off line business it will get flagged and you will eventually get banned if you don't play by the rules.

Or your HubPages! It's Free Too!

Photo: Jamie Anderson from Flickr
Photo: Jamie Anderson from Flickr

HubPages: How not to get Banned

Now its not difficult to setup a hub - click "create new hub" set a name and URL, enter some tags click continue open up the text capsule cut and paste some text, hit save and then click publish. That's it. So please don't buy the $40 E-Book that will show you how to do this - I wish I was joking! Not even if its a special one time price of $10! There are heaps of good hubs on the mechanics of hubbing!

However if you actually want your hub to last more than a day or 2 before it gets flagged as spam, and you want to build your reputation as a HubPages author so that your hubs are actually read you might want to try the following steps:

  1. Join up - if you haven't already feel free to follow the link and let me earn my %!

  2. Fill in your profile information - if you don't bother to add a photo, a profile and indicate where you live it doesn't sound like you are serious about being at HubPages. Also you are missing an opportunity to promote your other sites. Also if you get a decent author score you will also get a decent page rank on your the profile page too.

  3. Write a hub. Follow the rules - don't spam. Unlike Squidoo your hub cannot be just a promotion for your Clickbank product, E-book or other website. It has to be a complete article in itself - it has to contain useful and unique content. You can still have links - but make sure they are relevant and you cannot link more than twice to the same domain. The reader shouldn't HAVE to follow the link to get value from your article.
  4. A hub isn't just a plain text article. Well not if you want most people to read it it's not. Most people scan most easily a narrow column of text, so write in 2 columns or use links and other capsules to squeeze your text column. Don't link to the same domain more than twice in a hub. A cloaked link will count as a link to the same domain.
  5. Add at least 1 photo: the first photo will show in your summary on pages such as "hot" "latest" "best" hubs - if you don't have a photo then your profile photo will be used, if you don't have one of those either you are telling me I can't be bothered to read your hub.
  6. Use at least 2 text capsules - usually lots more. If you only use 1 the second Adsense block will fall right at the bottom of the hub, below the fold. It also makes it easier to make the hub look attractive.
  7. Don't publish 24 hubs in the first 24 hours. And don't use an article re-writing software to re-write the same article 24 times and publish it 24 times with different titles. The machine may think it's different - humans can tell its the same. By monitoring the "hubtivity"page those same humans can monitor and flag you.
  8. Don't write a hub and then go the forums and post : I just wrote my first hub what do you think? Particularly don't do this when you haven't even bothered to spell-check your work. Your profile shows that you joined 2 hours ago and that this is your first forum post - why would I care about your hub? If instead you contribute to the forums, or leave a comment on someone else's hub, or become their fan then they may well feel inclined to comment on our hub.

A Promotional Hub which obeys the TOS

The link to the right is a hub I wrote promoting another site of mine. It fulfils both the letter and the spirit of the HubPages TOS. it's a complete article which adds value for the reader even if they don't click the link. There are only 2 links to the domain in question. The photos are relevant and entertaining (IMHO!) There are other relevant quality links (down the bottom I don't necessarily want to loose my buyer to them! ) and a news feed which keeps the article updated automatically.

Interesting footnote: I had the site promoted by this hub up for a week before I wrote the hub and it was still not indexed in google. A few hours after publishing the hub the site had 8 pages indexed in the big G .... coincidence?

What is a Hubscore

An Author has a hubscore - see mine by looking at my picture on the top right of this hub. It varies but is over 90. When you first start yours will be low and change a lot as you publish more hubs. My hubscore moves between 94 and 98 usually and is therefore reasonably stable.

Each Hub also has a Hubscore is the number in red to the right of the title. The hubscore of a hub starts low -this hub started at 48 when i published it - its probably higher now. I've had some hubs hit 100 and others never make it past 60 - it mostly depends on the traffic.

Hubscore and Back Links

Hubscore important because if you are using HubPages for backlinks because HubPages themselves say: "We've recently taken the step of applying NOFOLLOW to the links in hubs that have a HubScore below 50, and to all the hubs of authors with an author score below 75."

How to Increase your Hub Scores.

  1. Search for some hubs on a similar topic to yours - write a sensible comment on them - do NOT add the link of your hub -your profile will link to it anyway. Look for hubs and hubbers with higher scores - commenting on them will increase your author score.

  2. Drive some traffic to your hub - this makes the most difference to your hubscore.
  3. In my experience being helpful in the forums seems to get you fans, fans not only increase your hubscore but a fan is emailed everytime you create a new hub - you get more readers. Then tend not to be the readers who will make you money but they will email your hub to their friends and the traffic will still up your hub's hubscore too.

Warm fluffy Picture

Photo:by WisGuy from Flickr
Photo:by WisGuy from Flickr

HubPages has something to Offer You

As an internet marketer HubPages has a lot to offer - in particular any hub I write is generally indexed in google within 24 hours - sometimes in 12! I get good page rank on my older pages and I get lots of backlinks - the internal backlinks seem to work very well at hubpages.

Hubpages lets you test out keywords with no cash down. HubPages will even give you some promising keywords if you think about who is asking in the requests section and the flagship section!

HubPages lets you get way, way off topic - every IM expert on blogs will tell you to keep your blog focussed - well mine isn't and I can assure you it doesn't pay! Here in HubPages I write on a variety of topics and I am rewarded for it - that's nice.

It has some downsides - after all its not your site. You can't control where the Adsense links show on your page yieldbuild does that. You can' t write about gambling or adult themes - I think Adsense bans those topics as and HubPages makes money from Adsense they ban them too.

HubPages is a Community

If you want to benefit from HubPages become part of the community. Not everyone is here to make money, some write poetry, some write about War of Warcraft, some about history. If you want to write about Internet Marketing and use HubPages to make money that's OK.

Take the time join the community, read, comment, participate, you might even have fun!

working

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