Hubpages - to Earn or Not

When I first started writing on Hubpages,  my main reason was to make money.  After writing my first and second hubs I was anxious to see how much money I was going to make.  After a while, I got discouraged, for I soon began to see that I wasn't making what I had anticipated, and thought for sure I was doing a lot of things wrong.

I began reading to see how to do the basics, I read about links, keywords, about the google worm, and about the various ways to get traffic to come to my hubs.  Basically, how to get people to read my articles.  It wasn't until I needed something researched that I realized what a vast collection of subjects and insights was at my disposal to learn about things.

I went to a couple of other sites that have articles written by the mainstream freelance writers, some who claimed to make large amounts of money, others wanting to make those same large amounts but were very anxious about what they were missing or doing wrong.  I looked for the differences between the sites, which I found  hubpages to be in a class all of it's own.  The rules and reasons at hubpages were such that it gave it's writers a greater freedom in many ways, from subject matter to allowing the writer to publish to the readers right away without having to wait to see if it would be authorized or approved for readers to see.  Hubpages also seemed to have a more hands off  policy when it came to it's writers and the affiliates.  Then again I found hubpages to be a more figure it out for yourself kind of theme than the others too.

The only way to make money is to have patience, and to make sure that your work is seen and read by as many people as possible.  In order to do this, the best way is to try to get your article on the first couple of pages of the google directory.  To do this you have to make sure that you have listed the keywords needed to get it there.  The appropriate keywords are the words or combination of words you have used in the title of your work.  If  you are on  the first or second page of the directory, many many more people will be exposed to it, therefore the chances of many more people reading it are great.

One of the other things to learn is how to make your ads visible and tie them to your article.  the Google ads are a copy and paste into your html code.  If you are new to this sort of computer talk, there are many pages of teaching, both on the google site and on hubpages itself.  The key to learning all the things you need to know in order to make some change jingle in your pockets, is to read, and then read some more on the topic your are working on.  Nobody minds helping the new person with questions, but there is a bit of irritation that goes along with trying to answer a question that is obviously from a person that has not bothered to read anything on the topic but is trying to just fudge along and do it anyway by asking a lot of questions.

Last but not least, is figuring out that the true money comes with the number of articles written.  It only takes a little logic to figure out that if you are only making .04 on an article, that if you have 1,000 of the same kind of articles, you will then have in the area of 40.00.  So being prolific in writing interesting articles that are listed where they can be found, this is the beginning steps in making money.

Writing articles that are interesting, not too long, but too short would say there is not much to learn from.  The content of the articles also decides what money is to be made.  Common sense tells me that articles about kids, and pets are going to be read more than lets say articles on something more technical like how to make electrical circuits.   But the electrical circuit article will have its own group of readers too, but maybe not as many.  Being consistent in your writing is important too because after a while you get a following of readers who perhaps like your style or like how you explain things.

I hope this helps some of you get started.  I know there is a number of things I did not talk about, but these topics are the ones that seem to come up in the forum questions most often, so hopefully it will help some of you.  Good luck, dont get discouraged, and most of all enjoy what you are doing.  Getting your style, your topics of expertise, and your knowledge shared with your readers, while enjoying yourself can be one of the most fulfilling things you can do as you get started.  Above all, have fun doing it.