I’ve written this new hub because I had a good response to my earlier hub Beginners Guide to Sucessful HubPage Writing describing my first 12 days of hubbing.

I’ve now been hubbing for just over 3 weeks and I decided against adding further to the existing hub because:

I find there are problems editing and maintaining larger hubs

• There appears to be a benefit in creating new hubs in terms of initial exposure via HubPages
• I can link the 2^nd hub to the first and vice versa so both hubs give the other a boost

My day job inevitably interferes with my ability to write. Hence I started hubbing during the Christmas break. I planned to produce 1 new hub last weekend but managed 2, making a grand total of 8. This was a slight cheat because I recycled articles previously published in magazines. I’m keen to do less of this and produce original material, more targeted at HubPages and Adsense. More on this later.

I also recently signed up my wife who has also produced 2 hubs. I have linked her Hub account to my Adsense account (with her permission of course!). This is good because:

• We get paid while she writes (this is much better than her playing the SIMs)

• We also get a further 10% share of her earnings because I referred her. She therefore earns Adsense from 70% of her impressions while I earn from 60% of mine

SIGNUP WITH HUBPAGES TODAY!

• Why not Sign Up Now With HubPages? Start Writing Today

HubPages membership is totally FREE - Get writing, make friends (and if you want) Make Money!

Interestingly, the original Beginners guide to Successful HubPage Writing draws around 70% of my total Hub traffic. This appears to be partly due to linking from other ‘Earning money on the internet’ websites.

If you are new to HubPages and have published a hub then you can log on and view your article and you’ll find a tab at the top ‘VIEW STATS’ – this gives you a graph of your hub traffic against time and an indication of where the traffic has come from.

Traffic to a new hub is initially relatively high. This is because it is heavily featured on the HubPages website (Select ‘HUBS’ from the top-level menu, then select ‘NEW’).

Below is a recent screenshot of the stats for the Beginners guide to Successful HubPage Writing. This gives an indication of the traffic with time and where it is coming from.

Traffic is only the first stage in earning actual money.

Amazon Earnings

I've still earned nothing from Amazon. I’ve had around 12 clicks but it is only purchases that pay out (the standard rate is 4% of what is ordered). But that seems to be a fairly common Hubber experience. The forums suggest Amazon money comes in when hub writers have given up any hope of a return.

I read a report on the forums of someone receiving 4% for various items totally unrelated to the ads originally displayed. In other words once someone clicks on your ad they might suddenly decide to roam the Amazon catalogue and spend $50,000. Apparently you still get the 4%.

I’ve not tried Ebay yet but I’ve seen a forum post suggesting some Hubbers find Ebay pays out more than Amazon.

At the end of Beginners Guide (part 1), my first 12 days of Hubbing, I’d earned nothing. I’ve now set up my AdSense account so I have a separate channel for each Hub.

This means I can see how many people have viewed ads on each page (impressions) and then how many impressions have resulted in a click. Note that the Hubber gets 60% of the impressions while HubPages normally takes 40%, hence the AdSense impressions are lower than the page views on your My Account statistics page.

The impressions to clicks ratio is known as the Click Through Rate (CTR). Generally 9% is considered tops for AdSense even when you have total control over ad placement etc. HubPages forums suggest, with the limitations of AdSense on Hubs, 5% is exceptional. 5% means that for every 100 impressions there are, on average, 5 clicks on the AdSense ads.

So how am I doing in terms of CPM?

• Beginners Guide: 3.08%
• Presentations: 6.67%
• Other 6 hubs: 0%
• RetoTech Blog 1.72%

My payout has recently averaged 50c - $1 a day but is probably much lower over a longer time. Note that the Presentations Hub CTR isn't statistically reliable as the traffic for this hub is low and this is based on a single click. .If you are sensible (unlike me) - Don't check your earnings all the time.

One interesting point here is Keywords and the value of clicks. The ads placed on The Beginners Guide (Part 1) relate to writing and writer’s services and these are not particularly high value keywords. You could get a much higher payment per click by writing about more technical issues such as medicine or web technology.

Similarly girls with great boobs may draw traffic (either on HubPages or in the street!) but any clicks will be of relatively low value. Keywords involving the law, the legal profession, or loans and mortgages are worth more (but you obviously need good, relevant content too). The downside, however is that your traffic would typically be lower with high value keywords.

High Hub Score Doesn’t Equal High Earnings

What interests me are my 6 hubs which have earned nothing. First, I should say that the total traffic is so low over the short time they have been posted that this may not be as bad as it seems. It is quite normal, statistically, to average 4% CPM but get no clicks for 100 impressions or more.

In practice it is easy to see another reason why I’m not getting clicks. For example, my most successful article in terms of Hub score is Budget Airlines. This is often on the top few pages and scoring 100. People obviously like it but it isn’t focused for AdSense.

It is about air travel so the ads are aimed at pilots, aircrew and passengers but the content isn’t really targeted at these people so my readers click the thumbs up but not the ads. The same is true for my quirky articles about the British Navy, toilets and the inventor of the internet. People may enjoy reading them but the articles are not closely targeted to the ads that appear.

I’ll not say any more about my blog RetroTech except to reiterate that it is much harder to get the volume and quantity of traffic and the right adverts on a blog than on HubPages.

I have a few doubts about the quality of traffic from somewhere like Stumbleupon. Yes you can generate a sudden massive peak of traffic but I’m not convinced the visitors stick around long or that Stumblers are good Clickers.

• I need to slow down a bit and take stock and see how money side develops
• Improve my existing hubs in terms of better tags, overview paragraphs (making sure tags actually appear in the text as well)
• In time write a hub targeted to Adsense earnings and see if this does better than the non-targeted hubs I've produced so far
• Write the Golden Hub - that gets around 200 impressions a day, has a CTR of 5% and pays $20 a click. In other words it earns $200 a day or just over $70,000 a year (We can all dream!).

Having said all that about making money - I still believe the prime reason to be on HubPages is to be creative and enjoy writing and there is no shortcut to producing quality, original content.

So far I've found Hubbers old and new fantastically supportive and encouraging. A final thanks to the Hubbing community for all the useful advice contained in Hubs and on the Hub forums.

PART 3 Now out - click to see how I'm doing after 2 months of Hubbing