Earning Adsense Income As An Armored Knight

Say what? What on Earth does earning with Google Adsense have to do with knights in armor, shining or otherwise?

Patience, please. The title wording announced itself loudly, but a bit of background helps. Here's the story:

A few days ago, while reading work by other Hubbers with an eye toward understanding both differences and similarities between us, I noticed that Embitca--by her own undoubtedly true statement a writer who does make money with Google--has produced at least some Hubs (I didn't read them all by a long shot) that were much, much different in style and even length than seems to be the norm for such wordsmiths as Hal Licino or Ghost32 (me). Embitca gets in, makes her point, and gets out with absolute keyboard economy, sometimes in no more than 300 words or so (I'm guessing, since I'm not the best word counter around). Her "fighting style" made me think of the Plains Indian warriors (before such were restyled as Native Americans) who prided themselves on counting coup, which amounted to simply touching an armed enemy with a specially designed and designated coup stick.

Another "Embitca image" that came to mind: Bullfighting. Not with her cast as the matador who kills the bull with a sword, but as a banderillo, the ballet star of the bullfight. The banderillo does not kill the bull but, early in the action, sticks barbed darts into the animal to--shall we say, stir the soup and bring it to a boil. Okay, okay, to get the critter even more irritated. Don't get me wrong: My preference would be to protect the bull and tell everyone right down to the matador to go get a real job. It's just that I have to admire the grace, skill, and speed of the banderillo...and of Embitca's writing.

Sadly or otherwise, I don't write like that. My verbosity is legendary: If two words will suffice, I'll use only three. Or four. I hate leaving out even relatively minor details that cut down on the overall color, depth, and emotional adventure a reader might experience. Three hundred words? I'm lucky to get a Hub "terminated" in much under 1600 words--again, I think, because my word counting is amateurish at best. Since the slide show feature became part of the everyday statistics at HubPages, I couldn't get myself to include fewer than five photos in a Hub if I beat myself with a wooden spoon. Ten relevant links every time. With all of that....

Oh. You saw it coming. Right. Whether with an eye toward earning Adsense income or not, I write like an armored knight. Packing a steel tipped lance, a two handed broadsword, and a mace for weapons, encased in nearly 300 pounds of literary armor, lumbering across the countryside on a humongous Percheron stallion with the faceguard bars of my boiling-under-the-sun steel helmet blocking way too much of my vision, looking for a fight with someone dumb enough and slow enough not to sneak up and bop me about the head and shoulders with a coup stick or jab my horse in the rump with a banderilla.

The coup stick and broadsword provided food for thought. Three questions came to mind.

1. Could I change my style? The answer to this was an extremely muddled "maybe", but eventually it became obvious that the wrong question was being asked.

2. If I did change my style, would I risk destroying my entire Internet persona, established readership base, and credibility-to-date with the search engines? That answer was crystal clear, a resounding, You'd better believe it, buddy! Which conclusion led to a third obvious question, the "Sixty-four Coup Question":

3. Could I learn to use my same existing style and yet increase my current Google Adsense income from its current $100 per year (approximately) to $100 per month...and then go from there? The answer to that: Don't see why not.

In order for anyone to succeed at--well, pretty much anything, he or she must first believe the thing can actually be done...by them...at a price which can be willingly paid. Sylvester Stallone was quoted in the media some decades back as saying that if he'd known how impossible getting Rocky (the first one) to the silver screen was going to be, he'd never have started. Or words to that effect, pardon the paraphrase. Quite often, the price you have to pay for success is far higher than could have been anticipated up front.

Even so, part of the dues have been paid. Competing for number one Google ranking no longer seems impossible, even when the pool is sizeable...at least if my Hub titled Guns Are My Friends is any indication. That one was published two nights ago and hit the top spot about twelve hours later in a pool of 16,400,000 results. Never mind the coup sticks. In terms of edged weapons, it might be said that I've learned to use my old, battered pocket knife (getting great ranking on Google) to whittle out a penny or two. Now to learn to use the Roman gladius (stab a dollar here and there via improved keyword selection)...and maybe someday the glorious, two handed broadsword (put it all together for an actual monthly check large enough to take my anorexic wife out to dinner once a week).

Thanks for reading,

Ghost32