Welcome to my First Anniversary Hub. This is a guide which contains some reflections and tips based on my first 12 months at HubPages. In particular, how to write sucessful hubs and earn a modest amount with AdSense (but not enough to retire on yet!).

I originally wrote three Beginners Guides (parts 1,2 and 3) after 12 days, 3 weeks and 8 weeks of signing up with HubPages respectively. These are really diary pieces or snapshots of my experiences at HubPages during my first few weeks on this site.

Beginners guide to Successful HubPages Writing, Part 1

Beginners Guide to Successful HubPages Writing, Part 2

Beginners guide to Successful HubPages Writing, Part 3

So what do I think of HubPages after nearly a year? – Well I’m still here. I still think HubPages are great. I began Hubbing over the Christmas holiday at the end of 2007. With the break from work, I managed to write several hubs and incidentally earned nearly $9 in AdSense in January 2008.

But I've never written primarily for money and I'm more interested in being somewhere where I can post a wide range of content. Networking with other online writers is an added bonus. I’m also keen to experiment with web-based earnings and HubPages is an ideal platform to do this. A full-time day job (recession permitting) and a busy life generally means I don't have time to make serious money on-line.

My hub output has been relatively modest. I’ve only written 39 Hubs so far (this is number 40). I’ve finally reached by first payout having passed $100 at the end of November 2008. The way things are going I would expect to reach my next $100 by around March/April 09.

My low spot (in terms of earnings) was April 08 with total earnings of just 7 cents! Please note this, those who post on the forums that they are disappointed with initial poor financial returns. Hang in there. Earnings do get better but it takes time and patience!

This dip is explained if I go to 'my profile' and select 'statistics'.  This shows a decline in traffic from January to April 08 (after an initial surge) followed by a steady increase in traffic from April to December.  This is in spite of the fact that my rate of hub production reduced during the second half of the year. 

You can see from the above that my AdSense earnings have fluctuated wildly during my first year. Things began to improve around September '08 with $10, October produced over $30 and November over $20. One of the factors that has boosted my earnings are referrals. I'll add more on that later.

I've just received a surprise $59 from Amazon. I couldn't work out what this was for as I thought I hadn't sold anything. Checking my account I found a wood burning stove which was out of stock had finally shipped and the 4% commission was the $59 (my first payment from Amazon). The advert was posted on one of my hubs on wood burning stoves. I never expected a payout from Amazon so such a large amount for my first payment was a welcome treat!

I've never bothered to register for Ebay or Kotera.  Incidentally, I gather from the HubPages Blog (well worth a read) that Ebay is currently paying out around twice as much to Hubbers as Amazon so I should register with Ebay.

In earlier guides I mentioned the search for the mythical Golden Hub that generates huge traffic, has very high value keywords and a high click rate. In practice there is always a trade off.

Of course, you can generate high traffic by posting pictures of desirable young women. Come to think of it why not men too? Come on ladies, and gay men - why not create some photo hubs full of attractive hunks! Lets have some equality around here!

Unsurprisingly, the downside of girly photo hubs is the click rate on ads is low and the value of the clicks is almost zero.

The three key ingredients to AdSense earnings are:

1. Traffic
2. High Value Keywords
3. Clickable Ads

Well written Content rather than photo galleries generates good online earnings. High traffic is pointless if the clicks generated have a very low value.

High paying keywords are associated with valuable topics, for example, business, finance, technology or expensive consumer items. If you want to know the relative value of keywords, why not use the Google AdWords free tool?

It is also important to attract relevant, clickable ads to your Hub. Leave some of the reader's questions unanswered and let the adverts provide the answers.

Here are my top 10 Hubs in terms of earnings so far. Obviously those written earlier will tend to be higher earners.

1. Beginners guide to hubPages writing part 1
2. Presentation skills
3. Budget Airlines
4. Ten Reasons to Burn Wood
5. Weird Glamour
6. Helium
7. Beginners guide part 2
8. Sci Fi Weird Glamour
9. JackSpeak
10. Matchstick Maths

A Click Through Rate (CTR) of 4% is probably quite reasonable for a Hub although some bloggers claim to get much higher rates on targeted blogs. Arguably anything less than 1% is pretty low. Incidentally, I'm deliberately not been too specific about precise earnings or CTR as this apparently breaches the AdSense terms of use.

This Hub you are reading now currently has a higher CTR than any of my other hubs but the traffic is modest so this isn't statistically significant. I've chosen to write on a wide range of subjects to see what works and what doesn't.

Presentation skills also has a relatively high CTR (over 4%) as do my 4 hubs about job hunting although traffic is relatively low as these are specialised subjects with loads of competition.

Generally entertaining, picture-based articles attract relatively high traffic but low CTR. Business related articles like 'presentations' has a relatively high CTR but relatively low traffic - its that trade-off again! However I believe almost anything will generate some AdSense revenue.

Most Hubbers would agree that fiction will not make serious AdSense money. However, I earned nearly a dollar from a single click for episode 3 of a tongue in cheek romantic serial called Coffee! This attracted expensive coffee machine ads. I've also got several low-value clicks for a spoof gossip piece about Kylie Minogue which is pure fiction. So anything can potentially earn small amounts of cash.

HubPages allows authors to add their own trackers to links to other Hubs. This means we get a share of the impressions on that Hub which would otherwise go to HubPages. This is outlined in HubPages Help.

Potentially more lucrative is encouraging new writers to sign up with Hubpages. If they click on a link (with your tracker) to sign up then you get 10% of the earnings on every hub they subsequently write. I've had 40 sign ups so far including 8 in December 08.

Note: that this doesn't affect their earnings. The 10% comes from the Hubpages share of the revenue so it is a win/win for both the new author and the referrer!

Unfortunately most of my referrals either produce no hubs at all or produce 2 or 3 and then stop. However one of my sign ups has produced over 330 hubs and another 50 hubs. I therefore have a total of nearly 500 affiliate hubs which produce 10 to 20 times as much traffic as my own 40 hubs.

The bottom line is you can potentially earn far more from affiliate hubs that from your own hubs (as I do). For more information, read this hub: HubPages Sign Ups - Earn more when others sign up to HubPages

Well, I certainly plan to keep writing here. If I ever quit my full-time job then I may increase my number of hubs by a factor of 10 to earn more money and generate more affiliate traffic. I've also experimented with blogging but my AdSense earnings are much less than with HubPages (although someone has paid me $50 to post a small advert for one year).

My goals for 2009:

1. Increase my earnings in year 2 by at least 50%
2. Sign up with Ebay and add to hubs and blogs
3. Increase my number of hubs by 50 to 100%

Like new year's resolutions there is no guarentee I'll stick to this plan, however!

So now I'm looking forward with anticipation to see how HubPages develops during 2009 and wish all of you success in your writing this year!