HubPages - Start of Your On-Line Business?

You don't know where to start but you want to make some money on-line, probably from your writing? HubPages is a great place to start to build your on-line portfolio and web prescense either as an freelance writer or an Internet marketer, or even both!

HubPages As An On-Line Portfolio

As any writer will tell you the hardest thing to get is your first sale. In fact writing on-line its a lot easier to get that foot-in-the-door first sale. One of the reasons is that its perfectly possible to use a free site such as HubPages to show examples of your work to the world. Then link to your hubs as your example on-line portfolio. Once you hit publish at HubPages you still retain full control of your work: you can edit it, re-write it, even delete it, so you can always polish your material for as long as you want.

There are two ways you can do this. You can use HubPages to build up your on-line portfolio and use it as a way of marketing yourself as a freelance writer. In fact the contacts I made at HubPages launched my freelance writing career. Here is the experience of another writer who got a full-time writing gig partly from his writing on HubPages: HubPages as an On-Line Resume

HubPages as a Job Board

I am not the only hubber to have picked up on-line writing gigs from HubPages. There are number of fellow-hubbers who need writers from time to time. You could do worse than register your interest as Jimmy's hub Writers For Hire

You can use HubPages as a way to relatively easily get approved for programs such as Adsense and eBay. Its getting more and more difficult to be approved for these programs because of the number of people trying to make a quick buck without adding value to the Internet. The companies are getting less likely to approve you unless you have a well-established website or other published material on the web.

Here's the lowest risk way of applying for eBay and Adsense - note if you all ready have been approved for these programs you just use your existing code: you don't need to re-apply - in fact you shouldn't have more than one account with these companies.

1. Create a free gmail account: preferably using your real name. This is a good idea anyway, don't use an email account tied to your ISP as you will loose it if you change ISP's
2. Use the same email address for HubPages that you intend to use for the affiliate programs.

3. Create an HubPages account and create a profile page. Create around 5 or 6 good hubs. Original content, varying subjects, non-promotional (remember you can always add your promotional links later), pictures.

4. or Adsense create a blogspot blog (blogger.com) with the same gmail account and add a few posts about your life, your passions whatever. Create the blog over a month or so, preferably six months. Blogspot (blogger) is owned by oogle.

5. Having established your credibility now apply for the programs, via HubPages, using your HubPages profile page as your "website" when its requested. I'd wait at least three month before this step after completing your initial hubs and blog.

If for some reason you are already banned from any of these programs, or live in a country where they do not accept publishers, you will NOT be able to use these particular revenue stream because unlike other shared revenue sites HubPages does NOT pay you directly - except for the exceptions listed at the end of this report.

Do NOT just apply to these programs - to see if it works! Or because your friiend got accpeted a few months ago easily. Adsense and eBay particularly have made it LOT harder to get approved recently and getting declined wil make it hard or impossible to get approved in the future.

To me there is the way that many new marketers try to use HubPages and there are several ways that work but which are maybe are not that obvious to those who come to HubPages from a commercial point of view.

Its easy enough to write a hub which promotes your site and is within the HubPages Terms of Service (TOS) but HubPages is also a brilliant place to build a pages with high PR to support your websites and also your personal brand.

How NOT To Use HubPages for Backlinks

How Not to Do It Some experienced Internet marketers come to HubPages in order to get back links to their main sites.

They register with a keyword-stuffed name such as a cheapwidgets and proceed to throw up hub called "Best Places to Buy Cheap Blue Widgets" with 300 words of duplicate content and 5 links to a website called buy cheapbluewidgets.com. The words are usually copied from their website and they are upset when their hub gets flagged and their ID banned after they try the same thing with another 10 hubs.

I wrote this hub about Internet Marketing at HubPages just for them!

According to the HubPages Terms of Service (TOS) you: will be flagged as overly promotional if you are :

• linking repeatedly to the same site within a hub or across many hubs including links to a page that contains largely the same content as your hub

• linking to products or services unrelated to a Hub's content

• including more than 2 links to any one domain short "teasers" with links to "read more" at another site

• including promotional links on content that is unoriginal (i.e. not exclusive to HubPages);

• promotional links can only be included on content that is exclusive to HubPages

In the same way as the better article sites such as ezinearticles will reject your article if its just an advertisement for your page then hubs that are the same will either be flagged or just ignored.

Write an article which adds value to your reader and use your link (or a RSS feed to a blog) in terms of further reading. Develop a group of hubs all on a similar topic and they can link to each other as well as your external site.

Yes I know its a lot more work, but in the end it will allow you to build a long-term business with solid content and links.

Having trouble working out what an elusive "buying keyword" is or, choosing between several? I find for most topics if I can't get a hub onto Google's page 1 I have no show with my own site. In fact when I started developing my own sites I looked at my best performing HubPages, in terms of search engine traffic and used the same keywords. It worked.

If you want to test keywords I will develop some quick hubs and see how they do. They will probably make me a little cash if they are any good. If I can promote them at get them to the first page of Google I will then turn around and repeat the exercise with my own site. Having one site on page 1 of Google is good, having ten is much better...

Think before you choose a user name at HubPages. You can have more than one user name at HubPages but hubs cannot be transferred between users. This means that once a hub has got some age and PR you will loose these if you decide that you don't want to be known as "fluffyblonde" any longer!

I didn't think and now regret that my user name is not "Lis Sowerbutts" (embedded spaces are allowed). If you are going to use HubPages to develop your brand I think its best that you have a proper first/last name - even if its a pseudonym.

Your profile photo can change and there is reams written about whether its better to have a formal or casual photo, or maybe just a logo. What I do find is that again that I am stuck with the photo I originally used because I use it across many sites and it triggers recognition of my brand and identity.

Your profile page is also important and this is where you can be self-promotional. There are no limits to outgoing links on this page and I find a link here will get a new site indexed quickly. I change this quite often depending on whether I am pushing an affiliate product I have reviewed on my blog or whether I want a more resume like profile for freelance work.

Fans are also important at HubPages. I have found consistently as my number of fans have increased it is quicker and easier to get a hub indexed and ranked on Google. When someone becomes your fan they get an email every time you publish a new hub. Fans are your "list" without having to harvest their emails or do all the scammy auto-responder tricks which turn off so many people from Internet marketing.

This creates traffic, it rarely gives you any income because hubbers don't click on each other's ads. Hubbers will however comment though and there are two ways to get a hub "hot" one is to get a sudden increase in traffic, the second is to get a whole lot of comments.

The first page of hot hubs is a PR5 and Google definitely seems to notice that page. You don't need to have a terribly high hubscore to get to that page but you need to have the burst of traffic and/or comments, and in my experience get the comments from your fans and the traffic will follow.

Thanks - you've just read the third in the series: it was going to be an e-book so these are being published quickly!

Part One: Make Money Writing

Part Two: Develop Your Own Site Compared to Writing At HubPages

Part Four: Rank Your Hub in the Search Engines