While some people are here at HubPages for the joy of pure writing, many folks here hope that their Hubs will earn them some royalties. Web writing can be a source of secondary income which earns while you do some other work, or it might be your ambition to break from a regular day job and support yourself entirely with an online career.

I fall into that second category myself and after a few years of effort, it's actually working. Now take a moment and read that previous sentence again. It takes time and content to make decent money online, so if you haven't got patience and aren't willing to put in the effort, most of what I'm going to say here probably won't work all that well for you.

I started at HubPages just as they were coming out of their beta phase in the summer of 2006. I didn't really get going with the site until December of that year and I got to see a lot of changes and improvements along the way. My number one piece of advice is to forget about how you write for other sites or systems and learn how HubPages works and what the rules are. That's been invaluable for me. This site is not like having a blog, it's not like making Squidoo lenses and it's not like writing for your own website. I learned by trial and error, and I think that method actually works rather well.

There are a variety of ways to earn money built into the HubPages system and I'm going to talk about the following on this Hub: AdSense, Amazon, eBay, Kontera, Videos and Referrals.   Plus a few bits that seem to go well with talking about those topics.  Nothing I'm going to talk about here is a revelation or special trick, it's just plain common web sense, but a lot of people have a tendency to overlook the simple stuff.

I also have chosen to disclose a bit about what I earn on this Hub, and that gets updated about twice a year with my monthly averages.

The above poll reflects data from mid-August 2009 going forward.

From 2007 to August 2009, there were 258 HubPages users who chose to vote and give an indication of their earnings. Approximately 63% stated they were earning $10 or less per month. 

Are you writing about things that bring sales?

One thing to consider if you're trying to earn here is that it really helps to write about things that incorporate a buying angle. Notice I did not say you need to write commercials or flog products in people's faces. I tend to write about topics I really know (i.e. life-long interests or things I studied in college or graduate school) and then make targeted recommendations for products which support what I'm writing about or which I would buy myself. I think a lot of web writers totally blow it when it comes to making recommendations. If you wouldn't buy or use something, why would you expect your reader to want it

Are you worth Google's and eBay's time?

More and more in the forums, you'll see posts from new Hub authors who made a Hub or two or maybe even a dozen, and then applied to the affiliate programs and got rejected, and now they need to whine publicly about it. Their personal outrage and insult are a tad misplaced.

• If you get your application rejected, don't just get angry, take a serious and concrete look at the situation: are you a worthy affiliate program applicant? If you don't have an established web presence (your own web site, or a good amount of Hubs) you aren't going to be earning Google or eBay any money, and that is, after all, why they want people to join their programs.

• Having been a member of HubPages for a few months let's you fine tune your Hubs and build up a few decent backlinks. And solid Hubs with traffic and reader interaction seem like a good bet to the people deciding who gets to be an affiliate or not.
• Think about what you are doing because to Google and eBay, you are running a business. That's why those applications ask about your business model. I think that's where a lot of Hub authors fail the applications to the affiliate programs.
  

Most Hub authors will tell you they make the bulk of their earnings from AdSense. What happens is that HubPages displays your affiliate code on your Hubs 60% of the time, and they put HubPages' affiliate code up for the other 40%.  Any and all clicks that occur when your affiliate code is displayed are credited to you, and that's how you make money.

Here are my suggestions for getting better performance from AdSense:

Write Original Content - This does better with Google than recycled or duplicated content. Share your genuine knowledge and experiences and write about things you really know, not something someone else says might be a hot topic.  And if you are going to rewrite your own content from elsewhere, you have to do a really good job or the HubPages system will dock your HubScore for duplicate content.

Filter Out Weak Advertisements - In your AdSense account settings, there's a section where you can add in the URLs of websites whose ads you'd like to block or prevent from showing on your pages. This is for sites whose ads you don't approve of, which might be in competition for sites you are supporting AND sites which serve incredibly low-paying ads. A lot has been written about filtering out low-paying ads, so go out and do some research on the 'net about that and then figure out what works best for your pages. Remember, this filtering will only be in effect during that 60% of the time when your own ad codes are on the pages, but I believe it raises your payouts in the long-term.

Have Good Keywords - What makes a good keyword is a word or few-word phrase that is CLOSELY descriptive of what you are writing about. Get rid of words that are really broad and used profusely by lots of sites. They just don't earn much. I went through all my Hubs and singled out all the ones where the Hub Metrics showed just one star for "potential earnings." Then I began experimenting with getting rid of really general keywords. I saw all those Hubs turn into two and three star earners, just by getting rid of a few to a handful of keywords! In the end, both my HubScores and my earnings went up.

Just my personal opinion, but I think that the suggested keywords that the HubPages system provides are terrible and those phrases should be ignored for the most part.

Amazon is one of the king's of online retail. What started out as an online book seller has branched out into just about anything for the home, inside or out. To sell items from Amazon on your Hubs, you'll need to sign up as an Amazon Affiliate, and enter your affiliate ID into the HubPages system.

None of the tools that Amazon offers will work for adding links for products to HubPages. Here you use the built-in Amazon capsule, which has been expanded and improved since HubPages started. You can pick items by selecting keywords, choosing a department to narrow the search (or not) or you can specify exact products listed on the Amazon site.

I think the more specific the recommended items, the better your chances of making a sale, so I tend to hand-pick the items I'm recommending. There is also a spot where you can enter a brief description of your own instead of just showing a picture and price for the item selected and this was a feature I actually requested when I visited the HubPages office in October 2007. This lets you highlight exactly what you like about a product or why it's so great, which is what people tend to do in real life when talking and sharing info with friends and family.

Just about everyone has some familiarity with eBay. It is an auction site where just about anything can be sold or bought. As when making other retail decisions, you want to pick items that directly relate to what you are talking about.

You get two options for how the eBay capsule picks items to display: keywords or seller ID.

If you are an eBay seller, by all means write up some relevant Hubs and link them to your auctions. You'll be able to drive viewers and sales right to the items you're selling.

To make the keyword selection process work better, be sure to take the time to optimize the keywords. This means playing around with different keywords to see what products are selected. Most often you'll want to use three or four keywords to get the best items. Try different words and combinations and see what different items show up. To make sure a keyword is included put a "+" in front of it, and to eliminate products that aren't quite right, put a "-" in front of specific keywords you want to remove.

If you are new to HubPages and are having trouble getting approved for acceptance by eBay (or if you haven't even gotten that far) this entry on the eBay Partner Network blog about how to get accepted IS required reading!

Ever see a Hub with light blue underlined words in the text? Those are Kontera ads in action. What Kontera does is scan the written content of your Hubs and it turns key phrases into paid links.  Lots of original written content on your Hub gives Kontera the most options for picking and choosing the best key phrases to highlight.

The Kontera reporting is rather limited, but it will show you a keyword report (which words or phrases are earning the most clicks across all Hubs) and a URL report so that you can see which individual Hubs have the best click-thru rates. Comparing that data with the stats you get for Hubs from Google Analytics will help you optimize your content and key phrases.

NOTE: You need a LOT of traffic and interaction for Kontera to become viable. Notice I just said "viable" and not "profitable." You'll need even more for it to be profitable. A lot of Hub authors are unhappy with Kontera, but in October 2008 I had a single Hub that earned $160 from them and  to me that is a sign that there's some serious potential to be mined. HubPages added their service to the site in July of 2008 and my earnings with Kontera averaged out to $61/month for July through December. If I can maintain that average for 2009, that's another $700+ I'll earn and I have no reason to be upset about that. AdSense didn't earn me that much that early on...

If the total views to your Hubs is below 100,000 per month, I suggest you don't use Kontera just now as it won't earn enough to be worth it. If you draw more than that number of views steadily and/or regularly, you might want to give it a try.

P.S.  Be sure to read the ENTIRE Kontera Terms of Service if you are thinking of signing up.  A lot of Hub authors didn't bother and then got surprised when they violated the terms of the user agreement and Kontera got unhappy with them.

The HubPages video capsule allows you to pick from a variety of video hosts to include videos by you or others as part of your Hub. As with anything else, making sure your vidoes are relevant and informative to your content is vital. Writing about cooking? You'll want to make or find some "how-to" videos that illustrate what you are talking about.

I use YouTube a lot for videos, but the capsule also lets you add videos from Google, Metacafe and Revver, a video service that will pay you for views that your videos earn. Slowly but surely, I'm making more of my own videos and getting them into my Hubs.

Here's a short video I made when I was in San Francisco that's about riding on the famous cable cars. It's hosted by Revver, so someday, if I have enough different videos, that could be another good revenue steam.  BTW, I made this video for my hub about Great Stuff To Do In San Francisco.

HubPages has a detail in their earnings program whereby if you refer someone to the site and they come in via a link you've marked with a tracking code, and they then sign-up and start building Hubs, you can earn more.

How that works is that your affiliate codes will be displayed 10% of the time on their pages, giving you a chance to earn during those times. Notice I did not say you get 10% of their earnings, there's a big difference.

This appears to apply to all your affiliate codes, which means it would be prudent to not click on the ads of other HubPages users, especially people who are your referrals as that could jeopardize you if you happen to start clicking on your own ads.

If your referrals don't build lots of quality Hubs, the amount you will earn from them is really negligible. Even if you refer friends and family, they really aren't going to be earning you much. I got lucky with one of my random referrals. That person happens to build moderate quality Hubs and has produced a lot of them. Some of their Hubs hit keyword phrases so popular, I see their Hubs listed in my Kontera stats. (this may play a key part in the secret of my success with Kontera)