I like HubPages a lot because the platform has enough reach to get posts up there in search rankings, and the revenue is a lot better than anything else I've been working through. I've had days when my clickthrough rate is enough to turn a guru green with envy (thanks to ProBlogger and Joel Comm for insights into content optimization).

Yet even with several dozen posts taking over a day to write, I've had days when I've looked at my AdSense revenues and seen absolute zero.

But unlike the experiences I've had with other platforms, where I can blog till I'm blue in the face for practically nothing, this zero revenue is easily reversible for me on HubPages. If you're stuck with zero or very little income, I'd like to offer the following suggestions.

1. Post as close as you can to every day, and if you have to choose between getting it posted or fussing over it till it's perfect, send what you've got after about a half hour. The best and most enjoyable writing can be what you do on the spur of the moment, without any heavy planning or research put into it. If you have a blog idea that's been sitting around for some time, just try to put it into words and see how well it does. If it absolutely doesn't work, you can either save it unpublished for later or trash it after a few minutes and try again for the day. Web 2.0 search engines value fresh content and give it a slight edge in the rankings. And if you build a collection of fairly recent postings, they will all help bring traffic to each other.
2. Make article groups as large as you can, but concentrate them into a better-defined subgroup if you can. When you write your hub, you have the option to put it in a grouping of your choice. This will benefit you in two ways: not only will the keywords of the group title help interested people find your hub, but people will also see related hubs you've already written. When you have enough posts to further define each niche without limiting the number of articles the reader will see, be sure to send related hubs into sub-groups.
3. Don't overload your pages with ads and add-ons. Nick Usborne taught me that the more options you add to a webpage, the lower the overall conversion rate will be. In other words, the fewer choices a person has to make, the more likely they will make a choice, instead of Xing out your page. If you have a stunningly good hub written on car parts, it may be good to add some eBay to your hub. If you're writing about a movie adapted from a novel, Amazon.com may be better, since you can list the book and the DVD. But if you're an AdSense earner, there's no point in diluting your ads to the point a reader becomes annoyed with the page, or gives you two pennies from the sale of a 99-cent sticker book. I'm coming to realize that each advertising partner of HubPages has its strengths and weaknesses, and that each does best with as little competition as possible.
4. Don't add worthless keywords to your posts if you rely on AdSense. When you write an article, try to keep your base language as neutral and plain as you can, while providing information quickly. Google bots that crawl the page can often trip over content and serve up ads that don't help anyone, be it publisher, advertiser or reader. So if you're writing about blogging, for example, it's best to rein in your language and stick to the specialized terms of your writing field. See how I said "worthless", for example? The first draft I had of this article used "turkey" and then "junk" instead. But unless you want to serve up ads for birds or scrapyards, it's better to use words that a searchbot can't turn into meaningless or inferior ads.
5. Use social networking to promote your articles. One trick I've learned is to get a MySpace blog going, post just a teaser, and then post a link to the full HubPages article. Make sure to put in your HubPages affiliate tracker URL when you do it, too, because you never know when someone may sign up from that link and start getting you residuals! Another excellent resource is this post I found recently: 7 Facebook apps every blogger must have. This article has been a godsend since it automates a lot of my link posting to Facebook.
6. Use numbered or bulleted lists and boldface to highlight your main keywords. Searchbots give preference to text with extra formatting, so long as it's not heavily done. Try adding bold to the title of a movie in a movie review and see how your AdSense ads respond over time. Even if you have a focus on Amazon or eBay, your ads can benefit from attractively formatted copy.
7. If you have to, run your writing through a spell or grammar checker. When bots see a lot of misspelled words, that can lower your search ranking and contaminate your ad placement. Not only will clean writing make for better search rankings, but it will make the most important people happy: your readers, who can often turn into fans.

So if you're frustrated, just remember: write often enough, and cleanly enough and the comments you receive, good or bad, will help point you in a better direction. Don't make your reader jump through hoops to get to what he or she wants, and most of all, write from your life.