I wanted to do something a little bit special for my 100^th Hub since it does represent a major milestone, but I didn’t want it to just be a review or recap of all of my Hubs.  I could have written about my experience and why I came to HubPages.  That just didn’t sound like it would be all that interesting to others.  I didn’t want to post a list of everything I had written as that seemed too self-promotional. 

Instead, I have elected to write a Hub that takes a lot of what I have learned through trial and error and my own personal reading and research on the web to provide a road map for those just starting out.  It is the same kind of fatherly advice that I would give my children having made my share of mistakes.  I certainly don’t want to tell you how to do everything since I would rather save all that information for the ebook I might write someday.  These aren’t rules but guidelines to point you in the right direction.  If you really want to make money online, this may give you a head start.  It will take a lot of work, however.

Keep in mind that I don’t feel as if I am an expert yet.  I am still in the learning process.  I will be making my first AdSense payout soon, likely by the end of this month.  That means that it will be five full months from when I first started writing online.  I anticipate the amount of time will decrease rapidly and within the next five months, I will be making payout on a monthly basis.  Why can I say this?  Because I work hard and take what I have learned to heart.  I spend an hour or two each day online and have been trying to publish something everyday.  It may be an article on HubPages or a link on Xomba or a blog post.  But each and everyday, I will try to post something that will enhance my online income.  That being said, let’s look at what I wish I knew from the first day.

Start by figuring out your passions.  Since the effort to make serious money online will be substantial you have to enjoy it.  You may think that just because the keyword “mesothelioma” pays a lot per ad click, it will be a great topic about which to write.  But there are thousands of others out there who will be trying to do the same thing.  It just isn’t worth it.  In the time it would take me to write one article about “mesothelioma”, I could write 8 or 10 about subjects I enjoy.

Now that I have finished several articles on various topics, I am getting a sense of the types of topics that come easy for me to write about.  You may not be able to figure it out right away.  You interests may change.  But if you sit down to write an article, and it just seems like so much effort, don’t bother wasting your time.  The lack of excitement will be seen in your writing.  I am not a salesperson.  I hate salespeople!  I could never do fund raising door-to-door as a child, and I can’t do product reviews and try to sell stuff on the internet.  That’s not me.  I prefer to convey facts and information.  Education and knowledge are my passions.  All topics investing and finance are my passions.  Golf is a passion for me.

When I first started writing, I had no idea what keywords were.  Keywords are crucial to your money making efforts.  Pick the wrong keyword, and your articles could be well written and generate tons of traffic, but your earnings will still suck.  Keywords are what determine the price that advertisers are willing to pay to have someone click their ads.  Keywords determine what ads are placed next to your content.  Keywords are what people will type in to the search engines and will impact where you rank and whether people will find your online content.

That is not to say that you should write just for keywords.  Instead use your passions to guide your topic selection and then focus in on those keywords that might be valuable to you.  After you identify what your passions are, then you can start looking for keywords that belong in those passionate categories.  To do this, you need to become incredibly familiar with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  This tool will become one of your best friends if you want to make money online.

About a month and a half into my online earning efforts, I ran across some information about the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  In the early days of my writing, I would write a little and then try to spend some time on the web learning about making money online.  I would come across a term that I didn’t fully understand (like keywords and long tail keywords) and Google the term.  Then I would proceed to read several articles.  I often go to 10 and 20 pages since I find there is a lot of good useful information that doesn’t always show up early in search.  I would usually come across something in an article that I didn’t understand so I would Google that term or phrase and read some more.  In this way, I am self taught as much as is possible.

Eventually during that process, I learned about the Keyword Tool.  I wish I had known about it from the beginning, but I didn’t.  Maybe this information will help you as it has me.  Once you identify your passion, use the Keyword Tool to identify those keywords or phrases that pay a lot per ad click.  Start by entering your keyword or phrase in the box and making sure the synonym box is checked.  This will provide you lots of ideas for other keywords that might be useful.  Once you have a list of keywords, make sure that the “Show Estimate Avg. CPC” is highlighted on the drop down menu on the right of the page.  You will then see the amount that advertisers are willing to pay to put ads next to your content that contains those keywords.

Let’s say that your passion is gardening.  Using “gardening” as a keyword reveals that there are over 2 million monthly searches that include that term and that advertisers will pay $1.18 per ad click.  You can expect to get about 15-25% of that with Google keeping the rest.  (You may want to take your online earnings and buy stock in Google.)  You also will notice that the green bar is full so there is a lot of advertiser competition for the term. 

Unfortunately there is a lot of website competition as well.  You can determine this by going to Google itself, typing in “gardening” and finding out that there are 6.7 million sites that have that keyword.  When you write your article, you might be in spot number 3 million.  No one will ever see your article so you won’t get any traffic or earnings.  This leads us to the topic of long tail keywords.

So, “gardening” is much too difficult a topic in which to compete.  But what if we narrow our focus within that broader topic.  Since you like roses and have some in your yard, what if we search “rose gardening” as a keyword phrase.  Going back to the Keyword Tool, we find that “rose gardening” has 8100 searches per month, pays $0.68 per click, and has lots of advertiser interest.  Going to Google tells us that there are 125,000 websites to compete against.  Make sure you put your specific phrase in quotation marks when searching Google, otherwise you will get results that have either rose or gardening in them. 

By narrowing the focus and using what are known as long tail keywords, we find that it may be easier to compete and get a higher rank in the search engines.  We may not get as much per click, but the higher exposure and traffic may very well make up for that in terms of overall earnings.  The next step would be to try variations of the keyword phrase that might either pay more or have less competition.  It can take some experimentation to hit on the right combination, but as mentioned, hard work is part of the process.

Search engine optimization is an entire topic by itself, but it is useful to have a basic understanding of SEO prior to writing an article so that you can incorporate the keyword phrase you have selected in the title, headings, and body of the article.  The search engines have little spiders that crawl all over your content and look for the main idea of your article based upon the words you use.  You wouldn’t include the words baseball cards in the title for your article on rose gardening.  The spiders look at the headings and the content as well.  They look at the picture captions and what you link to.  This is all for the purpose of deciding what your article is about so it can be placed in a list of results when someone searches for a topic.

Not only are the keywords of the URL, title, headings, content, etc. important for the search results, they are very important for the ad spiders to figure out what your article is about in order to serve up relevant ads.  Nobody searching for information on “rose gardening” is interested in clicking on an ad for Chinese restaurants in San Francisco.  It is just not relevant.  But an ad for a special type of rose that withstands temperature extremes might be interesting enough to garner a click and revenue for you.  Once you have an article that contains some keywords (but not too many that the text seems unnatural), it is time to look at getting some traffic.

This is still an area that I am working on.  I suppose almost everyone trying to make money online works on developing traffic.  Organic search is the best kind of traffic since these individuals are looking for information or something to purchase.  You need to rank high in the search engines to get this kind of traffic.  That is why identifying the proper long tail keywords, developing keyword rich, pertinent, and useful articles, and understanding some SEO basics is so important.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to rank in the first Google position on the first day of publishing.  It takes a lot of time and effort to get to the top so there needs to be some other ways to develop some traffic while you are awaiting that top spot.  That can be where social bookmarking sites can come in.  Think of these sites as a way of saying, “Hey, look at what I wrote!”  Personally, I will check the twitter box on any Hub I publish as well as facebook.  I know that I have gotten a little bit of traffic in that fashion.  I also have been using Xomba to link to my articles with the idea that a different group of people frequent that site as those that frequent HubPages.

While I am doing this, I am creating my own backlinks.  What is a backlink?  I had no idea when I started.  Apparently, these same spiders that look at your content for the search engines will get to your site or article and follow the links on it.  Then they will go to the links on that site and on and on and on.  (Unlike that commercial a few years back, they never reach the end of the internet). 

These links serve as a voting system for the spiders.  The more links back to a particular article, the more important the article should be.  Now not every link is of equal value.  The spiders can figure out if there are a bunch of links to an article that show up as a result of purchasing or trading links.  I don’t know how they do it, it just happens.  However, if a very important authoritative website that has been around a long time links to your article, then your article must be very important and it will move higher in the search rankings.  I suppose that the spiders figure if you are serious about generating money online, you will stick at it for a year or longer.  Aged sites are good, like a fine wine.

Once you get to this point, it is time to start all over. Identify the passionate topic about which you would like to write; identify an appropriate keyword phrase that fits within the topic, pays well and has relatively little competition; write a keyword rich, content heavy article that conveys a useful point and publish it; post a few links to the article or use it to link to some of your other works; hope others find it useful and link to it while waiting for it to age. Then do it again the next day. And again the next day and on and on. Before you know it, you will have several great articles possibly on several different sites, picking up traffic and showing up in the search engines. Eventually, the earnings will start to roll in and will pick up steam like a snowball rolling downhill.

I am just starting to get to this point. It took me a few months to figure out the keywords and backlinks. I am just getting to the SEO and traffic generation. I may not generate a lot of traffic currently, but it is traffic that pays. Each day that goes by allows me to learn more and earn more. I am earning more on eHow than HubPages with only 40 articles versus 100 Hubs since many of my early Hubs are crap, and I didn’t know what I was doing. That’s OK. It is part of the process.

This has only been an overview to help kick start the process for some of you. It is not meant to be exhaustive, nor is it meant as a step-by-step instructional manual. It is meant to provide a broad overview in one place of the process by which you can start earning some money online. It is simply the first step in a much longer journey. For many, it might be the first article that attempts to pull it all together. I would hope that it provides at least one person with that A-HA! moment. (If you are that person, consider linking to this article or sending it to others who might be interested.) For me, it is simply the beginning of the next 100 Hubs.

I elected not to place any links in the text of the Hub, at least for now, since I don't want to interrupt the flow of the article. If you want, be sure to check out the other Hubs in this group since many of them are useful. Also, be sure to stop by and follow my blog (link is in my profile) where I am tracking my progress on making money online. It is interesting and informative.