Want to Make Money with Hubpages? Forget the Myths!

I believe it is much more pleasant to enjoy one's hobby if it brings in some extra cash. There's nothing wrong with it: anyway, collectors of fountain pens exchange their writing instruments, write reviews, share tips and teach others the art of calligraphy. Stamp and cork collectors create photo albums, sell excess of items and publish books.

Earning cash with Hubpages is the other side of the hobby medal. On the one hand, you write because you love to and want to share your experience, on the other hand your writing turns the income-creating wheels of the Internet. There's no contradiction between writing for fun and earning a little extra cash.

If you decided to try out Hubpages network and feel like several hundreds $/month would make you happier, then here's the 1st lesson of Successful Hubbing: Unveiling Myths.

Myth 1: to succeed with Hubpages as online income opportunity, one needs to publish a lot of hubs.

Truth: "a lot" is subjective. Is it 20 or 200? Do you believe that a hubber with 200 published hubs earns a lot more than a hubber with mere 20 hubs? Unfortunately, "more hubs" does not mean "more money". In fact, only quality hubs have great income potential, but to create a quality hub you need to spend hours of work, where writing itself is nothing but a part of the process. This means you cannot publish a lot of quality hubs simply because of time constraint.

Myth 2: Bring in as many visitors as you can, and you will succeed.

Truth: this is true, but only partially. Successful hubbers rely on Search Engines traffic in their monetization. But it doesn't come quick and in large quantities. For newbie hubbers it is common to go after "quick" traffic like that coming from Social Bookmarking services or forum spam. If you choose to go this way, please do not get disappointed with your Google AdSense account displaying 1000 impressions and 0 clicks. In the worst case, you may end with your AdSense account banned forever.

Myth 3: Some novices assume that the more ads they have in a hub, the more money they will be earning.

Truth: look at your hub from the point of view or a regular visitor. Do you like tons of ads with little to no content? I doubt. But it is not rare to come across a hub with some 200 words and dozens of amazon, eBay and AdSense ads. It is screaming in your face "buy something! click here! I NEED MONEY!" A hub is primarily about useful content, NOT about earning money. Content establishes your credibility as the author. If a reader finds what he or she has been looking for, there's a chance (s)he will become interested in ads. A hub stuffed with ads and only a tiny passage of text looks disgusting, and random visitors WILL quit asap.

Myth 4: there's no need to write, just browse any article directory and you'll find lots of articles to throw into Hubpages.

Truth: it is an example of short-sighted approach which doesn't bring anything but rotten fruits. Copy-pasted articles have little chance of ranking high in Search Engines, and they will never stay there for a long time. Users of Social Bookmarking services are likely to flag such hubs (if you submit them) as non-original or stolen. Hubbers don't favor such hubs either.

Myth 5: Insert high-paying keywords in your hubs to attract profitable AdSense ads.

Truth: Internet is full of circulating lists of Top Paying AdSense Keywords. Unfortunately, relying on such lists is a big mistake. You never know who, how and when created that list. What's more important, it's Adwords advertisers who decide how much to pay for ads and who create campaigns. They may or may not spread their campaigns onto Content Network which we all refer to as AdSense. They may set lower bids for AdSense than for Google Search Engine. Finally, nobody but Google decides how many cents each click gets. Thus picking up a keyword with a promised value of $5 per click often ends in $0.01 clicks. Pretty disappointing, right?

Consider the competition factor: using a high-paying keyword means competing with thousands, if not millions, websites. For a newbie, it's next to impossible to win the Search Engine game and reach the first page of Google (which traffic is most preferred because of its numbers and conversion rate).

Myth 6: It's just impossible to earn with Hubpages because they steal 40% of money!
Truth: Hubpages implement an automatic system of splitting hub views (similar to "page impressions" in AdSense terminology). 

Within 100 hub views, hub owner gets AdSense ads with his/her ID displayed 60 times. HP reserve 40% of views. Bear in mind that of those 40% HP give a portion of credit to trackers (if used). There's no way HP can steal someone's money.

However, in return of those 40%, HP provide a number of advantages that normally would cost heaps of money.

• SEO benefits: promoting a hub is MUCH easier than promoting a stand-alone blog because Google considers Hubpages an authority website (hence PR6);
• Simple use: hubbers don't need any HTML knowledge. Compiling a hub involves the use of "capsules" - one-click menu items like Text, RSS, Video, etc.;
• AdSense insertion: with an ordinary HTML website you'd have to insert AdSense blocks into every page. Hubpages provide a single box to insert AdSense Publisher ID which is valid for any number of hubs created under same user profile.
• Community help: whenever you have a question regarding hubs, SEO, promotion, traffic or specific advice, HP team and forum members are there to help you. Hubpages DO NOT charge anything for their services. There's no such thing as "premium HP account".
  

Myth 7: visitors don't care about hub outlook, they come to click on ads!

Truth: poor grammar, tons of exclamation marks and loads of ads on a hubpage don't warm a visitor up to clicking/buying. It just makes sure the visitor will never come back. Poorly written hub cannot build credibility, it loses all SEO benefits and in fact just wastes server space.

A successful hubber aims at establishing credibility. It probably means losing a couple of clicks at the beginning, but it pays off in the long run. Hubbing means investing time and efforts into future success.

Myth 8: Getting backlinks is the only sure-fire way to promoting a hub, and backlink-developing strategy guarantees success.

Truth: In my opinion, this is an example of "half-truth" which is more misleading than a blatant lie.

Why? Because generating backlinks quite easily leads to getting them anywhere, no matter what. This is especially dangerous for novices because such approach spoils the concept of SE-friendly promotion.

Much better results are achieved when active backlinking goes hand in hand with proper On-page optimization. Quality content, also known at Hubpages as "evergreen", is the first step to effective promotion because it ensures readers will get interested in reading and will want to link to the hub they liked. Fellow hubbers know that this strategy works slowly, but brings ripe fruits over the course of time. It is a lot easier to work on promotion when part of it is done by readers. Their volunteer commitment facilitates the task for a hubber. The more backlinks are generated by hub readers, the less the hub owner will have to develop on his/her own.

And it is much easier to get people link back to an "evergreen" hub.

Myth 9: when tagging a hub, the golden rule is to add as many tags as possible.

Truth: this probably works as a Blackhat SEO trick. However, being on the Whitehat side because I don't like struggling with ever changing Google algorithms, I stick to relevancy rather than quantity.

Here's how it works: as outlined above, a hub should be specific. So, "earning money online" is a very broad key phrase, and thus it's easy to pick up half a hundred tags to describe it. Instead, I suggest narrowing the topic, e.g. to "earning money using affiliate programs". It's even better to specify a concrete program or network. Creating a list of tags this way is a bit harder, but the resulting tags will be targeted and up to the point. For example: "affiliate wealth", "successful affiliate marketing", "clickbank", "regnow", etc. I know these example tags aren't superb and I do not suggest using them all at once, but they give you a clue as to how organize the process of choosing tags.

Tip: try to include in the body of the hub every tag listed in the corresponding column, possibly bolding/underlining each one. This makes the tag list relevant to the hub and assures Search Engines that you are not into spam. Of course if you prefer to build up a list of 100 tags, bolding all of them is not recommended. I prefer to include into my tag list about 10-20 items.