You can make money with Hubpages.

There I got that out of the way.

I've been writing online and using the Adsense advertising program for just about two years. I've posted articles on a bunch of different sites and I even own a few websites of my own.

I had heard about Hubpages probably about a year ago but I never had the time to join and start writing here.

I started about a week and a half ago and I've already started earning money from my Hubs. I've earned $.12. That's right, twelve cents.

It's not much, but it's a start. The more quality hubs you post, the more traffic you will get, and the more adsense clicks you will get. It's a matter of gaining more exposure. So far, I've posted six hubs. I plan to write a lot more.

Here are four tips on how to attract traffic to your hubs from search engines.

1) Write a good article with information about a topic that people are searching for. This is key. People type words into search engines like Google because they want information. Whether it's movie times or where to find cheap furniture, people are searching for answers. Provide answers in your hubs.

2) Use keywords. If you are writing a hub about "Making Money Online" or "Carribean Cruises," make sure to use the appropriate phrase at least three times. Don't spam your hub by filling it with the phrase, but do use it several times in the course of your writing. Keywords are how people will find your hubs.

3) Submit your work to social bookmarking sites like stumbleupon, reddit, and digg. People will find links to your work from bookmark sites and if they like what they see, they will recommend it and you will continue to get more traffic. Success with these kinds of sites depends entirely on how useful the information in your article is.

4) Don't Get Discouraged. Gaining substantial traffic takes time. I would say it you write ten to twenty good hubs on a similar subject and you promote them and use solid keywords that people search for and provide good information and great writing, then you should start to gain traffic.

Learn more about Hubpages and sign up here.

I've written above about some very basic (okay, super basic) ways to start getting traffic to your hubs, which really is a large part of the game when you're trying to make money online, especially with Adsense.

Now, I want to write about how you actually make money writing on hubpages. I mentioned above that you can earn money from Adsense, which is Google's advertising platform. Chances are you have been on a website with Adsense text or image ads on it today as it is a ubiquitous method of monetizing websites, both large and small.

Everyone from weekend bloggers to large news sites like CNN.com can use Adsense to earn money from the traffic that comes to their site. Publishers earn when a visitor clicks on the text ads displayed by the network. If you don't know what Adsense is, have a look at the top of this hub and you will probably be able to see blue text links below the image of the dollar sign at the top right.

The key to making money with Adsense on Hubpages is to get traffic. You need people to see your work in order to have the ads displayed to them. It's that simple. Well, at least it sounds simple.

Aside from traffic, the other important element to earning with Adsense is by doing all you can to ensure that relevant ads are displayed. The more "targeted" an ad is to a visitor--the more helpful it is--the higher the chances are that someone will click an ad and thus put a few cents to a few dollars in your account.

The way you control relevancy of the ads is by using sets of keywords in the body of your hub. The keywords for the article I am writing should be something like "make money on hubpages" since it is what this piece is about. You can see how this would be different than just targeting a more broad phrase like "make money online," which can include all kinds of other schemes designed to earn income on the internet.

Now, I don't really expect that there will be very relevant ads to "make money on hubpages," but this is the choice I've made for this hub because this is the traffic I am hoping to help learn more about earning some money from this site. And I also want to clarify that there are quite a few people out there who know a lot more about how to use hubpages to earn income online--but I felt like sharing some things I have learned.

There is quite a lot you can learn about how to select and use the right keywords, but that is for another hub. In fact, there are probably a few hubs in existence that can give you excellent primers on how to select the right keywords for your hubs.

So now we know that in order to do well with Adsense you want to create a lot of traffic and expose this traffic to highly relevant advertisements that they will be interested in and will click.

Another way to make money on hubpages is with Kontera ads.

Kontera is an advertising network that I have had a love/hate relationship with. Well, it isn't really as dramatic as that all seems.

It's just that earnings with this in-content ad network are so erratic, that there really is no way to forecast your earnings or know how Kontera is going to perform for you. I went through a long period where I didn't use this kind of ad, but just today in fact, I turned them on for all of my hubs. Hopefully, it brings in some much-needed earnings.

If you don't know what Kontera is, look through this post for words or phrases underlined by two blue lines. When you hover your mouse over these lines, an ad box pops up. Sometimes what pops up is relevant to the phrase and the hub as a whole, and sometimes it's not.

Kontera is by nature erratic, but it also serves a function. I have read and thought more about it and it seems that Kontera is more a way to complement your other ads like Adsense and eBay, rather than being a main money maker for you. If used properly, it may be used to monetize certain traffic that may not click on your Adsense ads or be interested in an affiliate link or Amazon book.

Amazon and eBay both have affiliate programs that allow publishers like you to sign up, promote their products, and earn a cut of the sale.  Typically, the cut is 4 to 6% of the total sale price of the item.  

This is one of the main ways people earn income from Hubpages.  It is very easy to integrate Amazon or eBay links into your pages.  All have to do is add "capsules" that make it easy for you to select products that relate to the body of your article.  But you do have to sign up with the affiliate programs first.  Once you do this and get accepted into the program, you just have to input your code into the appropriate field in the "affiliate" section of your personal profile here on hubpages.

Selling products via these affiliate links is not something I have perfected or am even very good at, but I see how it can be a very good way to earn money through your work here.  I recently read a hub about a man who wrote a hub about Rolex watches and 36 hours later earned a nice amount of money when someone purchased a watch through an Amazon link he had on his hub.  

I am learning more about selling with Affiliate links on hubpages and will possibly write a hub on my experiences in the future.  

Adsense and affiliate sales through ebay and Amazon are the two top money-earners on hubpages and there are probably quite a few writers here who do very well with both of them.

The owners of Hubpages.com earn money from 40% of the impressions on your articles.  You earn on the other 60%.  

The way this works out is 4 times out of ten, Adsense and affiliate links contain Hubpages' ID code, which means if at one of these four times a visitor clicks an add or buys a product through Amazon, this website gets to keep the earnings.

The other 6 times out of 10, your ID code is referenced, and you earn money if action is taken on these impressions.  

Another thing you should know is that you can actually earn money from affiliate sales for products or networks not associated with Hubpages and earn 100% of the revenue.

If you have a product to promote, you can do so on your hubs. You can only have one affiliate link to a given product in each hub.

I am sure that some people do quite well selling through commission junction or clickbank affiliate links, but it takes some very well-written articles, targeted keywords, and a very relevant product to do so.

Sign up for Hubpages today and start earning for your writing.

The best way to get started writing and making money on Hubpages is to write about what you know.

Do you have an expertise that you can write about and share with others? What do you know how to do that others don't know how to do?

I don't care if you want to write about how to build an eco-friendly bird feeder, you will be able to find an audience for your content if you do it right. One tip I will give you is that if you write about the same topic in a few hubs, you can use them to promote one another. This is a good way to create links and gain stronger search engine results positions.

So start writing about a topic that is easy for you to write about. Do some keyword research and figure out the terms that people would search for to find the solution or information your content provides. Use a strong title that incorporates your given keyword phrase.

Also, use the phrase or similar phrases several times in the body of your hub. This will help you gain much-needed search traffic and will help target your Adsense ads to your hopeful audience.

This article is about how to make money with Hubpages, so it's important to note that the best written content on this site is the most useful, informative, and helpful.

If you write authoritative articles that help people find a solution to their Google search or give them the information they are looking for, then you will eventually earn more money. This kind of content is evergreen, meaning it is as good today as it will be in a year from now. If you can write this kind of hub, you will be able to earn a good income from hubpages.

Write for Your Audience

Put yourself in the shoes of a potential visitor to one of your hubs. You know when something is spammy and designed just to get some search traffic. But you also know when something is written to legitimately help you out by providing insight or information. When people take the time to do good work, it really shows. Instead of just attacking hubpages from an internet marketing angle, try to think about the end user at all times--think about how you would want the page to appear if you were doing a Google search for a given topic.

There is nothing wrong with writing in order to gain traffic and make some money online from displayed advertisements, but the writers who provide the most value are the ones who earn the most money in the long run.