The Politically Incorrect Guide to Making Money on HubPages

Herein we peel back the layers of political correctness to expose the brass tacks of turning a profit on HubPages.

Children under 14 may want to look away now. We are going to Keep It Real.

Serious Writers who value their craft should find something else to do. If you agonize over every word, if you double-check your verb tenses, if you know what a gerund is, please surf away now. Point your browser at SeriousWriters.com; do not continue reading here.

According to The Politically Incorrect Guide to Making Money on HubPages, only three issues have any significance whatsoever.

I'm going to tell you what the three issues are, rather than forcing you to read this entire hub to dig for them. If you want details, please read on. Otherwise, go forth and apply the knowledge you have gained.

1. Get your hub indexed by Google

2. Pick appropriate keywords

3. Get people to click on the ads that appear on your hub.

Note: nowhere in this agonizingly simple list is any mention of writing good. Serious Writers, this is your last chance to bail out. You've been warned.

Google provides the majority of search results around the world. If your hub is ignored by Google, you've shot yourself in the digital foot.

Indexing is the process wherein Google computers read your hub, analyzes it, and adds it to their database of web pages. If your hub isn't indexed, Google will never include it in any search results.

Google indexing should take place automagically shortly after you publish a hub. Google knows about HubPages already. You don't have to do anything. However, some hubs may take weeks to get indexed and some worthy compositions may never be indexed. It's a mystery as to how Google separates the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes hubs get indexed, then de-indexed, then indexed again...

Watch out for the insipid NOINDEX tag imposed by HubPages if they don't like your composition.

We all know of the Google AdWords Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. If you can't decipher it, go watch TV instead of writing any more hubs. Your time you are wasting.

Learn the tool, live the tool, be the tool.

Well, HubPages won't let you pick keywords any more, so scratch this rule on HubPages.

After mastering steps 1 and 2, light a candle to Step 3. Google and HubPages prohibit you from actually encouraging your reader to click on your ads. In the words of Sheriff Buford T. Justice, "You can think about it, but don't do it." Sheriff Justice went on to explain how Google will shut down your AdSense account quicker than Valerie Bertinelli at a free doughnut bar, but only the Director's Cut of Smokey and the Bandit II included that scene.

You get paid when an ad gets clicked.

Tolstoy could publish a War and Peace hub and still go broke if no one clicked on his ads.

To some extent you're at the mercy of Google; they decide what ads your hubs will host. You can filter out an advertiser now and then by configuring your AdSense account properly. Some Hubbers feel a slight animosity toward Scientology ads while other hubbers are happy to have ads for christian colleges on their atheist hubs.

We know it's politically incorrect, but you can write whatever you want. Use bad grammar. Incomplete sentences. Apply abstruse pop culture references that would only be funny to shoe cobblers in Malta on the Fourth of July.

Pretty writing won't make you money. Google can't detect pretty writing.

Only The Three Rules will make you money.

Don't neglect any of the Three Rules. You may find yourself with the inherent ability to dominate Rule 1. You may find yourself manipulating Rule 2 like a Ninja Keyword Master. You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile, but David Byrne never made any money on HubPages. Neglect rule 3 at your peril.

We need accomplished writers to make our money-grubbing hubs look good. The symbiotic relationship between junior Hemmingways and AdSense trollops is well documented. Google probably like us all better when some of us use big words and literary references. However, a hub about the Top 10 Gas Grills for 2011 will probably monetize more effectively than 1000 words on institutional racism in 17th century France.