Breaking $1 a Month on Hubpages

Making $1 a month online is something that took me 9 months and 17 Hubs to do. I've just made $1.30 for this month as of today.

During the time it took to make $1 a month, I mostly ignored the social aspect of the Hubpages community, mostly because I'm busy in my life and busy with other things when I go online. I would occasionally read Hubs I found interesting, sometimes comment, but most of the time I just go about my life. When I had an idea for a Hub I'd write it down or file it away in my mind for later. And then sometimes I'd find myself in the mood to write, or thinking about a certain topic, and along with this I'd have a desire to earn some moola, and off I'd go, writing a Hub.

Because I was so used to seeing such little pocket change when I logged into Hubpages, it was easy to think writing Hubs was never going to make me any money. I kept my spirits up by equating my earnings into the real world. ("Oh look!" I'd tell myself - "I can afford a stamp!" and so forth.) However, after reading some more Hubs by more active members I decided the problem of my little earnings was my own fault. So recently I just made a mental note to myself to try to write more and to become a more active Hubber.

No sooner did I publish just one or two more Hubs then I noticed my little pocket change had increased a bit! Since I'm no Big Potatoes I happen to get excited by little penny increases in my earnings amount. I guess I see it as people enjoying my writing, which makes me happy.

Since I was soon spending more time on Hubpages writing, I spent more time browsing what's out there. And there are so many interesting articles out there written by other Hubbers. So with the new mindset that it was possible to increase my earnings with more work and effort on my part, I started learning from other Hubbers, following others, leaving comments when I like articles, adding fan mail, and reading up on what I could do to improve my writing and my Hubpages earnings.

I decided to try to be less critical with my own ideas about what I should be writing. So what if I wasn't a total expert yet or had only a story to tell? As long as I was doing my best and trying to be accurate, enjoying myself and enjoying reading my own writing, I decided I'd take a stab at it. I consider it a win-win proposition.

That's when I realized I really enjoy writing Hubs and what's even more funny ~ I didn't mind that I was doing it for practically free! I'll take a long-term view of my online writing work and build up for myself a nice little asset of quality Hubs. ...I'll just try to take less time to do that than I have in the past!

Here's the second installment of my earnings tracking. I brought my Hubpages earnings up to $10 a month just a few short months after writing this hub. Check out:

The Exponential Pull to $10 a Month on Hubpages

With becoming more prolific in mind, I began reading more Hubs about other Hubbers who wrote prolifically or were adept at making money online. One of my favorites is kksonakiya's hub "How to earn $100 from first month on Hubpages".

I work full time and have other interests and activities I regularly take part in, so writing 10 hubs in one day is not likely to happen too soon around here, but I'm going to take the gist of the article to heart. I can become a more prolific writer and still enjoy writing. I believe that it's true that it can be easy to write a lot of articles quickly. I just haven't done it yet. ;)

Last night I wrote a hub about the time I took care of some little baby mice, and what that experience was like (it's called "How to Care for Baby Mice"). While I had cared for the mice a couple of years ago, I never even considered writing a hub about it until out of the blue last night. All I did was think about what things I've blogged about on my personal blog that others might find interesting too, and the mice idea came up right away. The hub was written fairly quickly and I enjoyed writing it immensely. I don't know how many more pennies it's going to bring me, but I'm glad I wrote it and shared that experience with the world.

I would like to do more writing like that, that I enjoy doing, and I would like to have a great deal of hubs to my name. Since I've been slow to start, I'll have to get on it. From now on when I have an idea for a hub, I'm going to try to get it done at the earliest opportunity, rather than putting it off and letting it sit. (Usually what happens then is I forget about it, or become too critical of the idea, or feel it's too much work to get to at the moment, or etc. etc. etc...)

I am not sure how quickly I'll be able to write a lot of hubs, but I'm going to try to get a lot more done. Rather than having a set number of hubs to write in a set period of time, my goal is simply to stay active and keep writing regularly. I have to balance my life with this goal, but at the same time, I want to make sure I am effective at writing. So my goal is a very rough estimate of writing a couple of hubs per week, and the more the better.

I will keep you posted.

I am happy I have earned my very first dollar per month online. It was not as much work as I thought it would be. And since it doesn't feel like "work" anyways, I look forward to earning my next increase in earnings soon.