Can You Make Money Online? The Top Ten Things I've Learned in Six Months on HubPages

Early last month, after checking on my earnings from my various web activities, I came to the startling conclusion that I was, after hours and hours of work, a two-figure blogger. I wrote a wonderful hub, linked above, that discussed my travails that are now going on two years.

After earning a mere $0.62 in 2010, I was elated to find that I'd crossed the $10 threshhold for 2012, still with eight months yet to spare (or a little less if you believe the Mayans). I was hoping to double my money in May. Alas, that did not happen, but my total earnings were basically equal to the last month's. I was happy, however, because about 1/2 of April's earnings came from a single ad click.

My hope is to reach $1 million in online earnings this month, but I'll probably be happy passing the $10 mark for a month. Slow incremental increases seem to be the way to internet hundreds. From there, the millions will follow, right?

I remember goofing around on the internet late one night for get-rich-quick schemes as though it were yesterday. OK, I'm embellishing the truth a bit there, but I do remember looking for opportunities at making money on the interwebs. I'm a firm believer that people only get rich really quickly because either a) they've done something that at least borders on the illegal, if not doing something that is totally illegal or b) they had a rich relative will a huge chunk to them. Unfortunately, making money legitimately takes time and effort.

I came upon the topic of Hubs and HubPages. Being by nature a very skeptical guy, I then googled "HubPages Scam." Of course, there were a few people with sour grapes and an axe to grind complaining that they had not earned one single red cent in two weeks on the site. I tend to take these types with a grain of salt because they generally seem to be under the impression that they can earn millions in just two days from their tiny one-bedroom apartment, simply by putting ads in the paper.

Most of the checking around I did seemed to be pretty legit, however, so I decided to give it a try. I signed up and posted my first hub that very day. My first wonderful hub was a discussion of Perry Miller's classic work on Puritan history Errand into the Wilderness. To date (June 2, 2012), I've gotten less than 100 hits on this one.

Much as my blogging experience noted in my previous Hub about two-figure blogging (linked above), traffic did not come rolling in immediately--from HubPages or Google. I'm pretty sure that about half of my pageviews in that first month were simply the result of me checking and tweaking various things about the hubs I published. I got a total of 7 (yes, that's seven, with no zeros coming after it) hits from Google that first month. I was not about to get discouraged just yet, however.

I have learned several things from my six months on HubPages. As promised from the heading of this capsule and the title of the Hub, here are the Top 10.

1. HubPages is not a get-rich-quick scheme. See above again if you have doubts.

2. You can make money at HubPages. Some people make decent side incomes from the site.

3. You can write about things that interest you. The things that interest others may be totally different. I posted a series from a historiographical paper I wrote about two years ago for a graduate seminar. I anticipated that this series on the English Reformation would get very few hits. These Hubs are among my most popular.

4. Current events tend to get a few hits early on, but then they die. I had a Hub about Rick Santorum and evangelical voters. It was my most popular for about two months. Then, good 'ol Senator Santorum dropped out of the race, and my wonderful Hub about him has not had a hit since--bummer.

5. The more you write and publish, the more your traffic will increase.

6. The increased traffic will partially come from the HubPages community, because your number of followers should increase (unless you are a Neo-Nazi Holocaust denier-type that tends to scare people away).

7. The increased traffic will partially come from Google. As you begin to get more Hubs published, the wonderful search engine will find you. Then, people who are searching for your info will also find your Hubs. I've experienced a 100-fold increase in Google traffic in just 6 months. Of course, that's not terribly difficult to accomplish when you start out with 7 hits for an entire month.

8. Increased traffic will lead to increased revenue for you.

9. Sign up for the HubPages Ad program to earn more money. I've seen a couple of people complaining that their revenue went down with this program, but I've found that my revenue is much higher with this program. If I'd started out with HubPages ads from the start, I'm sure I'd have at least $5 more right now, and I might even be able to anticipate payment THIS year, rather than next. HubPages Ads are a definite necessity.

10. I wish I had started sooner. Interested? You can sign up here for HubPages and start writing. The money won't come overnight, but it will ad up over time. Happy hubbing.