Hubpages Myths: From Author With 100,000 Views

(UDPATE: Since publishing this hub, my hub views are approaching the 1 million mark.)

Every writer on Hubpages wants to make money here - even those who are here primarily because they enjoy writing here. Fair I guess.

There's plenty of advice to new writers as well as for the experienced hubbers around how to make money on Hubpages.

Having taken that advice seriously, my partner and I have published many hubs here - we have separate Hubpages accounts. And I have crossed 100,000 views recently.

So I decided to do a stock-take and see what has worked and what hasn't. I felt that I should share my learnings with the rest of the Hubpages community.

After all, I have benefited from the advice - and motivation - from other hubbers that were here before me.

Both of us have been on Hubpages for a little over two years, and have published a little less than 50 hubs between the two of us.

On average, each hub gets about 2 to 3 views a day. A slightly popular hub gets a bit more traffic.

However, most of our pageviews have come from just two hubs that became very popular and hit the first page of Google SERP (search engine ranking page). These hubs have made good Adsense money and have also helped earn good money on Amazon.

When we reviewed the amount of effort put in:

writing these hubs, and

promoting them,

we have come to some interesting findings. Some of the myths about making money on Hubpages may be revealed here as we share our experience.

The hubs that have made us the most money and attracted traffic for us haven't really been promoted extensively on social media.

Of course, we put a link on Google+ and Twitter, but that's about it. Whenever we have put in a lot of efforts we haven't really got that much in return from our hubs.

I would rather spend that time on writing more hubs. In fact, this advice becomes more relevant after Google's Hummingbird update. Google has stopped giving the same importance to links as it used to till 2013. Now, links serve just the basic purpose for which they were invented originally - to send traffic.

There's no link juice anymore. Most links around the web, including those on Hubpages, are now "nofollow" links - meaning, you don't benefit from the authority of the website that's linking to your hub and vice versa.

So don't worry too much about social media. Just do the basic promotion on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest.

This is partly true, but I will come to it in a bit.

The more you write, more you earn is a myth. Most of our earnings as I said have come from only two hubs.

The classic 80/20 rule applies to Hubpages too - 80% of your traffic will come from 20% of your hubs. Yes, most of your traffic will be because of only a handful of your hubs.

Similarly, most of your income will come from only a few hubs.

Now here's the true part that I mentioned - you wouldn't know which 20% of your hubs will bring the most traffic - for that you need to publish your hub. That's right. Publish your hub.

The more hubs you publish, better chances you have of making money - by revealing those 20% hubs that are drawing traffic.

When you find the winners, you can then spend extra efforts in perfecting those hubs further and promoting them more.

So here's what you should do - initially, get your hub to meet the basic requirements of HubPages, and then publish it. Wait for a couple of weeks - a month will be better - and see whether you have found a winner.

If you are getting just 1 to 5 views a day, then that's a dud. However, if you are attracting more than 5 views, then there's scope for that hub to pick up more traffic with time.

Don't worry about getting a perfect 100 Author rank from Hubpages. I have known authors will good author ranking, and yet with little money to show for their efforts. So a good author rank doesn't necessarily mean good income.

Second, don't worry too much about your hub score. Same logic - a great hub score doesn't necessarily mean that search engines are going to like your hub more.

Having said that, use hub score as a benchmark of quality for your hub. Aim to achieve the minimum hub score you should to pass the quality mark of Hubpages.

Leave the rest to search engines.

I deliberately avoid mentioning an ideal hub score here, because the goal post keeps moving with all the changes that Hubpages team makes. This is because Google keeps moving the goal post for all of us.

Use Hubpages tutorials and guidelines to write quality hubs, but don't get bogged down by your score too much.

Based on the above, you have got a gist of my argument.

After receiving 100,000 views, here's my advice on making best use of your time on Hubpages:

1. Do keyword research in the area of your interest. Here, Google Adword Planner will be handy. But don't get too bogged down by it. Don't spend more than 20% of your alloted HP time on keyword research. It's almost hit-and-miss process. (Yes, you should allocate a specific amount of time for Hubpages, otherwise you will spend too much time on writing hubs. Of the time allotted to Hubpages, only 20% should be given to keyword research. Both - keyword research as well as Hubpages can be very addictive. I have spent days on researching and writing ONE article.)

2. Write your hub. Write on the topic you like. Just write. Then publish. Don't worry about getting it in perfect condition. But write quality stuff. It's the quality that matters. Keep the reader in mind.

3. This is the most important advice - try to get as many tick marks as possible from various parameters that Hubpages has prescribed - 1200+ words, more than one photo, one video, one poll, summary etc. Initially I use to ignore those things, and my traffic was low. I followed the Hubpages guidelines for one of my hubs and the traffic shot up by THREE times. You read it right, my traffic grew by THREE times on that hub.

I am not saying you will have the same experience, but use the advice that's freely made available by Hubpages. It's worth it's weight in gold. After all, they have a full-time team working on doing search engine optimization research. And we have that expertise available to us for free (well, not for free, but for 40% of our revenue, which is fair).

Yes, you read that right. Close the Hubpages tab and start your own blog. You need to start building your own audience on your own platform.

Here's why:

1. You get to keep all the earnings - even though these earnings could be pennies initially.

2. You will be forced to learn basics of search engine marketing. You will get better at it.

3. You won't have to rely on the viability and existence of a third-party business.

4. You can build a more credible brand on your own domain.

I had my domain and my own blog way before I joined Hubpages, and that decision, though not intentional, has worked well for me.

It can either a free blog, or a self-hosted blog. I would prefer that you buy your domain, and start a self-hosted website. These days hosting is as low as $4.95 a month - that's like skipping one cup of coffee a month so as to pay for hosting.

Two good hosting companies that also provide free domain registrations are:

DreamHost (my current hosting company)

BlueHost (one of the most credible hosting companies)

Both these links above are my affiliate links, and I wouldn't recommend a product unless I have faith in it.

That's my final word - content is still king. And quality content always wins. So don't compromise on the content. Keep your readers in mind always.

But don't waste too much time up front, at the beginning of the tunnel, fussing over getting everything right.

Just write. Publish. Come back and see the response. If it's a dead bud, you will know in the first couple of weeks. Abandon it.

If you see some interest - more than 5 to 10 views a day, then you can re-visit that hub and bring it to perfection. Then you can spend more time on social media and other promotions.

Your ultimate loyalty and accountability is to your readers. Everything else is secondary.

If you have been writing on Hubpages and have experienced myths that you would like to share, please use the comments section. Let's share our learning for everyone here. Isn't that the best part of Hubpages.