My 100th Hub - Just a little look at how far I've come

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So this is my 100th Hub! I think I have even surprised myself that I have managed to keep going to number 100. I officially published my first hub on the 30th of March so have now been here almost 9 months, and I feel like I have come a long way in those 9 months!

I originally came here so I could have a new creative outlet as I was getting a little bored of my blog. But I have come to really love the community that I have found, such a beautiful, great group of talented people that have inspired me to keep writing and encouraged me all the way. I would say they are at least half the reason I have made it this far, and why I will continue to write, hopefully for years to come.

I have also begun to realise that I can turn my writing into a little passive side income, I didn't know this when I first started - it will never be the main reason I write but it is definitely a perk. It takes work to make money and become a successful online writer, but when you love writing enough, it tends not to feel like work at all! It's the slow and steady race here, but I am happy to put in the work and slowly build my hub numbers until the earn me a nice little passive income.

Anyway onto this little hub! I'm not going to go into major statistics and metrics or anything I just want to highlight what I have achieved so far, thank a few people who have helped me along the way, tell you what I have learnt and set a few lose goals for the next year. So on with the hub...

So here are a few of my statistics to date, just so you get a general overview of my account.

• I have been here 8 Months
• 100 Hubs
• Over 22,000 views
• Over 240 followers
• Level VI commenter
• As of today I have made around $65 - via Hubpages Ad Programme and eBay
• I have made around $20 via Amazon
• My average hub score is 71
• At the moment my hubber score is fluctuating between 93 and 99, I have it the big 100 once!

Below is a list and links to my top 5 most popular hubs! These are my 5 hubs that have had the most views overall. Although 2 are more seasonal hubs and have had a major hit for the Christmas Season, the other 3 are definitely evergreen and are having a constant steady stream of traffic.

Ok I can't possibly thank everyone that has encouraged and helped me in the last 8 months, if I did this hub would be running on for pages. But I would like to make a special mention for just a few people. So thank you to everyone who has been there to support me so far and special thanks to the below hubbers:

• Teaches12345 - I swear you have probably left comments on 90% of my hubs. I hope you try out a few of my recipes and really love them!
• Billybuc - You were the first person to properly greet me when I arrived, and I genuinely think you are one of the friendliest people I have ever known. Thank you for all the encouragement you have given me.
• Lipnancy - You always comment on my recipe hubs, so I hope you try some and enjoy them. Thank you for all the lovely nice comments you leave me.
• Jools99, btrbell and Carol7777 - All you lovely ladies have been very supportive of me and I have enjoyed some of your hubs so much.

Well to be honest the main thing I have learnt is that you have to persevere! You need to keep writing even if you don't feel like you are making much progress. I earned less than $5 total in my first 3 months, which felt like nothing considering how much work I had put in. But you are just starting out and you need to build up your base of hubs, which will continue to earn for you long after they are written. To see my earnings report from the beginning check out my hub - My hub story from the beginning.

Networking and commenting on other hubs is a hugely important part to becoming successful on Hubpages. Not only will they help you with any questions but they will encourage and support you along the way. 50% of the fun on hubpages is the community you become a part of, if you allow yourself to become a part of it.

Have fun! Don't forget to enjoy yourself! Writing on hubpages should be enjoyable, if it becomes a chore and you stop enjoying it, you won't do your best work and you will resent spending the time here, especially if you don't get the monetary gain you want. But if you enjoy your writing, and have a little fun while you are at it, it will keep you here longer and make any money your earn just seem secondary to your writing itself.

Try to Challenge Yourself. Setting yourself small achievable goals will encourage you to keep going. Whether you just want to get up your first 10 hubs, or have your first 1000 views or reach your first payout. Giving yourself something to aim for will help you greatly. I wanted to reach 100 hubs by christmas (I've done it) so I challenged myself to 30 hubs in 30 days in November to guarantee I would reach my 100 by Christmas.

Don't expect things to happen over night. It takes time to build a following, to get ranked on google and other search engines, and to start making any sort of money. Just relax, write quality content, network and share your work and it will start to happen for you too.

I don't like to set myself specific challenges or anything, but I think setting my self some loose goals to aim towards will help encourage me along the way next year. Plus it might help me keep going when I start flagging or having any writers block. So I have come up with a few things I would like to achieve in 2013

• As I managed to write 100 hubs in 8 months I figure I should be able to write another 150 in the next year. Which would bring me to the grand total of 250 hubs by this time next year.
• I hope to increase my views to a point where I will be able to make the minimum payout each month - I am still a long way off this, but I hope getting up 250 hubs will mean I am getting enough traffic to do this. I don't expect to make $100's or be able to live off my earnings, I simple want to be able to take the stress of one of our household bills away.
• I hope to continue increasing my followers - I'm not putting any specific figure on this, as I really can't judge how many more I will gain nor can I actually encourage more hubbers to follow me. I just hope I can naturally grow my network or fellow hubbers.
• Sign up and complete the Hubpages Apprentice programme. I hope to be able to do this next year now that I have become more confident in writing hubs. Fingers crossed I actually get accepted!

That's it really. I think these are all achievable goals to aim for in the next year. I just have to hope I can make it onto the Apprentice Programme, that one is kind of out of my hands, the others I can personally work on.

01.02.13 - Now you may notice if you look on my profile at present that I no longer actually have 100. I took stock of all my hubs and decided to unpublish a few until I have time to work on them and improve them, and even to delete a few that just wern't working for me on here. So I think maybe the moral of the story is - It's not important how many hubs you have but the quality of those hubs. As the new hubpages guidlines say you should be aiming to create Stellar hubs not 100's of not so great ones. I haven't noticed any drop in views since deleting and unpublishing my idle hubs so it hasn't really affected me (other than my number of hubs lowering) but I am happy with what I still have featured. And will be working on a few of the ones I think are worth saving soon, to republish them, and hopefully give them a new lease of life.