My HubPages Earnings - A story from the beginning

'How do I earn money?' and 'how much can I earn?' is probably one of the biggest questions new comers ask - and I was one of them! I didn't come here to earn money but obviously earning money from something you are already doing is great and it has encouraged me to actually work a little harder than I would of if I was just hubbing for myself, without the littlest possibility of monetary gain. I have read many hubs but hubbers of all success some who are here purely to make money, some who have no real interest in money and others who have been lucky enough to make a little even though they didn't really intend to. I am trying to be in the latter category. I shan't be writing hubs purely with making money in mind, but I will optimise the stuff I do like to write about to at least give me a little chance of making some money.

So I am writing this little hub to keep people up to date with a new hubber and how the earnings progress from the very beginning! Its all good seeing an earnings report from someone who has been hubbing 3 years and is make a few $100 a month, but for a new hubber seeing the reality of another new hubbers efforts and earnings is a little more helpful! Yes I dream that I will be a hubber who in 3 years time is making $100's a month, that would be amazing, but for now I'm going to grow the number of hubs I have and aim to make $10's instead!

I'm not someone who can spend hours writing, or who will turn out a 100 hubs a month (I wish I could) but I have a job and other work that sadly has to come first - so I am a hubber with a normal life that has to keep running around my writing. I am an example of a part time - write when I have the time hubber! So hopefully my earnings will reflect how much you can make just writing the occasional hub around your normal, everyday life.

These are the combined earnings from ebay and the hub pages ad programme, not from AdSense. I have no added a colume for adsense earnings in 2013 to see how they are starting to grow slowely. This doesn't include Amazon at the moment, as I am not always sure wheer my adsense sales come from, as I advertise on a few different sites

I have read from a lot of other long term Hubbers that it took them on average 9 months to hit their first payment threshold. I think that is probably going to be pretty true of me too! And that is with only being to write in my spare time. I'm sure if you approached Hubpages as a full or even part0time job and published daily or pretty near to that you would be able to make the threshold alot quicker. But I am happy with my progress so far.

19th September: I was hoping to be able to hit the $10 mark for this month, but I think it is a little unlikely. I have had hardly any time to write this month sadly, so when I have had a little spare time I have been working on editing and proofing old hubs in the hope that will help a little. I may still make it, if I can get a few decent hubs in before the end of the month so fingures crossed! - Oh and I also got my first Amazon sales this month! Sadly the payout threshold for that is $100 if your outside the US, but I am 5% of the way there, hehe!

3rd October: Yay! As you can see I made the $10 mark in September, just! I am very happy about that as I actually removed a few hubs and didn't have a huge amount of time to write many new hubs. So the aim this month is just to hit the $10 again as I don't think I am going to have much time again to write new hubs, but I am working on editing some of my earliest ones to improve them.

2nd November: Well I hit the $10 mark again, a little less than last month, but as I thought I didn't really have much time to write this month. I added 6 new hubs and updated 2 of the ones I had unpublished. I hope to make $15 this month which will take me over the $50 pay limit. I shall have to work pretty hard though as the last few days of October my views rocketed due to a few Halloween based hubs, which will obviously drop off now as they are seasonal. But the new Review competition is just up my street so hopefully that will inspire me to write a few more hubs this month! I had hoped to reach 100 hubs by Christmas but now it's looking like that may be a bit of a stretch, we shall just have to see.

19th November: Ok so I decided to do the 30 hubs in 30 days challenge again this month, and actually complete it this time. Mainly so I can reach my 100 hubs by Christmas target. I was hoping it would also boost my earnings to make it to the $15 mark this month, and the $50 payout threshold, but sadly my views just arent climbing like I hoped so my earnings are also not climbing that well. Disappointing! But fingers crossed, things can always change on the internet with one well placed backlink!

16th December: If you did check out my 30 hubs in 30 days challenge link above you will know I did indeed complete my 30 hubs, actually exceeded it to take me up to 99 hubs in total! Whoop! My earnings didn't rise as much as I was hoping, but I figure it may take a few weeks for them to rank and start getting some organic traffic so I may not see my efforts paying off for a month or so. Which is cool! We are half way into December now, and I havent actually published a single hub since the end of my challenge, so nothing in 16 days. This is partly coz I'm so busy and partly because I want to see what my hubs can do without me publishing new things as much. Amazingly Christmas has given a massive boost thanks to a few seasonal hubs, and I have made as much in 2 weeks as I did all last month. Sadly after xmas this will drop off, but I will be up to 100 hubs and that is a good place to start from for a New Year I think. I missed the pay threshold by mere cents last month but made it on my first day in December so will now get a nice little payout in January, yay! I'll keep you updated. Thanks for all the support!

28th January 2013: Yay I got my first payout. So happy! $89 which converts to around £53 got paid into my paypal today - and no fees were taken which is even better. So this went straight into my savings account for our first home deposit. I am so pleased to have made payout after 9 months. January is obvioulsy a little lower than my December earnings as my seasonal hubs are no longer getting as many views, but it is still going pretty well. I have pretty much doubled on my November earnings already, so I am feeling pretty good about that. It shows I am still growing my earnings and earning more even without the christmas seasonal boost. I have though realised how important and impressive the seasonal views can be, so I am now trying to target a few of the other seasons through the year. They may not be ever green but they definitely gave me a massive boost in views over Christmas. I actually had one hub hit 10,000 views in a week! Mad!