One Year of Writing in HubPages--how much I've earned and learned

So I got quite surprised when I was notified that I've been writing on HubPages for one year exactly three days ago. The earth has revolved around the sun and I've really evolved so much most especially in terms of SEO writing or blogging. Time spent doing something really does make you grow more in that field as explained by Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. 10,000 hours is all it takes, he says, to be a genius in doing something. Well, I've been blogging for about 9 years now, if I counted correctly, and if you can only see how different I used to be when it comes to writing style and traffic effectiveness, you can really say I've gone a long way.

Aside from the things I learned, I have also earned. Google AdSense pays me by writing here on HubPages and on my several other blogs but a great deal of my earnings come here from HubPages. I've actually already discussed some sort of comparison between my Hubs and blogs from Blogger on my Blogger vs HubPages article here on HubPages. All in all I've earned around 230 dollars in one year a bit low in terms of earnings but in terms of traffic and many things I've learned about SEO, it's been a very significant year.

So much has changed in just one year. From a Windows user I am now a very proud owner of a Macbook Pro. Plus, there's really something about that 10,000 hours things that's really so true. I swear, nowadays caffeine is all I need: just give me a cup of coffee and an internet connection and I promise you I'll be able to make a really good blog post (focusing more on quality now than blackhat SEO techniques).

Let's take a look at one of my older Hubs "Make money on Hubpages even with Few Articles" where I'm so proud of having 8 dollars in my Google AdSense account and so happy I was getting around 300 views a day (here in HubPages only) whereas now, as shown in the screenshot of my statistics, I'm on my all-time high on page views here at more than 1,800 views a day. It's even very possible that I earn that 8 dollars in 2 days. It's really just so exponential. As I've been writing recently on my flagship blog Beating the Search Engine, I don't even do anything anymore. It's not about writing in quantity anymore or ranking. I just write for the enjoyment of it and I still earn (even if I don't write).

My biggest concern now is Ben Bernanke and US monetary policy, being that I earn in dollars, I am directly affected by their devaluation of their currency. I mean, I can really feel it. From my first Google AdSense earning compared to the second one, I can really say that I feel that its purchasing power and value has decreased. I feel that I can buy more with dollars before than now. I should really invest in precious metals (I always say that ugh but never really have the means). Gold increased in price by 7% in just one week! Imagine that! With all the debt issues in the US, I'm really starting to lose faith in the dollar. For more on this topic and other similar rants and thoughts, you can check out HarryLeaks, my blog about libertarian political philosophy. Here's a video of the honorable congressman Ron Paul about this whole topic (be sure to check out his other videos as well!):

You see, I don't care anymore if I have a niche-focused type of articles. I can be as random as I want. I don't care if this article ranks (but I'd love it of course). This kind of free-spirited blogging gives me a chance to focus on more on my advocacies for instance by randomly inserting preachy paragraphs about how all of you should just be more like me haha or by posting random videos of Ron Paul, a true living hero and champion of liberty.

I really liked The Lord of the Rings trilogy. See, I was completely random just now. It's fun and still somehow contributes to my earnings (the fact that you are reading this right now is already a big thing, thank you dear reader). Yes, I should probably write a whole section about thanking you guys (people I know) or any other strangers who have randomly come across any of my blog posts or hubs but I'll reserve that for later. Or maybe I won't. It depends entirely on my mood.

The traffic I get isn't really just on social media. I think I wrote about this already before. Search engine influence is still more significant than social media influence but of course both go hand in hand with each other. Most of my blogs outside of HubPages get views through social media shares only like through Twitter or Facebook and now Google+ (which reminds me I should do a bunch of anticipative SEO hubs with keywords about g+).

This doesn't make me complacent at all. My top three hubs are the ones that get me most of my traffic and I'm sure any of those can be outranked at any time so I should really focus on investing backlinks or inlinks because as you may know, those are big factors considered in PageRank power.

I read somewhere before that more words is always better because AdSense focuses primarily on word content. I mean, obviously, the search engine is a robot and can't really comprehend the content of videos or photographs and have to rely on tags or what you write in the alt="" thing on the HTML image tag. So it's still all about keywords, that is the bottom line.

There are just so many blog posts that I have to write that are way overdue. Like the time I ate in Chowking and did not like the chicken. That was supposedly for my food blog (see photo on right) and I could have somehow provided a backlink somewhere on this article already. I just never really feel like blogging recently. I haven't been in the mood. Luckily, the notification of my one year anniversary of being a member here in HubPages compeled me to write this article. I always say, what if I wasn't as lazy as I am, right? I'd probably be earning more (but we must also take into consideration that if I wasn't as lazy as I am then there's a chance that I won't be as good a writer).

I started writing on HubPages after seeing its ranking power during my internship as a content writer for an internet marketing company. At the time, I decided to make my own HubPages account and didn't even know that it would be something I'll be getting significant earnings from. Ideally, I was only aiming for the traffic that would come from backlinks in HubPages posts I write. Randomly though, after integrating my Google AdSense account with it, I saw significant increase in my earnings (though at the time significant was measured only in cents to me).

That doesn't even have anything to do with how I applied for Google AdSense. That's an entirely different story and happened long before my OJT. And of course I plan to write about that real soon as well (this is one of the many overdue blog posts I was talking about).

It's never really complete, or realized in form, what I am doing. It is continuously changing and I never really know what it is exactly. I'm just making things up as I go along. Which is actually a good thing, I guess, since I read this quote thing on Google+ from Amanda Palmer's commencement speech to some art school that was saying something very similar to that. I've always had a grasp at this concept, I'd like to think. I don't know what's next exactly but I have some plans in mind (I always have haha). If I wanted, this article will never end. I can just keep on writing and random things will always pop out of my head. There will always be a story to tell or write about. There is alway something that I see differently. We all see the world differently obviously. All of us will always have a unique perspective. I guess it's just on how effective we are at sharing it (and we all have different ways of expressing ourselves).

I was actually at Graphika Manila the other day and it was really inspiring to hear some tips and tricks at the concept of becoming creative from the speakers (last year was definitely better though and more fun). So I guess I just wanted to write something long and random since it was my HubPages anniversary a few days ago (I actually only found out today). There was this really cool dubstep song used for the intro video thing. And so I thought of sharing that video above. It's also something I'm listening to right now.

My HubPages statistics thing says I've had a total of 285,560 views. So that's around 23,000 views a month. But always remember that Google AdSense isn't all about views. It is all about clicks as well. But of course, 23k a month is really a wonderful and heartwarming achievement. But I do have to work harder and write more and conquer as much cyberspace as I can. Here's to another good year!