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Can You Get Burnt Out with Online Writing?

Updated on May 26, 2011
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Are you debating on whether or not writing on Hubpages is beneficial? Are you one of those writers who just enjoy writing and can get overwhelmed with the commercialization of online world? Are you burnt out on trying to make money online? When doubts creep in and you feel overwhelmed by everything, you can get to feeling a little bit like that car above.

I'm not a long-time Hubber. In fact, I have only actually been active for around five months. The idea for this particular hub came from reading a few websites and Hubpages' forum posts. I was reading back and forth between ex-hubbers and pro-hubbers. It's a bit of a scary world, that. It tired me, but it made me think.

The premise I offer is this. Think about your average favorite author. I've read many complaints against the publishing world in general. I've seen many writers burn themselves out. It can be from not being satisfied in selling their work or feeling the harsh criticism of readers and professional critics altogether. It can even be from not being satisfied with a certain publisher or platform. It can be from not making enough money like they had hoped. Writers do burn out, even being great and famous writers.

The difference is that here you write with certain mindset towards earning google revenue.  Out there, the published authors write with the mindset of creating worlds for people to enter.

What Do You Expect Out of This?

What, exactly, are you looking for here? What do you want from all of this? When I write on a public, commercial platform like Hubpages, I ask myself this: What do I offer when/if I write this? Am I really selling myself short by going through a revenue sharing site? My hope for this hub is to help sort out feelings of doubt and feeling burnt out.

Do you ever think about the following? Even a few out of these random thoughts?

  • I wanna make money, fast.
  • My hubs will never bring in enough revenue in X amount of time.
  • Hubpages and Google makes all that money, and we scrap by on pennies. They have a bad system and they are cheating us. Look at them making millions!
  • I refuse to sell out to commercialism, because there's too many advertisements and too many people wanting other people to read things that does not truly offer anything.
  • Why the heck does it have to take so long to get paid?
  • I'm going to write insane amount of drivel just to get X amount on Adsense. That's all this stupid platform is for, anyway.
  • This SEO thing is B.S. and confusing. The people who are focused on SEO tactics are just people out to get you to click on their ads and make money. They're hypocrites. Et cetera, et cetera.

If you are not yet a hubber and you've thought a few of the above, STOP . You are NOT a hubber. You will hate it. You will burn out fast. You'll have a fit before the first two months are up. Unless you get it into your head that it takes a lot of steady writing on informative, eye-catching, and in-depth things to get anywhere, then Hubpages is not for you.  Unless you realize you have to utilize a lot of resources in very smart ways, like RSS feeds and many capsules, then Hubpages won't work for you.

If you are a hubber and you've thought a few or all of the above, take a moment and see if you can play the devil's advocate to each of those questions. Consider that big companies and small people all make mistakes. Consider that every system is flawed and always evolving. If the questions persist as something you cannot deal with, then STOP . By all means, stop, quit, drop out. Only you are responsible for your choices. It should only be important to you that you think nothing else of it and move on.  It's okay, really.

What Is Really Going On Here

Let me address the above questions and then we are done with this article.

  1. Making money. It's not gonna happen immediately, unless you are expecting to make a quick $1. It takes a while. That's because your articles have to get indexed. The more your hubs are being backlinked, tracked, searched for, and has had time to mature into an article that Google will index on the first page, the more money will start building up. My experience is that my older hubs are bringing in more money, while my newer hubs are fledglings in a world of competition. Out of 29 hubs, I've made $90 off of them and the money is slowly trickling in more and more on that alone. The money you're expecting to make will come from advertisers and highest bidders.
  2. Google and Hubpages. Well, yeah, they are making tons more money than you ever will working for them. That's because the money they make not only pays their bills, it keeps the site up and running. It keeps the advertisers afloat. It helps businesses to thrive. It helps people to have articles published a solid platform that is highly indexed so that they, in turn, can also make money. Hubpages has less than 10 people working for them. They're highly successful maintaining a system that became more successful than expected. With them, it wasn't a sudden shock of money rolling in. It took a lot of brains, a lot of late nights, a lot of effort tweaking everything, a lot of research, etc. -- and then people come along expecting to roll in their success immediately as well. No, they are offering you a place to create your own success as well. You must put in a lot of effort for yourself, alone.
  3. Commercialism and SEO. The problem with this is obvious. In order to have successful hubs, there has to be some amount of commercialism. Some people have no qualms with this. Others, however, are frustrated with the amount of advertising in our world. So many ads, so many people putting out their merchandise, so many people expecting to benefit off of that. Where is the creative writing? Where are the stories? Where are informative articles that doesn't expect you to go gallivanting off on more of their links to give them more traffic or buy something from them? Here's the upside. Links can be adventurous. Readers can find more information or events provided by the advertisements. Believe me, I've been surprised into finding relevant ads that I did want to click on for more information. And I haven't actually regretted clicking on them. In fact, I bookmarked some.

So, if any of this is over your head or still makes you feel angry, then yes, some of you will get burnt out. Some of you would rather make an honest living doing something else or maybe find a serious not-so-honest get-rich-quick scheme. Some of you have a different logic, different way of doing things, like getting into creative writing that means something to you.

Hubpages is a platform that offers a few specific things.  Hubpages is open to variety of topics that you really enjoy writing about (minus a few things Google says no to).  Expecting them to be something else entirely is your problem.

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