Two Years on HubPages and Going

Earlier this month, I received an email from HubPages noting that I had reached my second anniversary with the site. I signed up for HubPages after having searched for ways to earn money online back in late 2011. I clicked the publish button for the first time on December 2011 with a Hub that was a review on Perry Miller's collection of essays known as Errand into the Wilderness. Little did I know that I was starting on a journey that would earn me a few hundred bucks.

I started out by posting a few of my papers and reviews from school. Some of these are among my biggest traffic draws. I also have an affinity for politics (which not everyone shares), and I posted several posts on the Election of 2012. These Hubs would draw some traffic for a week or so and then tail off. One example was a post on why I was confused as a Christian why Newt Gingrich was suddenly the poster child for the values voters. I've since removed some of these early Hubs because they were too narrowly focused.

I posted a review of my first few months that cheered my entrance into the world of the two-figure blogger. I've since been able to move into the realm of the three-figure blogger, and hope to move into the four and five-figure category. In those early days, especially before I signed up for the HubPages earning program, I earned a few cents here and there. I decided to move forward, though.

In September 2012, I started in the now-on-hiatus HubPages Apprenticeship program. I applied because I hoped that it would help me with learning the ins and outs of online earning. I also hoped that it would help supplement my income as a grad student. The $6.09 bonus that they offered at the time per hub was pretty enticing. In my first month of the Apprenticeship Program, I would have made my first payoff if I had not gotten a single bonus. That felt like an achievement, because I was able to see a bit of fruit from my labor.

I made payoff every month during my apprenticeship but one. I've continued to accumulate monthly earnings in the months since without writing a single hub for about four months. My goal is to earn a few bucks of passive income from the site every year. Getting a few passive income streams built up should help with the bills, and it should also help my build savings that will continue to grow more passive income, which is the best kind of income that there is. I'm now in year three on HubPages, and some of my stats follow below.

I started out with that one Hub on Perry Miller back on 12/06/11. When I hit publish on this masterpiece, I will have 148 Hubs published on HubPages in just over two years on the site.

My 147 previous Hubs have earned 47,111 page views to this point. Many of them are educational like my Hub on Charles I and his conflicts with Parliament and my Hub titled What is Government and Why Is it Necessary? These topics tend to send my traffic spiking in August to November and January to May--the months that tend to follow the school schedule.

My best Hub in terms of traffic is one on the worst president in American history (hint: it's not Obama or Bush) with nearly 9,000 views at this point. Some of the worst Hubs that I have in terms of traffic were the first batch that I wrote during the Apprenticeship Program. I have a handful of articles that have fewer than 20 views. I leave them up because they might get a view or two at some point and earn a penny or two a year.

I've learned that writing online is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but more of a get-less-poor-slowly scheme. The income on sites like HubPages can be passive, but it takes time to build up. I've also learned some great lessons from the Apprenticeship regarding keywords and other methods of drawing traffic that have allowed me to get my best success on my own blog on making money online while wearing pajamas. It allowed me to get very close to the level of the four-figure blogger (that's $1,000 from blogging income alone). I'm sure I won't be as active as I was as a HubPages Apprentice, but I'm sure I'll continue to leave my content up with hopes that I can earn passive income. It's been a fun learning experience to this point.