What REALLY increases traffic?
In the few years that I have been on this site, I have heard that you can increase traffic by picking short titles. I have also read that you can get traffic by choosing a long title and including many search phrases in your title, and also by picking long titles that are specific for a search (long tail keywords).
Some recommend a short summary. Some tell us that you should utilize every character that HP allows you to use.
I have also read that it is best to do keyword research and only pick a subject when you have a “winner”; a keyword that has little competition and a lot of searches. A successful hubber has said that you should not bother, and just write what you know.
On the forums I have read that it is not necessary to have a niche on HP since the site is so general: writers can do well with or without a niche. Looking over the numbers, those that have done well in the last few years have a niche.
So what is the answer? How can we build traffic?
The guys at Google probably do not even know the answer. They hide their ignorance behind the statement “We have decided to keep that information secret to prevent people from gaming the system.”
Do any of you hubbers really know the answer to this question, or are you all just guessing based on what is working for you, at the moment?The only real thing that works most of the time for most people is to keep on writing, to make good quality hubs and to share them round.
The rest is based on everyone's different results with different tactics and tricks. There is nothing to stop you having a play with all of them. There are no concrete rules.
You will always win, whichever tactic you choose to play with, if you write lots of quality hubs that people want to read for some reason or another. Just try to get them to be readable and worth reading.I have only noticed two hubbers with lots of page views and few hubs (wrylilt and relache). The answer seems to be to write a lot of good quality hubs, but also to play around and make sure the titles are drawing enough readers from the search engines.
Someone else made this comment on the forums "You can only read them if you find them."I am nowhere near Relache's achievements, but I do have 111 Hubs and I'm currently 50,000 short of 2 million views. I think you have to bear in mind that we were here before Panda hit, when it was easy to get thousands of views a day, so the figures are a bit distorted.
I wrote a Hub on how to optimize your Hubs (it's on the slider on my profile) which explains my philosophy on writing Hubs.
P.S. I took a look at a few of your dog Hubs and was overwhelmed by the number of links in them! Google does not like pages which are a "list of links", which may be why they're not getting as much traffic as you'd like. It's nice that you are linking to Hubs by other Hubbers but it is tipping your Hubs over into "list of links" territory.If you are referring to my hub "in the spotlight" on dog health, it is a "capstone" hub to make it easier for readers to find an article that will help them take care of their dog. Google certainly does not seem to mind, at least based on the traffic they are sending my way.
As far as adding links to other hubbers work, I have stopped doing this because too often they end up as broken links and I have to go back and fix them. (I went to my "following" list last week and deleted about 20 people that had zero hubs published. They were not that way when I started following them.)
And do you really think those related hubs shown at the bottom of the page are of much value? I published a hub on Brazilian parrots last week and one of the related hubs was about Brazilian waxes available in DC, another was about Brazilian movies. I have seen others that are even worse. (I just finished reading that hub you wrote about traffic, which I found useful. What do you think about those related hubs at the bottom of your hub?)It's fine to have a small number of Hubs like that, I have one myself for each of my niches. In fact I think they're essential on HubPages because unlike a blog, there's no other way to help your readers navigate around your Hubs. However, I opened three or four of your dog Hubs and all of them had a lot of blue links.
I can't do anything about them so I try not to worry about them.
Marisa Wright:
You made a point here that I forgot to make, and I think it is important.
Those who have been here a very long time did well, but now for many, due to Google, that has changed. I know I have worked very hard to write well, tweak, etc., but doubt I ever will reach a million views because after two and a half years I'm just now at 175,000, and frankly, am happy to have that much because I got hit three different times, badly, by Panda.You need to learn not to depend on Google for all your traffic. You need to post to forums that allow signatures, do guest posts on others blogs, build blogger blogs, build word press blogs, try to get other sites to post links back to your sites and Hub Pages. I get sometimes 12 to 15 thousand views a day from other sites that link to my Hub Pages. If I can do this anyone can. You have to create a lot of alternative traffic resources besides Google. Don't just depend on Google or you will never achieve really great traffic. Not in post panda days.
crazyhorseghost:
Obviously you have worked very hard to get your work noticed, and I suspect this is because you write for a living.
I already have a passive income as I am retired, so I neither need nor want to do all of that.
I do some networking, but I am not willing to spend every living minute trying to market my work. If I make a bit here and there with what I am doing, it's enough for me.
If I wanted more money, I'd go back into my jewelry business where I cold make as much as $2,000 in a morning.
We each have our own situations, and while it would be nice to have your success, it is more than I care to do to get it.Yes I do write full time. Its what I've been doing since the very early days of the internet. At one time though not all the time recently I was making $1000 plus every day with blogging. I think I was one of the first to ever get to that level.
Right now I am working on many projects with a long term goal of getting to $10,000 a day. That is my goal right now and I have every belief I will get there.
Right now I'm concentrating on recipes, food, D.I.Y., Farm and Garden, Paranormal and Ghosts.
With Halloween coming I have my best money making time of the year coming.
Everyone has different ideals of what they want to do. And how they want to get get there.
There are four schools of internet gurus.
There's the white hatters - who don't try to game the system because they believe it will be counter-productive in the end. Write what you know, use keywords naturally. They're not against SEO but they're more likely to use keyword research after they've chosen their topic, or to refine what to write about within their topic. You'll rarely hear them talk about formulas (e.g. use your keywords in these specific places).
There's the black hatters - they're out to spot weaknesses in Google's armour and exploit them. Their advice is often quite specific and expressed in formulas - but the problem with a formula is that it's easy for Google to write an algorithm against it. Their techniques work in the short term (until Google catches up to them) so they'll give their advice confidently and cite their great results to prove it.
In between are the grey hatters - as it sounds, they're trying to navigate a middle road between the white and black hats, using the tricks but not heavily enough to get penalised by Google, not always successfully.
Then there's the fourth group - the people who've done their research and are eager to share their knowledge, but totally misunderstood what they've learned. Anyone who advises you to go for keywords which are "low competition and high searches" is a good example of this category. On the Google keyword tool, the competition column tells you how many advertisers are bidding on a word - it says nothing about competition from other writers. And it can be sensible to go for mid-range searches, because keywords with very high searches are being targeted by every black hatter on the planet already.
There are people from all four groups on these forums and that's why their advice is so confusing. Work out who to listen to and block out the rest. Greekgeek is a good example of a knowledgeable white hatter.
If someone offers you advice on these forums, it always pays to take a look at their account. I see a lot of newbies, especially from developing countries, offering black hat/grey hat advice which they've obviously been taught, but I doubt they've actually been around long enough to know whether it works!I have noticed that on the forums too. A lot of people offer advice and only have 1000 page views, tell you they know all about SEO but none of their hubs appear to be doing very well.
I would like to learn more, but I fear I am in that fourth group! Alas, I probably need to keep my mouth shut and do a lot more reading.
Thanks for that very detailed answer.They might have 'learned' that writing on "How to get maximum page views" is one hot topic that everyone searches and hence written such articles!
It's very important at Hub Pages to write on Evergreen Subjects. If you don't know what an Evergreen Subject is research it at Google. But simply it is a topic that is as popular in a year as it is today or five years from now.
Food and recipes are great to write about. The top three key words for food right now are.
1. Chocolate Cake
2. Meatballs
3. Pork Chops
You can find the top key words for each niche. You could make a mini authority site about either of those three key words.
But remember write naturally and resist the urge to stuff key words.
You don't have to write on recipes or cooking. I've done very well here at Hub Pages on the subject and also on my on sites.
One really big thing is write about what you know. I've been a Chef for over 50 years now and my family has always loved cooking.I agree, write about what you know, some of my best performing Hubs are on subjects which I have a lot of knowledge about.
I have tried to write about things I know little about they don't do well. I think the mantra here is if you have to use Google to research a subject you are just basically respinning (re-spinning??) info that is already out there, it won't do well.Space Shanty:
This is exactly why having tons of articles does not work well. Just writing reworked pap does not get it. I know from my own experience that this is true.
I have 50 years of experience with the RV lifestyle, so I do not have to turn to Google to find information in most cases.
However, writing about home and fashion, while good topics, is another story. I find it taxing to write in those areas and while those articles do OK, my real bread and butter comes from the RV posts.
You are spot on with your observation here.TIMETRAVELER2
Thanks for your reply. I guess the answer to this forum question "What REALLY increases traffic" is create 'original, unique and useful' content.
As we say in England "Simples"
Where do you find these top keywords?
Yes people don't fully understand the method you describe in the 'fourth group'.
You need to use the keyword tool to find a keyword with high searches (1000 - 10,000 monthly) but THEN search that term on Google to see what the competition is REALLY like, if there are tons of authority sites like Wikipedia you won't be able to beat them. If no other sites are really covering your keyword/niche you have a good chance of getting good traffic.
What has worked and been real successful for me is articles that are 1500 or more words. They include photos, videos, polls and other interactive ways to encourage people to stay on the Hub Page. I have started to do my own photos and videos and I'm doing well with You Tube Videos and etc.
I have started making Hub Pages into mini authority web sites and they have done very well. I have some individual hub pages with a million or more views per hub page with some having that many in a few weeks.You have several interesting niches but a lot of your articles do not fit into any category. Which are more successful, those that are in the niches or the stand-alones?
He has over 1000 hubs. Maybe all that content helps too.
I noticed that too; a lot of content must help.
Several hubbers with over 1000 hubs have more than 10,000,000 page views, but then I have seen a few with 600 and only 100,000--there is even a guy from California with about 600 hubs and less than 100,000 (he has the 10k accolade).
So do you think crazyhorsesghost must have learned which of that content is going to succeed?My first thought, when looking at CHG and Relache's profiles, is that they disprove the conventional wisdom that you must have separate HP accounts for your niches to be effective. I bought into that and now have a second account here limping towards its first payout.
I would guess that the niches are their best producing hubs. When I interlinked my hubs of similar interest, their pageviews went up 30%. Duh, I wish I had thought to do that earlier.Mine too, Solaras, but I cannot give you an actual percentage increase as there is always so many other things to take into account.
I also deleted all of my Brazilian recipes, but now I wonder if that was a mistake. None of them had many page views, so maybe they needed to be rewritten, but based on CHG´s profile it is possible to put them on my profile and not hurt traffic to my dog health articles.I'm just guessing, but I would think CHG might suggest that you repost them and create a blog about Living in Brazil for a fraction of what it costs to live in the US or Brazil as the ultimate retirement destination for people on fixed incomes, and link over to your recipes from those blog posts. Just a thought for all of your spare time lol.
Yes, as you mentioned in your original post, it doesn't seem to be necessary to specialise here in order to get traffic. However that also depends on how you're approaching it. If you want to become an authority on something, like Agilitymach, then it's going to look odd if you run a specialist Facebook page and advice line, then your followers visit your HubPages account and find recipes on there.
I recall Mark Knowles trying recipes and finding that they weren't worthwhile. There are so many specialist recipe blogs.Marissa,
This makes sense,,,BUT...you can know about more than one thing! So what is wrong with having several niches under the one HP umbrella?
I may not know a lot about gardening, but 26 years in education have given me good insights into relationships and 50 years of RVing have taught me a lot about that topic also.I think you just pointed out why we need multiple opinions here.
Actually if you read my post, you'll see I agreed that specialisation isn't necessary on HubPages. What I'm saying is that if you're trying to set yourself up as an authority on a given subject and promote yourself heavily as an expert outside HP, then I think it makes more sense to specialise - it means that when people come to visit your Hubs, it reinforces that impression that here's a real expert who devotes all their time to that subject.
Yes, and that's the nice thing about HubPages - you can write about anything. However, the way to make real money online these days isn't by getting paid for views: it involves building a loyal audience and marketing stuff directly to them (e.g. ebooks, affiliate products, your own products). To do that, you need to specialise because you need to know exactly what will sell to them. You don't want to annoy people by trying to sell a relationship manual to an RV'er, for instance.
You can't follow that model on HubPages directly, because you don't know who your readers are, but you can do it in tandem with a Facebook page. Agilitymach has been very successful with that technique. If it was me, I wouldn't have done it with HubPages, I'd have put my material on my own blog instead.
It really depends whether you want to go down that road. It's a lot of work!But is that more "How to make big money online" as opposed to "How to get more traffic"? Several people came on these forums a year or two ago and suggested that TT2 (and others writing about several topics) delete a bunch of their hubs so that the remainders would have better traffic.
If Agilitymach had followed that advice, she would have deleted about 1/4 of her hubs, which are recipes and book reviews. Do you think that would have helped her other hubs perform better?I think if you truly build a following, people will be interested in what interests you. Look at Oprah. Sadly, I am not capable of creating a cult of personality. So I must rely on the search engines.
One thing I gather from CHG is that his multiple topics are supported by many feeder sites. I don't know Relache's formula. I would be interested if having multiple topics requires a lot of external backlinking to support it.
That said, I think it is not good in the short term to delete hubs. I think it diminishes the portfolio in the search engines eyes even if they are on different topics. Just MHO.Yes, it is more about making money than getting traffic - but since most people want more traffic because they want to earn money, isn't that the same thing?
Although TT2 feels deleting Hubs helped, I still believe her traffic would've recovered without those deletions. Unfortunately there's no way to know!
The advice came from the idea that Google will judge your whole site based on the poorest quality posts on it - so you must delete all poor quality posts. That's pretty well established as fact. The contentious bit is that some people say, "if a Hub doesn't get traffic, Google must think it's poor quality, therefore it should be deleted". I think that's a failure of logic, because there are very many reasons why a Hub won't get traffic, most of them not relating to quality. And it's also known that Google dislikes small sites, so it's not good to cut down the size of your account (each of our sub-domains is its own site).
Again, it's debatable. I'm still amazed that she's managed to do what she's done, using HubPages rather than her own blog.I am rather amazed at this comment. Are you able to judge traffic in some way that I am not? All I can do is go by and see the accolade at the writer´s profile page. This writer has the 100k accolade, which is not amazing.
Are you amazed by the facebook "likes"? She has come on a forum to point out that the likes do not add up to page views. Sometimes people "like" an article just for a picture, a title, knowing the author, or because of the subject matter.
What is impressive, to me, is a writer like Alexadry that has the 10M accolade and has been here only 5 years, according to the profile.I'm going by AgilityMach's own posts, I've never looked at her profile. I don't take the figures seriously on profiles anyway, for anyone who was here before January 2011 - because it's likely their figures give a very distorted impression of how many views they're getting today.
But if you do not take figures on profiles too seriously, what else is there to go by? I have read several articles by crazyhorsesghost, Patty Inglish, Relache, and Alexadry, since they all have the 10M accolade. Some of the writers that have the 1m accolade and have been here a short time are Melissa Smith and Turtlewoman.
I agree that there are a LOT of people who were here before Jan. 2011 who have the 1M accolade. It did not seem to mean much, so unless it is a person who is helpful (like you, Izzy, wrylilt, or a few others), I do not think reading and learning from their hubs means a whole lot.The only figures that matter are traffic and CPM. Only one of these is semi-public so instead of looking at figures I look at their material and whether they talk sense or spout bollocks. That's the ultimate index of value surely?
Marisa Wright:
Why using Google has finally worked for me is that I write with great personal knowledge and mostly in a niche that offers important practical advice and also sells products.
I also have more than one niche, although the others are not nearly as big as my main one. My long term goal is to make each niche strong, so that if one falters, the others will pick up the slack.
The hubs I deleted were either poorly written, thin in topic, not producing or had too much competition. Thus, it appeared to me they would never succeed.
Now I have a base of well written, well read articles upon which to build, and I think Google sees that.
Having said all of this, I know in my heart that this can change in a minute, so I'm just enjoying the ride while it lasts!
Marissa:
You may remember that you helped me set up a blog awhile back, and, as per your advice, I tried to do as you suggest.
It simply did not work for me.
I loved writing the articles there, and I did get some decent reads, but I did not make one penny!
So, I do the best I can with HP.
I do wish we could know who our readers are when they come in from Google, but, so far, even with Analytics, it is very hard to know.Yes, I've now worked with three different people who had the same experience. In each case, I wasn't able to achieve anything like the earnings I manage on my own blog.
Earning money from passively displaying affiliate ads just doesn't work that well, unless you have the gift of persuading people to buy what's featured. Like I said, what you really need to make money on a blog now is to offer newsletters and ebooks and collect your readers' email addresses so you can do deals with advertisers and market stuff to your mailing list. Too much work for me!
I like what you are saying on this subject ...I like the idea of doing your own pictures and videos ...I believe I will take this information into consideration for future writing.
In my experience, frequency of publishing is what makes the difference. When I went through the apprenticeship, we had to write 8 hubs a month, which averages to 2 a week. I had over a 1,000 hits per day by the time I was in my 6th month of the apprenticeship. Of course keyword research enters into that as well, like you said, if you can't find it, you can't read it.
After the apprenticeship was over, I took a break, in fact I haven't published anything in quite some time, although I still average several hundred hits per day. But nothing like what I had. So from my perspective, aside from the obvious quality content including photos/video, publishing frequency and SEO are key.
Hope that helps.
DOM, do you think a lot of that traffic was from HP? I have read that we do not earn from other hubbers viewing our material.
I always publish at least twice a week, but since I do a lot of other things it is hard to tell why my traffic is improving.I have read that too, and did not know if it meant HP readers are "not your bread and butter," or "HP has a policy to not pay for views from other hubbers." Can anyone clarify that for me?
No, most of that traffic came from Google. I watched my analytics closely and actually only about 5% of the traffic came from Hubpages. As far as I know HP pays for views, regardless of who clicks on the article, although I do know that we were told in the apprenticeship that you'll never make enough money to reach payout each month if you're just getting HP traffic. You need to get traffic from the Google God lol.
I'm just now getting back to HP and starting to write hubs again. I've done pretty well for the past 8 months though considering I haven't published anything. I forgot how much I loved writing for HP! lol
I do a lot of self promotion both online and offline. I've put up signs at busy crossroads with some web pages with a real simple address redirect on it. I do this every Halloween through Christmas with huge success.
I am creating mini authority sites here on Hub Pages and a few of them have been picked up by larger sites and they have promoted the hell out of them. One recently was getting 15 to 20 thousand views a day.
You have to think outside the box. Don't ever let someone tell you that <Example> won't work until you try it. One thing in this thread posted by another person is very important. It is you can build it but you have to let them know its there. Hell stand on roof tops and yell it out about your sites if you need to. Buy a short URL and redirect it to your mini authority hub page. Put that short url on business cards, bumper stickers, flyers posted around town and etc. Get the word out.
Here I'm going to give you three mini authority Hub Pages you could build and make a huge success with. Someone build these. And see what you can do with them.
1. Back To School Supplies, Where To Get The Best Bargains.
2. Flea Problems, How Do I Get And Keep Fleas Out Of My Yard And House.
3. Halloween Fun, Everything from how to have the perfect Halloween Party to Ghost Stories.
I could take either of those three and make it into a huge success. And if you put in the time and effort you could to.
I also never put all my eggs in one basket. Spread yourself out thin and then go out even further. Try to add at least one site of your own ( Wordpress Works Perfect ) every month on your own domain. Use anything and everything you can to make your self a success.
I think I wear all three hats at times, Grey, White, And Black. And I've made the big money. And will again. I'm working on some new things right now that I think may take me to $10.000 a day. That's my new goal.
I know of very few people that can spend half the year in Key West 30 feet from the beach and half the year in a beautiful Mountain community in N.C. My office is just down the hall and I can go to work in my underwear. I made a huge success out of nothing. And I continue to do it every day. I wish every one success and anything is possible if you'll go for it. Set goals and work towards those goals.
Your not going to make a million dollars next month but a few thousand a month is very possible. Promote the hell out of yourself and use every tool available to you. Do your own research and you'll see what is possible. Now I'm going out to see if I can catch a few fish for supper to go with the squash and tomatoes that are ready in abundance. You know that could make a web page or a Hub Page. See you all around. Have fun and keep at it. May the Great Spirit be with you and touch you in a special way.Thank you for the great advice and inspiration. What does this mean:
"Try to add at least one site of your own ( Wordpress Works Perfect ) every month on your own domain. "If you can't do it every month at first do it every three months. Buy a domain that is very easy to remember, what is called a type in like 123recipes.com and set up a word press blog on it. Add something good to that blog every day. Make it a nice informative posts that give something. You want people to bookmark your site and come back. Make it really good and they will bring other people with them. Set your site up to encourage social sharing like with Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and others. Recipes are easy but it can be any D.I.Y. project or help that people are looking for.
That is not my domain though I have many that are similar.
Examples
Tomatoes, Watch As I Grow Them, Process Them, And Make Cream Of Tomato Soup
That would be a great long tail key word description for a blog. But write naturally. Do so and the rest will come easy.
Shoot photos with a cheap camera as you grow tomatoes. Shoot photos as you bring them into the kitchen and process and cook them. Get people interested in coming by to see what your doing. I've done it with everything from growing earthworms, to back yard chickens and everything in between. Buy a new pet for the family like a miniature toy poodle and let the dog have its own blog where it writes and posts photos every day. You have to grab peoples attention and get them to want to look. Also you need to encourage them to bookmark and share your posts. If you tweet a post ask for a retweet. Simple as " Please Retweet " It works and works great. If you don't know what Tweet is go use Google.
Think Outside The Box And Promote The Hell Out Of Yourself
Just Like PT Barum did. He sold $2 tickets to a side show where a man eating chicken was. That was back when $2 was a lot. When people got inside the tent there was a 300 pound man setting there eating fried chicken. Loud screams from a man and a chicken played as people walked towards the front of the tent.
Think outside the box. What can you do. What can you create to make people look. Incidentally I caught 5 sea bass in record time. Got to go clean them and get them ready for the grill. Have fun everyone. Ask what you want and I will be back.
I like your idea of putting up signs at crossroads, taking it one step further, have you considered using QR codes? People can just point their smartphone at your QR code and it will take them to your desired URL.
DrMark1961, thanks for asking this question about traffic. I would only be guessing because it seems to be working for me but I think a key factor to increasing traffic is keeping hubs fresh and recently updated. I do this with extremely minor edits for most. I keep all of my hubs updated within 2 to 3 months. I also use the carousel often to showcase different hubs. I switch them around 3 to 4 times a week.
Crazyhorseghost, I really appreciate all of your advice and insight. I will take note of all you've offered. I'd love to see a forum post from you where we could pick your brain.
Thanks again.You have to remember that people like CHG and LiveWithRichard and certain others here do this for a living. For those people, networking is a must.
For people like me, who still like to get decent views but have no intention of making this into a big money maker, the rules are different.
I think very few people here have the time to do all of that work, or even want to. Certainly, I do not.
I think, too, it is important to remember that there is more than one way to make money here. Yes, views are important, but proper ad placement on the articles you already have can bring in just as much money, and sometimes more, than page views do.
Personally, I think niche writing is important because it allows you to cross link your articles. However, I also think you can have several niches, as long as you have enough hubs in them and the hubs are credible and searchable.
Google is the big fly in the ointment, however. You can write great posts and think you have developed a good working formula, and then Google can change the rules and you can lose the whole game. Many here can attest to that.
The bottom line is that there is no big "secret" to any of this and nobody here really knows what works. We all know bits and pieces or what works for us.
From what you have posted on the forums, you do quite well here...so why would you change what you are doing?
Anyhow, that's my two cents for what they are worth. They probably don't help you at all lol!Yes, I am doing well, but I definitely think there is room for improvement--only about 15% of my page views are canine health hubs, and some that I thought very useful, like saving money on health costs for your dog, have almost no traffic.
I am not as interested in placing ads as I am in getting more page views. (In fact, I have been trying to edit all of my hubs and am deleting Ebay and Amazon capsules.) I guess it is true that a lot of us are in this for different reasons.
Thanks for your "two cents". The more viewpoints, the better.Amazon capsules double my income, but I only get sales on 3 hubs, and mostly just one. I have decided to put high view ,no sales potential articles here, and sales potential articles on my blog.
Dr. Mark:
You have to remember that you are writing articles in a highly saturated area, which means you have a great deal of competition.
I really think that removing your Amazon capsules is a mistake because well placed and appropriate ads can easily double your income.
The ideal, of course, is to get views AND get sales, but that is not always easy to achieve.You are probably right about the Amazon issue, but this goes back to all of us having different objectives in being here. I have heard people say "I do not care about traffic, I am only writing for the pleasure of it".
For me, I do not care about the income as much as I do in traffic. If someone reads an article about excessive heartworm testing, then goes to another article I wrote about the dangers of overvaccination, that is a good thing and their dog will benefit. I would rather they do that than make a few cents from an Amazon sell.Hi Dr. Mark - I would say if you believe in a product, that it is clearly superior in some way, then promote it through Amazon. For your health articles, I understand what you are saying. I can tell you from my experience so far that "dog name" posts don't generate any sales.
One effective Amazon post can add $100.00 a month"Dog name" post don't make sales?? Really???
I would have thought that people looking for dog names would be getting, or have just got a new dog and would need lots of related products like bed, leads, toys, food, flea/tick treatments, grooming products etc.
The pet industry is worth billions.I would have thought so too! I think some folks are helping others out with a name for their new dog, so don't need any actual products. And, as a breeder, I find that people often already have a name in mind for their dog before they actually get one.
Looking at your Hubs you are obviously something of an authority on dogs. Your suggestions & recommendations hold a lot of weight. I think a few tweekts to your Hubs could increase Amazon sales.
These two Hubs helped me.
http://susana-s.hubpages.com/hub/amazon … cts-online
http://wrylilt.hubpages.com/hub/How-to- … azon-Items
I am glad to hear you say that about the dog names! I post them just for fun, since I enjoy many languages, even if I do not speak them, and almost always put an Amazon ad on those posts. They never have any sales, though, or very few, despite a lot of them having heavy traffic.
Instead of name tags and name collars, which are something important, do you think those hubs should be advertising something like toys?Maybe toys are a good idea (not the kind sold in big box stores). I have been going with tick and flea meds to no avail (that's the biggest selling pet item on Amazon).
Crates and exercise pens might be good too. Let me know if you can think of something people need, but don't get before or just as they have the dogs, and can stand to wait for it to arrive a week later.
Maybe harnesses, car riding booster seats and seat protection material. People typically run out and buy bowls, collars and leads when they have a new dog. That is why pet rescue is so popular with the pet supermarkets; the rescues adopted that day bring them big sales for immediately necessary items (food, treats etc...).I just read your hub about hiking with your dog, and all of those items you list there are not the sort of things people would rush out to buy from a store. I hope it is very successful for you.
The only thing I can think of is some training aids for working with large aggressive dogs. I just read Susanna´s hub on Amazon and most of my articles are informational; as she pointed out, and Marissa has pointed out in the past, those types of hubs do not make sales.
Just curious--how fast does Amazon ship where you live? If I was to buy something for housetraining, for example, would it do any good to wait? If you ordered from that company down here the dog would be a geriatric before the item arrived. I guess you could sell puppy housetraining pads and then the buyer could use them when their dog developed CCD!I think a last resort article on aggressive dogs with some really good training aids and advice offering useful products is something people would wait for. They are already emotionally invested in the dog, and have tried a variety of techniques. I worked with a dog that had issues, and we would have tried anything once to try to control him.
Amazon ships pretty quickly, usually same or next day. That gets the product to the buyer in 5 days or less. Third party sellers can be slower to move products out the door. Amazon lets buyers know if they are really out of stock. No one wants to ship outside of continental US. The shipping costs are exorbitant and customs is another problem. But you can sit in Brazil selling goods warehoused in Missouri and shipped to San Diego or Miami without a care in the world.Dr Mark:
I have to respectfully disagree with Marisa that informational hubs with Ads do not bring in revenue.
I have made hundreds of dollars from items I list on my RV hubs via Amazon, most of which are totally informational!Thanks for sharing that information, TT2. I have had a few Amazon sales through informational hubs (generic heartworm preventative, herbal medications, etc) but in general most of mine have not had many sales.
Dr. Mark:
I really think it is a matter of what you are writing about and how it encourages people to buy products.
For some types of informational hubs, there would be no relevance...but you have a very good niche that should be a font of options for selling things to dog owners.
Take a look at some of my RV articles to see how I point people towards ads and how those ads relate to what I am writing.
People want solutions to their problems, no matter what they are, and products are a way of providing them.
Actually, it wasn't me who said that. I think it was WryLilt. I have never written a sales Hub in my life, so all my Amazon sales come from informational Hubs!
Your point is absolutely correct - you can't just bung in an ad and expect it to sell, even if it's relevant. You have to (as you say) "point people towards ads and how those ads relate to what [you are] writing". You've got some great examples on your RV Hubs.
If your goal is to provide a helpful resource for your readers, then I think you should reconsider moving everything to your own blog. As TT2 and Jean Bakula found, it can be even harder making money on your own blog - but it's much, much easier to establish a relationship with your readers. You can have a Contact Form so readers can easily contact you with their questions, you can offer a monthly or quarterly newsletter, you can sell or give away ebooks, and it will be much easier for your visitors to navigate their way around all of your information, instead of getting confused and lured away by links to other people's articles which you wouldn't recommend or aren't related.
I´ve seen you recommend this several times, and am not so sure I agree. You have mentioned that the readers that visit HP do not even notice who the writer is; this is probably the case a lot of the times, but not all.
Before I even submitted an article to HP back in May of 2012, I set up a blog. HP is easier to write for, the articles look a lot better than a blog post when finished (the photos, videos, etc), and I do not mind the revenue sharing.
The one thing I do not like on here is the related hubs, which sometimes are not related and other times give poor information. As you mentioned in an earlier post, this is not something you can change, so why complain?Weirdly, I have equal readership between my personal blog and HP (150,000+ each- I started writing both 18 months ago and have approximately the same numbers of posts on each). I have earned monthly payout+ for ten months on HP, Amazon more than doubles it. My personal blog with just Adwords has earned a total of $72.00 over the same period.
I added the Amazon affiliate this month to the personal blog and one article there has earned $176.00 in the first month. That seems to be the only one earning on that site, but it has aged well and is my best for pageviews of either account by double. And summer seems to be really crummy, so I expect better numbers in 2 months.
The point being: for articles that are informative and not sales, post on HP for best revenue. If the article has a lot of readers and recommends products to people looking to buy them, go with your personal blog. And perhaps interlink between them as CHG does.
"and that's all I have to say about that." F. GumpExactly. It's logical, because HP pays per view, whereas on a blog you have to use affiliate ads, and they don't pay unless someone buys something. On the other hand, when they do buy, the commission is much higher than the few cents you get per view.
I think that's the point I missed when I was trying to help people blog - if it's not a subject that's likely to make sales, you're better off sticking with HP.
Re your other post - yes, I agree, posts do look ugly on Blogger. You can improve things with a good template - plus you also have to use labels as categories instead of tags, otherwise navigation is very difficult. To get a beautiful blog with good navigation, you really need to use Wordpress (either the paid version of Wordpress.com or a hosted blog using the Wordpress software).How easy is Wordpress to work in for a technical clubfoot like me? I have been thinking a lot about it without investigating it, for fear I would have to learn too much and then end up stymied, which is not unusual for me. lol.
People will tell you it's easy to set up a Wordpress blog somewhere like Hostgator - don't believe them! The thing is, once you've been up and running for a while, it becomes so easy you forget how bamboozling it was to begin with.
It is do-able - I set up my first site within a couple of days and I was a total technical ignoramus. Mind you, at one stage I got in such a mess I had to write to the help desk, bat my eyelashes helplessly (metaphorically of course) and ask them to delete the whole thing so I could start again! That was 6 years ago - I get paid to set up sites for other people now!
If you don't mind spending a bit of extra money, using Wordpress.com is a heck of a lot easier. The free version doesn't allow you to show any ads, but if you get the Premium version ($99 a year) you can do anything you like. It is more restrictive than a self-hosted blog because it doesn't have all the extra plugins you can use on Wordpress.org, but technically it's an awful lot easier. Plus, provided you've used a proper domain name (not just whatever.wordpress.com), it's very easy to upgrade to a hosted blog later without losing any readers.
The best thing is to sign up for a free account on Wordpress.com and have a play around. You can even import all your Blogger posts.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/import/
There's also a mechanism on Wordpress.com to block spammers from posting comments, so you can stop the spam without losing your genuine commenters.
Yes, my posts are ugly on Blogger. Everything looks much more professional here.
It is just as easy to add photos and videos to a blog as it is to a Hub, it's just a matter of learning how. If you want to blog for free then you are stuck with Blogger, and I agree it's not as good-looking as HubPages but it does have a lot of different templates and if you Google, you can find lots of tricks to make it look better.
Whether or not it looks pretty, my argument is that it enables you to connect to your readers far more than HP. Every time someone comments you get their email address or their Google profile. Readers can sign up to be notified of your posts (which you can't do on HubPages except as a Hubber). I thought that greater connection would appeal to you, but maybe I misunderstood.I was looking at my Google analytics stats and out of 15K visitors, 13K were new. At least I have a few returns lol. However, I did let that site go without any attention, (no new posts) for 7 months.
I shut down the comments last week as they were are spammy posts. I don't know if that was a bad idea or not. Something with blogger won't let me delete the commentators name, the post is deleted, but the names remains and will link to other affiliate sites. I did not like that so I turned comments off.
Any advise is appreciated!I find that when you allow comments on Wordpress, it can get out of hand. I once had 21,000 spam comments on a site with about 20 posts. Nowadays, Wordpress has a feature where you can delete the spam in bulk, but once upon a time you couldn't.
You can pay extra for spam plugins like Akismet, but I've heard that they can be a bit overprotective of comments and some valid ones can be moved to trash.Akismet is free, and there are several other spam plugins, also free. In six years I've only ever had two or three comments incorrectly sent to spam by any of them.
I should clarify that plugins are available only for a hosted Wordpress blog. On Wordpress.com, you can't add plugins and Akismet is already built-in.Good one Marisa, it has been a long time since I looked at Akismet and last time I looked, you had to pay for it, which is why I last looked a long time ago. I managed to delete all of the spam in bulk in the Wordpress site in question anyway. These days, I don't use comments, but they aren't my own sites I am working on!
I think I should set it up on Wordpress then, since the blogger platform does not look as professional/interesting to the reader.
Thanks.
Dr. Mark:
Why can't you do both?
What's wrong with helping people AND making money?
If you think Amazon only brings in a few cents, think again. Properly placed ads can bring in a great deal of money, sometimes hundreds of dollars, depending on what it is you are selling.
People with dogs need products for them, so if they are going to buy them anyhow, why not have them buy those things from you?
I used to avoid using ads until Amazon started paying more. Once I started using them, it was a whole new ballgame for me.
Of course you, like all of us, want to get as many views as possible, but selling items is not going to reduce your views. They will be what they will be!
Hi Jan: I think you are right. I will think of things that I should have put in an article or something that needs an update, and the change improves pageviews across the board.
In fact, I am getting ready to make a major revision on my How to Make Money on Bubblews hub. I think I'll start by adding "...or Not" to the title!I try to edit mine so that they have been updated in the last year. I wonder if anyone knows if it is any benefit to do it more often than that? I have read that "Google likes fresh content" but the question is: how fresh?
I have not changed my "in the spotlight" hubs since the page changed. The first one does okay, but I do not know that anyone stays around and sees everything "in the spotlight" anyway.My worst performing hubs are in the spotlight, if that is any clue!
I had to smile at that one! I have a hub on Taoism that has only had about 200 page views ever, since 2012. I think I should put it in the spotlight and see if I can get fewer than 0 views per month.
Google likes fresh content - well yes, but that's slightly misleading, because Google is looking at your account as a whole, not at each specific Hub. The average blogger does not go back and revamp old posts - they keep adding new ones. That's fresh content.
As for the spotlight - waste of time messing with it, IMO. The vast majority of your readers arrive at one of your Hubs, and will never even notice who wrote it. It's mainly other Hubbers who look at your profile.
During the last 8 months, I have come to know that it's all about keywords density in your article. Approximately, 12 to 15 number of keywords should be repeated in an article of 500 so that the google robot may find your article easily. I have tried this method and I am quite successful. Almost 99 percent of my visitors come from google search engine. Look at my hub titled as Neoclassical Poetry. Google this phrase Neoclassical Poetry and it will occupy the top position in google search engine results. So, have a look at that hub and decide how keywords density play a great role in attracting traffic to your site.
rafiq: What you say is probably true, but only if people are searching for your topic. I have articles on the first page of Google that get very few views simply because that particular topic is not one people need or want to read!
Good points you made about successful hubbers who do this for a living, TIMETRAVELER2. This is a side job for me so yes, the rules would be a little different. I wish I had more time to do more but business, family, and church obligations take precedence.
Key word density for Google should be 2.5 percent. I really don't pay as much attention to this though as I once did. Write naturally and try to check spelling and grammar. You do not want to do what was known back in the day as key word stuffing.
My traffic (though not much to boast about) has increased by 50% in the last 3-4 weeks. I am not sure whether there is any Panda update business behind it. I could guess one reason: Closure of website Helium! My theory is that searches that were getting directed to Helium earlier perhaps get diverted to HP!
CVRajan:
You are probably right about that, and don't forget that Yahoo Voices also recently shut down...so the competition is thinning a bit.
- swilliamsposted 10 years ago
0Hi DrMark! Understanding your audience. Finding content that will engage your readers. By utilizing your Google Analytics provides statics in that area. Also Utilize your share buttons, such as twitter and facebook can be helpful. However you seem to be doing very well!
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