This Has Got to be Some Sort of Joke
This has got to be some sort of joke. This site is not an easy place to make a fast buck. I knew that when I started. I then did the apprenticeship. It hasn't done me one iota of good. I have written well over 70 hubs, some of which were HOTD.
My earnings in the last week are [redacted] total. All that hard work I put into writing so many hubs and that's the result after more than three years. It's crazy. This has got to be the worst place to write if you actually want to earn anything meaningful.
Very unhappy Hubber!Meloncauli, my opinion is that your problem is the niche you have chosen, not the quality or quantity of your hubs. Not only is your niche saturated, but you are up against some large medical sites. I honestly don't think that you will ever make big money writing on those topics.
I have a similar problem because I write in the gardening niche which is also pretty saturated and has some large, well-known sites. I've been doing a couple of things to increase my earnings. I try to find topics that most gardeners look for information on. My most popular hubs have been about garden pests. I have also been upgrading the photos on my hubs to increase their popularity on Pinterest where gardening is a hot topic. Traffic from Pinterest has been steadily increasing for me. And lastly, I post links on my website/FB/Twitter to my hubs. That has given a big boost in traffic to some of them.
So what I am saying to you is that you need to find good topics/keywords in your niche and work on marketing your hubs on social media. That way you don't have to depend on Google. We've all taken a beating thanks to the Panda/Penguin updates.I think the information you have in your hubs is very useful and helpful. I share in your frustration because I learned when I tried to write about finance, that there are certain subjects for which search engines only seem to give traffic to very established, specialty sites. In my case, Vanguard, Fidelity, and even Bankrate.com are examples.
I spent a lot of time writing some finance and insurance hubs, topics I knew were highly searched for, and barely got any traffic for them. Very frustrating!I could start all over again with a different niche, but t took me years to get to this point. When I was in the apprenticeship, no one mentioned my niche being difficult to earn money from. That would have been more helpful than the apprenticeship in my opinion.
On the plus side, the training you had as an apprentice can be applied to any niche. It wasn't up to HP to tell you what to write, i.e what niche. What they were doing was teaching you how to write. It's up to you to decide what you want to write about.
Didn't you get discouraged a while back and planned to move your hubs? You are still here, and don't give up. I write on self help and medical issues, and they are oversaturated, and my income has gone down. Google has paid sites on the web which decreases the space available for the rest of us. I am about to hit 100,000 views, and many visits were before Google and its algo changes that impacted the site. You have friends here, and that is important, Good luck.
i would not say i am new here. I was here but have no time for full time writing here. I came back to brush up my two Hubs. But i have also read about many writers here that are happy making lot of money.
I was also wondering about the above quoted text. I really don't get it.If you look on a Google page, at the top, you will see several entries that say ads. Those are paid ads which come before the rest of the web page.
Thank you very much, i get it very clearly now.
Thanks. I was going to leave but got an email from a member of staff here and took some time to think it through. This time I really do think it's time to move on. I am not prepared to earn 69 cents a week - anywhere!
Probably a dumb question, but have you checked your Earnings settings? Make sure you're signed up correctly for all parts of the HubPages Earnings Program as well as Adsense. Sometimes things go wrong.
Lost images won't show up as broken links (videos and tex links do), so I'd suggest checking your images if others are reporting they're missing.
Assuming you've checked all that and it's all OK, then the only other thing I can suggest is to consider moving the lot to your own website. Google wants authority sites these days - and their robots can't read credentials, so what they really mean is a site that concentrates on one subject and provides a lot of information on it. While your sub-domain does specialise, it's not completely standalone so it's unlikely to be regarded as an authority.
Of course there are challenges to starting your own site - not least, working out how to monetize it (Adsense and affiliate ads aren't enough) - but if your earnings are so bad here, I doubt it could be worse on your own site. PM me if you need some help getting started.As many have said before, whenever this is brought up, you can't make money here if you don't write for the internet.
Your articles need to contain keywords and be written in a way that search engines can understand them. If a search engine doesn't know what your article is about, it won't be able to place it into search results. Google also prefers that content be different from everything else available in order to rank higher. If you're just saying the same thing that other people have said, they won't rank you higher than other sites because they aim to reward unique opinions and new knowledge.
You also need to be able to compete. If you were to write an article about heart attacks, for example, and your competition is Wikipedia, WedMD, and NIH.gov, there is absolutely no way you will rank above those sites. They're too large and too authoritative. If you can't beat your competition, you can't rank. If you can't rank, you won't get traffic. No traffic equals no money.
Unfortunately, you can scope out your competition and choose the best keywords ever, but it won't matter if you don't have backlinks and authority. If a competing site has 1000 quality backlinks from other related sites, that's a huge challenge to outrank using a Hubpages subdomain, or even your own website. Even if your content is better, it won't rank because Google sees this backlink profile as an indication that the competition is more trustworthy and authoritative.
This isn't meant to dissuade you or make you feel like it's your own fault. I just notice so many people who complain that they have no earnings or traffic, but then you look at their articles and they're writing about topics they could never rank for, and not even using proper SEO. Writing for the internet is vastly different to writing for other forms of media and it needs to be done properly to make money.Thank you. You made me understand better what I had been researching the past few days. I wanted to increase my traffic and I found out that the title and keywords I used were not what people were searching for. Also, my topics got very low searches. Those that are searched highly had high competition. I had to change my title and keywords and refocus my writing now. The angle you added is that of the advertiser.
Most of my articles are written from first hand experience and I was told in the apprenticeship that was fresh and new and therfore more interesting. The SEO. I followed all the guidelines given in the apprenticeship so are you saying I was given rubbish advice?
I'm not suggesting anything about the SEO advice you were given. I don't know what advice they gave you, or whether it was good or not.
What are you doing in terms of SEO when you start a new article?I don't see that you were given rubbish advice at all. Guidelines and online search trends (including human behavior and how we navigate and use the web) appear to change so often that some of the advice/keywords/titles given in the Apprentice program simply don't work as well now, especially in the medical related field. I think personal experiential writing can be relevant and helpful, but fine tuning broad titles to answer more specific search queries may prove beneficial. Your writing is very well done and I'm certain could help a targeted audience. Some readers want more than dry, informational knowledge and want to read from real people who have experienced their similar conditions. Find where those readers go in their searches.
Hi Meloncauli,
I'm not clear on whether your problem is that you get plenty of views but no earnings, or too few views.
However, looking at your hubs, I'd guess it's too few views. If I am wrong, you might care to ignore what follows...but maybe not.
My advice is along the lines others have touched on already - to narrow your niche. This applies to whether you stay on HubPages or whether you put the articles somewhere else. I don't actually think the problem is just how saturated the topic is, though of course that's important. I think the main issue is that your targeted market can't find you.
The first thing I'd figure out is: Who exactly is my market? What demographic? Right now, looking at your hubs, I have no idea. It seems to be left pretty vague. A vague market is different from a broad market. When a reader stumbles on an article written for a vague market, the reader thinks, "probably not applicable for my situation." When she stumbles on an article written for a broad market, she thinks, "Why, that's all about my issue!" Her first clue is the title.
Take: Resources for Panic Disorder Sufferers
The problem with this title is pretty clear: Someone who doesn't know they have panic disorder won't think it applies to them. And someone who already knows they suffer from panic disorder probably already has been led to specific resources by the agent who diagnosed them. If they stumble on this, they'll think, "Oh, that's too general for me." Perhaps they are unlikely to be searching for help unless a hoped-for avenue of help has let them down. In which case, the title is still too vague. It's not really designed to attract any specific demographic.
So first, you need to decide what market you want to nab. Picture the person. What gender? Age? Region? Subculture? Attitude? Is the person like you? Chances are, the person will value peer advice. (That's often true of hubs.) So make it clear from the get-go that the advice offered is from a peer, not an agency.
So for example, depending on your target market, you might try something more informal. Something jazzier, while still being keyword-friendly. Catchy without being breezy. Real without being offensive. PC without looking like it. Like, "Panic Disorder in the 21st Century: How Far We've Come" or "10 Ways to Deal With Panic That Won't Stop" "Resources for Panic Disorder: My Top Ten"
And then, once I figured out EXACTLY who I'm talking to, I'd ask a lot of questions about that market.
Why is that market on the web? Are they searching for stuff about mental health (potentially profitable) or browsing/casually interested (less likely to be profitable).
If they are searching, then are the topics they're searching for related to commerce in any way? Also are any of their thoughts likely to turn to commerce during their read-through?
For example, let's say they have a problem - you solve it - they now have guidance and hope - but they might also want to take action in the form of using various services or products. It's not what many idealistic writers like to think of, but practically speaking, this sort of searcher is where the money currently is on the web.
This is the kind of consumer advertisers are looking for when they place ads on web pages. It is not random. It is not subject-based. Advertisers for mental-health related products don't think, "Why, I'll target people who are suffering depression." They think, "I'll target the people suffering chronic depression due to loss of a job or frustration in a career who live within a 100-mile radius who would consider my services useful." It is very much product-based. They can't afford not to be.
Just to emphasize that: The current economic model of the web insofar as writers are concerned is product-based.
This doesn't mean your articles are sales pitches. They're not, any more than traditional print sports and fishing magazine articles were (or weren't) sales pitches for the sporting equipment advertisers. (That's a whole nother question for the philosopher or sociologist...)
You don't use slimy salesperson tactics. You just do what writers have always done - think of both your story and your reader when you write, and put yourself in the heads of all involved. Think like an advertiser. Then think like a consumer. Then think like a writer - a writer who makes money, not by the word now, not by making sales, but by the value of her material - to the reader, and to the advertiser!
Each of your articles that you hope to make money for you should solve a very real problem for people - in-depth, with utmost sincerity and earnest effort. Coincidentally, it should also happen to solve a problem for an advertiser - the problem of how to catch the attention of the demographic that the product was made for.Thanks for this advice, Fiction Teller. I've been having a vague sense for quite awhile that what you advise is what I need to do for mine. Like Meloncauli, I went through the apprenticeship program (same one, in fact) and learned the practical techniques of SEO, but not necessarily the strategy behind it. And like Meloncauli, I don't have many views for my 81 articles, although most of them are well written and interesting (to me, anyway). So I need to become a lot more calculated in how I choose topics in the first place, and you've laid out a good way of thinking about it.
Meloncauli, you sound like me! After about three years I have never had a payout!
i am sorry to hear that. maybe you need to buck up on the number of hubs. I wrote 122 hubs for 4 years. Now I earned 0.30 cents per day, in a week, I should earned $2.10, it takes patience to earn more, try the share medias. It had helped for me.
I'm new to Hubpages, and suprised to find out that it could take between 1-3 years to receive a decent payout.
The advice given on this topic has been very helpful, I will use it in future Hubs.I'd say 3 years is an unusual experience, but it's definitely normal to take a year to start earning a decent income here.
HubPages is a long-term investment. What you write today may not earn you money until next year - it can take time for an article to build its reputation and rank well enough in the search engines to get decent traffic. Ultimately, an article you could've sold for $30 could earn you $100 - but that may take four or five years. My best performing article has earned me over $400 but it's taken six years to do that, and in its first year it earned about $2.
Melonculi,
No one from HP has ever asked me to participate in the Apprentice Program and I have been here going on four years, so you shouldn't be so sad. I have written over 700 hubs and not all of a certain niche. Some are serious abstract/poetry while some are about people and yes, some humorss in places and this doesn't cover the older hubs that I deleted for myself NOT liking them.
I knew going in that HP was not a place for me to make a fortune unless I devoted every waking hour to this venture and I am sure that there ARE hubbers who stay up day and night to achieve more bucks. I am not phy sically-able to do this. I suffer from fibromyalgia and neurothopy, which are both painful and I require medications everyday to just move about.
So take a second look at your situation. I am sorry that you feel sad, but it can always be worse.Hi and many thanks for your response.
I have fibromyalgia too. I know how bad it can get so I sympathise. I feel okay about the decisions I am making. I will be moving some articles and leaving a few behind.
take care
I am New to this myself, but anybody trying to make money online needs to know that it takes time and energy to get the ball rolling. Doing all the proper steps is just one part of the equation. In the end it still takes time to build an empire out of any online work.
It takes a LONG time to make any money on Hubpages. I've been here 2 years and didn't make payout until I joined the apprenticeship 8 months after I joined. But now, I make payout just about every month, except when Google changes their algorithm. You have to be patient. It may take a year or more before your articles get some momentum. Pay attention to keywords. They are your best bet for traffic and don't forget to share your hubs. I use Hootsuite to schedule my hubs to be shared several times a day. That way I don't have to think about it, and I always have a steady stream of traffic from social media.
You have been here at least a year less than me and you get a payout every month? Well that justifies me being rather angry doesn't it really. I made two payouts in a year!
Don't begrudge anyone success on here but for me personally it's diabolical.Try experimenting with different subjects and find what works. Then write several articles with different angles or other areas about the subject and link them together. You've got to experiment to find out what is best to write about. Then you should be able to get payout every month.
Took a look at some of your hubs, you have broken images, but the hubs themselves look ok. Self help is a very crowded niche though, so yes it is going to take time to build an audience, and it takes effort.
I moved here from Squidoo (by force) but I find that I earn similar on here to what I earned on Squidoo, and my traffic is growing. I am still only earning about $10/month, but it ads up and should continue to grow.One broken link is showing up in my list of hubs when I go to my account! I can make 69 cents in fifteen minutes on Bubblews but the posts are easy to write and take me less than five minutes. Yes, I know it's not an article site and it's more of social place, but you do the maths.If it takes me a whole week on here to make what I can earn in fifteen minutes on Bubblews, there's something very wrong. When I write a hub it takes me the best part of five - six hours.
Images that show as broken is what I was referring to, not broken links. I don't know how Bubblews works, but articles on Hubpages continue to earn money indefinitely.... so to calculate how much you make for writing an article you have to take into account the long game not just one week. If you are not making money at it perhaps it has to do with your niche, or your writing style, that's not really Hubpages fault.
I meant the link to one of my photos is broken. Only one. That's all that's showing up in my account (the exclamation mark)
I think I will admit defeat here. I was praised a lot and had HOTD a few times. I was told I was doing well and had written some great hubs. Google doesn't like Hubpages.
Thanks for taking the time to respond but I am going to take all my hubs off HubPages and move them where they will earn money. After years of waiting for things to pick up for me here, it's time to admit defeat.
I agree with OldRoses. I was going to say the same thing earlier, but didn't think while you were angry that it was a good time. You've got to find the right niche or the right keywords for your niche. Very little of my traffic comes from Google right now, but I am still alright. Add some links on social media sites. See if there is a Yahoo groups that discusses your area of expertise also.
Thank you very much for your advice but I learned all about keywords in the apprenticeship. I know how to find good keywords. I also spent eighteen months on getting my links out there. Yahoo groups I have tried also. I haven't just written them and sat back.
Thanks again.
- calculus-geometryposted 10 years ago
0Sorry your Apprenticeship Program mentors didn't advise you that mental health was going to be a difficult subject to compete in. But maybe they thought this was so obvious and assumed you already knew it too. I doubt they were actively trying to give you false hope by neglecting to tell you that depression, anxiety, addiction, etc are all over-saturated topics. Perhaps they assumed you would use your expertise to write on less common disorders where there the competition isn't as fierce.
Well, they gave me some of the titles in the apprenticeship!
Mental Health topic is still one of the most lucrative to write about just if one knows where they are being sought.
Hi
If you know where I'd be grateful for that information. Thanks.Nobody is going to divulge that type of info because if they have it, they will want to write about it themselves!
I checked your profile and have a few suggestions:
1. Remove the sentence that states you have been a "mental health services user". That undermines your credibility in your niche area.
2. Unpublish all of your articles save for those that deal with health issue so that Google begins to view you as an authority who writes in one niche.
3. Check the competition by doing searches to see who is writing about each of your health topics. If you are up against the big boys in some of them, you might as well move them off the site.
It appears that you really know your stuff but that Google is not ranking it well enough for people to see. If what I have suggested here does not work after the next 6 months, make your articles into an E book and sell it on Amazon!
I know exactly how you feel and can tell you you are not alone. Many here are frustrated about views and money, but the internet has become quite cut throat in the past few years and competition is really stiff.
Good luck, and I hope you stick around because your work has real meaning.With respect, you're currently trying that strategy (cutting down to one niche) and you don't know if it works yet, so I'd be cautious about offering that advice to anyone else yet.
You are absolutely right, Google does prefer authority sites, but I'm becoming increasingly doubtful whether Google will regard a sub-domain as an authority even if it's specialist. I'm going to be very interested to see whether your traffic picks up as a result of your experiment, but I would be very hesitant to suggest anyone delete paying Hubs until we see the results.I know several mental health specialists write on this site. It would be interesting to get their opinions on the success of such hubs.
Marisa:
Although my income and views have not returned to their former positions, I can tell you that if I look at the views I was getting when I first got hit and compare them to the views I am getting now, I can say they have more than doubled and sometimes have tripled.
Also, my CPMs have gone through the roof...so even though I don't have as many views, I am still making payout every month so far. This tells me that what I have done has made things better.
I still have about 28 more articles to update, and I have noticed that each time I update, I do a little better.
I also think that since my articles can be viewed as being somewhat seasonal, the only way to really know will be to wait until Spring to see if views come roaring back. If they don't, then it will be time to make some major changes...an ebook or perhaps a new account here, etc.
I am giving her this advice because she is not getting many views anyhow, so she has very little to lose. She can always republish later, can't she?True, but for all you know, those non-mental health Hubs may be the only ones making money - so that's the first thing to look at.
I understand the frustration. If it makes you feel any better, I've been on this site for 4 years and not made a pay out. I even had a consistent hub score of 100 for a while, and I had a hub that was getting thousands of views a day. I do it because it's good practice and I like the community. It takes time, and I'm sure if I wrote about more current subjects I might make more, but at the moment, I do it for the sake of writing....plus some of the adsense stuff doesn't quite make sense to me.
You had a hub that was receiving thousands of views, yet still haven't reached payout? I would suggest you check your earnings settings and make sure you actually have everything set up properly. Look at the learning center, ask staff, or start your own thread if you need help setting it up.
Are you in the Hubpages Earnings program. If not, take care of it now. You should have earned payout ages ago if a hub did that well.
The issue is not whether you have a topic which gets a lot of searches or whether you are using the right titles and keywords or whether you've got all the right links
The issue is what sort of competition you are up against and whether the topic has a lot of high authority people writing about it.
IMO writing for topics which have got a lot of competition - particularly from very credible authors - is a complete waste of time (unless you happen to be one of those credible authors!)There are many thousands of writers on here and I can guarentee 90% of their articles will have been written about on the internet countless times before.
But your particular topic is even more saturated than most and to make matters worse it is usually covered by people with MDs and PhDs writing on highly respected medical sites, not content farms. People writing about arts and crafts on HP aren't in the same boat
If you think your articles on depression are better than most of what's online, then you should pitch to magazines and professionally edited health sites, not waste more time on HP.But how many of those articles are on page 1 of a Google search for a topic?
In fact how many of those articles actually generate any traffic at all?
Your first post complained about HubPages as a place to write. I provided you with one very simple explanation of why some people don't earn much from their writing. You then reject the advice - and I would venture to suggest that is why you wrote as you did in your first post.
COMPETITION is what prevents most people from making any money from writing. I cannot emphasise this too much. The fact that topics will have been written about many times before will be why many writers will be in the same position as you.
After competition comes CREDIBILITY. People choose to read articles by those they find most credible. If you don't have any authority in relation to your topic - AND you are in a competitive field (i.e. many people write about it) - then you are very probably wasting your time.
The thing is HubPages is NOT a bad site for those who want to write. Granted you might be able to make more elsewhere. However at the end of the day it's the choice of topic that really makes the difference - and the credibility of the author writing about it.
I have 28 hubs and my earnings are 69 cents so far this month. I should have enough money by the end of the month to buy a ?? - what can I buy for a couple of bucks?
I've been here three and a half years and in that time I've made exactly two payouts. I learned pretty early on that I was never gonna become a high roller here. The stuff I write about doesn't tend to draw a lot of traffic and to be honest I could give a f*** about niches, SEO, keywords, rankings, etc. etc. - I don't have the time or the patience for it.
Therefore I treat my writings here as a hobby, when I do get an occasional payment I go "Cool, beer money." If I worried about my CPMs and traffic fluctuations and all the other crap it would just make me nuts.This thread has lots of practical advise and honesty that can help hubbers on the site write good content, use good titles, and find their audience. Thanks for helping fellow hubbers. I certainly learned to not give up but to work smarter.
I think your titles need improving. "Tips For Travel Anxiety" sounds like it's for people who want to get more anxiety. Try changing it to: 5 Effective Ways to Get Over Travel Anxiety"
By the way, not many people search for "Travel Anxiety." (540 searches per month) "How to get over fear of flying" gets more searches, you might want to rework it from that angle. (880 searches per month).I don't agree and, to be honest, the above statement is rather discouraging for new hubbers. As people have said, your niche is not an easy one.
One thing you could do in addition to what others have already suggested is to check your titles. Titles should reflect what people might be looking for, what they might be "Googling".
For example, I don't believe that many people would type in the words "Depersonalization and Derealization - Symptoms of Severe Anxiety" into the search bar. A more effective title for this hub might be something like: "What are the symptoms of Severe Anxiety?" Then explain the terms "Depersonalization and Derealization" further down in the article.
Also, what does this title mean? "Affects of Mental Health Diagnosis & Care in Teenage Years"- Do you mean "What Are the Effects of Mental Health Diagnosis & Care in Teenage Years"? Or do you mean "How to Diagnose and Care for Teenagers with Mental Health Problems?" Try to imagine what a mother of a teenager with mental health problems would type into the search bar to get the information she is looking for to help her child.
And lastly, it can take years for hubs to take off. So tweak, be patient, and don't give up. If your articles are useful they will, in the long run, give you a passive income.You can't change "Depersonalization and Derealization into "What are the Symptoms of Severe Anxiety" because if you look at my other hubs you will see I have covered many aspects of severe anxiety - I would be repeating myself. Believe me, if you suffer from severe anxiety, you would know those terms - a psychiatrist or a GP might have to use them to describe what is happening to you.
I do know my subject inside out and back to front.
As for the other title, no I don't mean your alternative version, I mean what I put.
ThanksYou mixed up 'affect' and 'effect' in your title is what Sue is pointing out. Did you your Apprenticeship mentors not proofread your titles? Jeez. It sounds like you're getting better advice and feedback in this thread than what your mentors gave you, lol.
Sue, I have to say that just the other day I typed depersonalization into Google! If you have anxiety problems you might be looking for info on this. I get what you're saying, but you'd be surprised!
Meloncauli, I have read many of your hubs because I suffer terribly from an anxiety disorder. I also read many blogs about anxiety (something you might consider starting for yourself) and they are by people who have had anxiety problems, not Doctors. They are more helpful because you know the person writing it truly understands what it's like. Many doctors and shrinks don't...they've never had it! So, don't let that put you off, just emphasize that you are writing from personal experience.
I know exactly how you feel. As I said in another reply, I've been with HP at least three years and have NEVER had a payout. I haven't written hundreds of hubs and so I figure that plays into it, but it's very frustrating.
Anyway, all of this advice is nice, but to be honest things have changed so much that it is very confusing to know how much of the old rules still apply. A lot of the SEO tricks don't count anymore. And to be honest, I don't think HP is as successful as it used to be.
I you do move to another site, please let me know where, because I would still love to read your advice. Good luck!Thank you my friend. I will let you know. I am going to try and make these articles available somewhere else. I would like to know how you go about actually removing the hubs. I have seen how to delete the account, but I have to take these hubs out first. Just delete them? Not remove them from Adsense? Is there a writing time before they can be placed elsewhere and what about the ones that the Apprenticeship gave me the titles for? I can't even remember which they were! Doh!
If you delete your account, I'm assuming your Hubs would disappear automatically - but it is worth checking.
It's easy to delete individual Hubs though a bit tedious. Just open the Hub (not in edit mode), click the 'delete' button then 'done editing'.
If you're going to put the Hubs on your own blog then you don't have to worry about waiting, you can just post them directly on your blog.
If you want to put them on other writing sites then you'll have to wait a couple of weeks for them to clear Google's cache, or go through the process of asking Google to de-index them. Personally I don't bother with that - I mean, what's a couple of weeks? Most writing sites will let you create the articles then save them unpublished so you can spend the time doing that, then hit the "publish' button when it's time.
You have great hubs but like others are saying, the topics you explore are already over-saturated in the search engines. That's not really the fault of HP at all, but an issue of how things come up in the search engines. You might try using images or topics that people are likely to share on social networks.
Your writing ability is so good. I wish you would try the title advice for at least a few before you leave. I know one mental health writer who uses compelling photos which are a hit on Pinterest. Some hubs are on my board and always get repinned.
I would like to thank you all for your input. I can understand and agree with some of it, others simply don't wash for me.
This is how it is:
I was perhaps given bad advice. I was told on HP and I have forgotten who by because it wasn't long after I joined, that my personal and expert posts (because I am a trained anxiety management therapist also, just not practising any more) were an excellent choice for being 'useful'.
To whoever said I should get rid of the fact that I was a mental health service user I say this:
That is a very discriminatory suggestion in the first place. I think like a person who has mental health problems because I used to have them. Service users WANT to hear what works from someone who has had first hand dealings with such conditions. That is what HP told me made it more real and useful and I agree with them. If Google wants me to pretend something else then it's not happening - or are you saying some people will simply think I am crazy and not take me seriously?
I have done voluntary work for a borderline personality disorder site online. I have been helping people on an anxiety forum for years up until a couple of years ago. You write best about what you know.
I am just as confused as I was before. There seems to be some differences of opinion here so that has thrown me. Change my titles? What if I was to tell you I already tried that on at least six of them and it didn't make a scrap of difference. I just feel like I am flogging a dead horse.
It's nine days into the month and I have made $1.03. My all time Adsense account is shy of £3 - that's about three years or more. I know when I am beat. I need to change what I am doing because I honestly think it's pretty much been a waste of my good time.
Many thanks to you all again.Melocauli, I would suggest InfoBarrel. I wrote a piece on anxiety there and it was a featured article right off the bat. They are also easy to work with. Or start your own blog on the topic. Good luck and let me know where you go. I would certainly be happy to help "promote" your articles by liking them on FB and tweeting them, etc.
The ground reality is that perhaps only some 5 to 10% of all people who write seriously in web-content sites like HP make any decent money. All the rest are doing writing just as a hobby -- some with a hope that they too will make some reasonable money some day; for the rest, any money accumulating, however little it may be, is just welcome and accepted as it is. That's all.
There have been many sites (like Helium, Suite101 etc) that have been promoting and encouraging writers with a pep talk about making lot of money through web content writing have been closing one after the other. I have seen several of them. There are people who put their heart and soul into such sites and as I said, some (very few) people made money.
I can assure that whatever best you do, however much you dedicate yourself, however much you update yourself with changing trends etc, the income you get from such site WILL NEVER BE REMOTELY PROPORTIONAL TO YOUR EFFORTS AND TIME.
Accept this as the ground reality and then start enjoying writing as a hobby, with no expectations.
If you need money for survival, run away from these sites and do something worthy in full time day job!Hi and thanks.
As I said in my original post, I never expected to make much money. It's down to a personal level of what a person is willing to accept vs effort. We are all different that way.
To make a payout 4 times a year would have been acceptable to me. This isn't happening by a mile. I think what some of you don't realise also, is that during the apprenticeship you get much more money. I think it was an instant $8 per hub and I think it was a minimum of 6 per month, (lousy memory,) which gives you a false sense of what your hubs are worth. I was weaned on that as I had only been here a couple of months.
My hubs aren't perfect. I have seen much better ones, and credit where credit is due. I don't even have a lot of confidence as a writer.Meloncauli - Didn't you once say you sold a hub you wrote to a magazine? Or was that someone else in our group? I've been seriously considering writing hubs to magazine quality and using HP as a repository while I market them. What do you think of that idea?
Some magazines won't want articles which have been published elsewhere (though it's true, most of them will be happy provided you delete them from HP).
Also, if they're published on HubPages, they're at high risk of being stolen - and if they are, you won't be able to sell them unless and until you get all the copies taken down.
If you are serious about marketing yourself to magazines, then I'd suggest creating a blog as a portfolio would look more professional, especially if you attach a proper domain name - and it wouldn't be such a target for plagiarism.Or using your own web page, assuming you have one other than HP?
Hi. No, I never sold a hub to a magazine. I remember someone did in our group but it wasn't me.
I assume you mean webSITE? A one-page website is never going to get any attention from Google.
I looked up depersonalizations on the web and the first five pages brought up reputable medical sites. This happened to me recently when I used the technical name for the disease of my interview subject. I realized that I would need to put words that a layman would type into Google and that might not even work. I plan to change the title and hope for some traffic that I may never get. I enjoyed writing the article anyway. Good luck in your endeavors and good luck with your blog.
There is a lot of good advice here and I just want to echo the most relevant piece that is the cause of all of your problems..
Competition!
You are going head to head with some really big players that are highly reputable and well established. Even if you had your own site you would be lucky to get any traffic.
This is not the fault of Hubpages.....
Whatever keywords you target do the search in Google and see what is already there - because if the SERPS are full of the big well established authority sites you will not be knocking them off that page.......
If you want to give advice from the perspective of a user then title your pages accordingly rather than as general "top level" search. For instance "Tips for travel anxiety" - how about "What worked best for me to overcome travel anxiety"..
The problem here will of course be that the search volume for your keywords will be less but then so will your competition. The art of getting traffic is all about finding the angle that the big players have missed that still gets searches....... good luck........or "How to overcome travel anxiety" or "How to stop panic when you travel" That's because "How to" titles get a lot of traffic!
I had a look at one or two of your hubs.
I think you could improve their traffic if you:
* changed titles - a number do not express their content in terms of the problem you are addressing.
* summarised at the beginning what the hub is about and who it is for
So for example
What do "depersonalisation" and "derealisation" mean for anxiety sufferers?
ie keep the important words in the title but verbalise the key reason why people might be searching
Then state clearly:
* What this hub is about - in no more than a couple of sentences. You can also use bullet points eg
summarise the condition
summarise what the hub is about
* who the hub is for ie you are writing for those newly diagnosed with anxiety who din't know what the words mean
In other words - just as the doctors do - provide an abstract and summary up front so people can see what the hub is about.
Then you can launch into your personal experience and why you wrote the hub.
Another way to improve your traffic is to READ THE TOP ARTICLES online in relation to format and presentation of information. That way you get feedback about what people want to see and what they respond to.
What I read when I looked were lots of brief FACTS up front.
You also tend to write long paragraphs - which is fine if you writing a medical article - but NOT if you are writing online. Present people with huge chunks of text and they stop scan reading and start moving to another site
Again compare your hubs to the top articles online and note how much shorter their paragraphs often are
Lots of people who make money while writing online use Amazon. Try recommending a particularly useful book for the people who are suffering from a particular disorder.Well! I asked for advice and I got it. Or was it criticism? I think a bit of both.
I don't think some of you are reading what I am writing. I did the apprenticeship. Sorry to keep bringing it up but I did. I was a complete and utter novice to online writing before that. In the apprenticeship I was taught about keywords. I was given precise figures for search etc. I followed all this to a T. Now half of you are saying my keywords are not up to scratch (how do you know?). You are saying my titles aren't good. You're saying my paragraphs are too long. Whilst I understand what you are talking about, I was guided to do it the way I have done it by the HP apprenticeship.
You have no idea now how much worse I actually feel instead of better (not all your replies, some have given me great encouragement).
My subject may be saturated and I agree I may be up against some medical sites. I chose the wrong subject? Well, that's debatable, because I thought I pretty much made those hubs my own. Unique is the word you are all looking for. That's what I thought made my hubs on subjects that the medical field may have written about, different - aka unique. I wrote them from either a personal perspective or in some of them I gave examples through experience with mental health generally. You don't read those every day! The apprenticeship taught us to find alternative words, words that were not the most obvious and therefore did not get heavy amounts of searches.
I am completely and utterly confused. I wish I'd never gone through the blood. sweat and tears that I did.
I am even thinking I may as well leave them on here because they are obviously not as good as HP staff said - forget HOTD at least three times if my memory serves me right.
I am not an SEO expert but I did learn stuff in that apprenticeship. Now I am getting confused because you are giving me different advice. Apparently I don't even know the difference between affect and effect now either. Some of you are very far full of self-importance. Maybe it's the way you have written your replies.
Don't want to make enemies on here. Neither do I want people to make me feel like a writing failure. I am good at taking advice and will take what you have all said on board.
I edited a lot of my hubs after an email with advice about a year ago from a member of staff. Nothing changed after that advice. Bad advice? Probably not. I don't know now. I do know, it it's this hard work to earn a dollar every ten days, I am in the wrong business.
For those of you who have been here years (2 years plus), if you are not getting a payout every 3 months or so minimum I'd want to know why. I got two in the last 9 or 10 months but I consider that a fail.
Hubpages has got a reputation for being much harder work than some other writing sites. Have you seen how many people are complaining of next to no earnings? I am not special or unique in that regard. I am not however willing to carry on knowing full well this is not going to suddenly earn me more money. I never expected to get rich but I think I have stuck around long enough to know it's not worth my while writing any more hubs.
Thank you all for your input.
Ps. My average daily visits are 50-60. I have had very short spells where they have been 80-100 but those are far and few between. I made under £3 in Adsense in all the time I been here. I sell on Amazon rarely. I have accumulated about $25- $28 from there in all the time I have been here.I think you are missing the point some ppl are trying to get across. You are focused on the Apprenticeship program, consider the apprenticeship program a stepping stone that gives you the basics, it doesn't make you a master, and doesn't mean you can apply a formula they gave you to get 100% success, each niche has different demands on what is a success. It takes time to learn what works in your niche. Your niche is saturated, its hard to get success, but it can be done. The tips people are giving are meant to help you succeed in the same way the apprenticeship program was meant to help you succeed, following the tips and/or following the lessons taught to you in the apprenticeship program don't guarantee success in online writing, nothing does. Your articles are pretty good, there is some areas they could improve (as people pointed out), moving to another site isn't going to change that.
I am not trying to be harsh at all, but I kind of get the feeling you were expecting quick buck, you'd use the magic formula that the apprenticeship program taught you and voila instant income, unfortunately Google is constantly changing and online writers have to constantly be aware of those changes and constantly change their tactics for getting listed. In the end it comes down to a really good title, writing unique and interesting content (that part you have down pretty well), constantly making sure your data is up to date, continually error checking (missing images etc), and luck.It does get discouraging at times. I don't write much here anymore. It took me about a year to start making the monthly payout, and that continued for about a year and a half. Now it takes me two months to make the minimum payout. But it's all on hubs I wrote in 2010 and 2011. So if you consider that I still make money on articles I wrote that long ago, that's pretty good, like found money.
I tried having my own blog, and still write on it, but it's just a hobby now, I never made a cent on it, except for when a few people bought Amazon things. You have much less chance of getting views if it's just you writing, unless you have a really good hook to get readers.
I have tried changing titles, and sometimes that helps. My niche is also very oversaturated, but I still get new readers. Hang in there. And sometimes people get snarky when they are giving advice. If you took the apprenticeship course it seems they didn't advise you very well. I hope you stay. All the changes of algorithms don't help, HP has been in a down slump ever since the first change, picks up a little, and then goes back down. I think the days of making any real money on online writing are over. It's only for improving writing skills and a little extra cash if you are lucky.
Hello. Well, it took me a few years before I got my first payment of around $50. Things then picked up and I got like $50 every two months. But now I get one of those payments every 6 mo because of something called Panda that interfered with most people's earnings on here and many have given up and moved on.
I"m not saying you should move on. Just telling you the truth about my experience and some others
I think it's worth making a little money than none.Thank you. Now I call that a realistic answer and hardly anyone has mentioned this. This site suffers terribly. I have seen many people complaining about only getting a quarter of their usual views - but this happens on here regularly. I know this is a drawback to any site such as this but HubPages seems to suffer more than others at times.
Thanks for reminding people on the thread about this.
The HP apprenticeship is not the ultimate authority on what works for SEO, if it was--well--what you did would have worked.
Absolutely! The apprenticeship was quite hard going actually because a lot of hubs were demanded of you and they had to fit the criteria laid down for stellar hubs. It was the only time on HP that I got a regular payment.
I take any and all advice from HP about 'stellar' hubs with a grain of salt. I go for very long tail keywords that I find fun to write and it works out okay for me despite breaking most of those guidelines. There are dwindling returns for any content site. The days where I made $5 a day are long gone and not coming back. So these days it pays to be smart with SEO but also diversify as content earnings are inherently unstable and tend to be declining with every Google algorithm change.
Thanks. Maybe I am stuck in that apprenticeship frame of mind. It's all sounding a bit dismal but the truth often hurts!
I don't know when you did the apprenticeship but you did say you have been here more than three years
All I know there have been HUGE and significant changes in how SEO works in the last three years. I'd even go so far as to say whatever you learned three years ago, the chances are that at least half of it may no longer be relevant
The other thing to bear in mind is that HubPages has never had - so far as I am aware - a great reputation around generating income. Maybe that's partly because of what people have been taught as to how to write. I don't know - and I'm not criticising anybody who taught on the apprentice scheme in the past. However it does strike me that income generation is NOT a major motivating force on this site - and maybe what is taught reflects that?
I've always made a point of reviewing the sites of people who provide good information and the sites of people who do earn income from their websites and blogs - and looked at what worked for them.
OK - so then you maybe you then need to tweak it for for Hubpages or whichever host you write articles for. But that's OK if you analyse and understand what appeals to people.
My main point is READ AND ANALYSE WHAT WORKS. Look at what gets on to page 1 of Google - that's what gets the traffic. Look at people who are obviously earning income from their content and work out how that works.
Bottom line:
1) Don't complain because something from 3 years ago no longer works. You MUST keep putting in effort to keep up with an ever-changing content. If you're not prepared to do that then writing online is not for you.
2) Don't expect people to spoonfeed you. The people who are successful are very often inquisitive and work it out for themselves. Maybe try learning new habits rather than harking back to an out of date apprentice scheme?I got it loud and clear. I don't think I am looking to be 'spoonfed'. Tact and politeness go a long way with me. How was I to know what I learned 2-3 years ago was useless now. Where did it say that on Hubpages?
It doesn't say that on hubpages... why would it. Hubpages gives you the tools, you are responsible for using those tools to succeed. It's not that what you learned back then is useless it's that the digital world moves fast, you either move with it or get left behind.
I don't think there's any point in me arguing the issue. You all obviously know a lot more than me. I wasn't born knowing all this and haven't taken courses or anything outside of doing HP apprenticeship. I think perhaps some of you are rather assuming of how much your average hubber actually does know. I just wanted to write a few articles and earn a few pence. At least that happened and the accent is on few.
I can well understand that it's very disappointing. There again life tends to be full of disappointments as well as joys!
I think the main problem with some of these "get you started" courses is they really don't emphasise enough that you need to keep up to date with how your context is changing if your practice is to stay relevant to a changing environment.
You write well - and you could improve what you have to offer. It's up to you.Nobody here was born knowing anything or took any courses. Most people figure it out through trial and error, independent research, and asking for help from people with proven track records. The Apprenticeship program was cancelled for a reason -- because it didn't work and the people running it obviously didn't know what works.
In your posts you come across as being resentful that other people are making money without having had the benefit of all the spoonfeeding and guidance you received for free, which has made some people respond to you rather bluntly in return. Try to ignore the grandstanding and just think about the advice on its own merit.
You might be interested in this post http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/126581#post2671434 by a hubber who has found success writing about mental health on HP.
That's just a fact of life. In our digital age things change fast.
Ten or so years ago, I had two of the highest ranking sites for my keywords. I had SEO down--so I thought. Coming back to the web now, I'm having to learn SEO all over again.
Google changes their algorithms and we have to learn to change with them. What worked last year or even last month doesn't necessarily work today.
I checked out a couple of your hubs and you have some good info there, but I'd probably never find them in a search. I agree that you need to make your titles more user-friendly. I would personally not be searching for clinical terms. In fact clinical terms turn me off, because I want to know what's going on for other real people, rather than hearing more "doctorese."
As far as you being a mental health "user" (lol a bit of an odd term) I think that's a plus, as long as you can write your articles in a way that brings things down to earth.
If you want to know about pretty much anything, checking more than one reputable source is always a good idea. I tend to look at places like Wizard Forums.
Hi and thanks. I am not going to contribute any more to the thread. I wished I had never even made the post here in the first place. I don't need to be 'got at' and belittled by some of the people who have replied.
Many thanks to everyone and good luck.I think you missed the point if you are feeling so hard done by. People are trying to help, but you keep bemoaning the fact that the program you took 2 years ago, that was discontinued because it wasn't as effective as HP hoped, isn't still relevant. People are legitimately trying to help you out here, but the only thing you can do is complain that you are being picked on. There is lots of very useful and very relevant advice in this thread, most of it specifically aimed at helping you with YOUR specific hubs.... Stop assuming people are attacking you and take the advice for what it is.
I have thanked everyone for their help. I have also said I have taken everything on board.
Thank you everyone.
Can you give a link for that? All I found when I looked for Wizard Forums was info on Diablo, Magic the Gathering, etc.
I understand that you don't want to contribute any further to this Forum, however some of us will continue on it, since you sparked our interest in your plight.
I think before moving hubs, I would experiment with some of the tweaks suggested here. You have a large body of work in a niche area, albeit a competitive one. You may want to see what you can do to leverage that asset before dismantling it.
Regarding titles: MaM makes a good suggestion, "How to" is frequently searched for. I personally like numbers or lists, so I know what I might be getting into before I click. If I want a quick rundown, then 10 or fewer tips is good for me.
You have the attention of some very successful and talented internet writer; you may want to ask for some suggestions here for your best hubs for title and summary to see if you can quickly jump start your best hubs for 2015. You can even private message people you felt were helpful and offered good suggestions.
We don't want you to go or feel put upon; the nature of online writing means some can come across as harsh, when they don't mean it. Others are harsh, and that is the risk in being open.Thank you for your kind response. I am going to move some hubs but I will be leaving a few. There's more that I can do in this specialized area so I am going to take the plunge when I am set up and ready.
I do appreciate your thoughts and yes, sometimes it's not what is said but the way it is said. The written word is open to interpretation and I try to take that into account.Best of Luck - Let us know how we can help you!
It's worth bearing in mind that a lot of people when giving advice in a forum are also intending it to be very plain and relevant to a wider audience who are reading along but not contributing. I know I try to write with this in mind as I know full well how many people read even if they never say anything.
On the other hand I also know that sometimes if I get a lot of advice all in one go it feels rather as if I've been bombarded and it can be difficult to take it all in!
Looking at the advice after an interval often means it reads differently.
I'd counsel leaving off making decisions right now and leave it for a week or 10 days - and then come back and reread this thread again and decide which bits of advice you'd like to explore and which you can leave 'on the paper'.
After all if there's no rush to make a decision, you might find that you make a better one if you allow time for the various messages to 'percolate'.This is excellent advice. I know when I am frustrated by something, getting away for a while - taking a walk, getting some sleep - helps me see things in a new perspective.
I was in the apprenticeship program, and I learned a great deal of valuable information. And while I understood what was said, I had trouble applying what I had learned and actually incorporating it into my writing. Writing so many hubs was crazy, and sometimes you just had to write just to get it done. I do know that the other people in the program picked up different things than I did. They came at it from a different background, different angles, different schedules, different priorities, etc. They caught on quickly to things I missed, and they missed advice that I tried to incorporate.
I can't think of anything that has drastically changed, since they tried to keep the advice general and long-term, but then again, I regularly read the forums and keep changing what I do based on the advice given, if it sounds right to me. There has been a tremendous amount of valuable information in this forum, and I am going to have to re-read the advice several times to see if I can properly digest it and apply it to my writing. Thank you all for this.Understand what you are saying -thanks. I did start to feel criticized in the wrong way a couple of times. Deleting the fact I had been a service user was unnecessary in my opinion. I even wrote a hub about discrimination with mental health issues. I am passionate about the subject. When I had panic disorder for years, I intentionally looked for those books written by people who had suffered, not books by a doctor.
Then someone intimated I wrote too long paragraphs and that I didn't know the difference between effect and affect. It all started to take on less by way of advice and more of nit picking.
Thanks again.I can entirely understand why you would get annoyed about the service user point and the affect/effect issue.
However the issue re. the length of paragraph when writing online is purely a technical one.
It's also one that not everybody comes across when being taught about writing online because not everybody who teaches actually knows about the studies that have been done re. what length of paragraph is EFFECTIVE when read online.
Here's a blog post which summarises writing online http://www.mulinblog.com/5-tips-for-eff … b-writing/
Without having read it,this is the type of model model I've been using for years with my blog - and my blog gets in excess of 5,000 pageviews a day. I write very long posts - but I always make sure they are very accessible. All I can say is it seems to work!
The same applies to writing anywhere else online - the paragraph length has to be accessible.Hi and thanks for that advice. I shall take that on board in future and edit some of my work anon.
Take care
Being an apprentice was only meant for you to learn how to use the capsules effectively. At least that is what I got out of it. It improved how I wrote and how I organized my hubs.
I have received HOTD multiple times, but to me that doesn't mean a whole lot. I love it when I get it, but it doesn't provide the boost I want except from inside of HP. It won't generate money like it would from outside users coming in to read my stuff.
I don't see a lot of earnings either, despite having a lot more hits than I used to. We are all taking a hit because of the mobile market among other factors.
My recommendation is to write because it's fun and the small amount of pay you get. But you are right, there are other places you could write and earn more money. But in the end this is passive income.Thanks. We did learn some SEO stuff, working with keywords etc. It wasn't all about just using the capsules when I did it.
Good advice though - thanks again.
I'm new to HP and haven't posted any Hubs yet. I will be writing in a hugely saturated category, "Food and Cooking". I am reading as many Hubs as I can in order to understand the culture on this site. Since I haven't any success or failure yet in this writing arena, I will give some advice based on past successes in my life.
I was a professional chef at one time, like you were a professional at mental health. I then moved into sales. I made six figures annually selling into a very saturated market. You are writing to make an income, that makes you a salesperson. You are trying to sell your ideas. Success in sales doesn't come from having something no one else has; it comes from understanding your target market better than anyone else does.
In Olympic sports, the difference between a Gold Medal and no medal is often small fractions of a point.
In selling, the difference is in small fractions of understanding customers and relating to THEIR needs in the way they best understand. For a writer it's not about quantity of articles, or quantity of competitors. It's about relatability of content.
You have had many responses to your complaint about income. I would follow closely the ones who talk about clearly targeting your audience.I recommend a book to you that may sound off subject, but trust me it is just what you need. Please read it looking for the hidden meaning and it will reveal to you success anywhere. "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. It should be called "Think and Grow Successful".
Best Regards
Chef Charle Alfred
As I already outlined if you think you will make money here and not the 10 cents a day most make it will take years and you will have to retrain yourself spending many hours how to learn about keywords, marketing , SEO etc
I read an article by a successful writer how he wrote 29 hubs and using every tool and tactic he generated 100,000 views in 17 months. In total he had made $1500, he has a unique niche gets some income from Amazon etc. but he spent perhaps 180 hours writing and posting plus the need to update ,do the math he is making below minimum wage.
There is not a quick buck to be made here perhaps years ago some money was made but not with the changes by Google. you need millions of views and notice how many people write here with similiar topics.
My advice you built a portfolio of work try building your own website, establish your expertise, market yourself through facebook , Twitter etc and when after a year or more you are a recognized as an expert you might make money sending articles to magazines etc.
Everyone believes they are a writer and will be famous, I went to a small seminar at a local library about how to publish a book and I thought naively I would be the only one of a handful of people there but in fact over 100 people showed, all thinking they are great writers.
LinkedIn began a feature to post articles etc. as a professional I was invited to write only to see hundreds of people had already written articles and these are people who do not consider themselves writers by profession.
I have been on hubpages 3 months the skill here is not writing but research and Internet acumen. Writing is doing what you love not writing to please the latest trend. Think, the great writers of our time would not have prospered here for they did not have pictures , or videos , or how to's .
The advice you received above is only half correct not only is your niche saturated but the world of writers as well. Try sites like eLance where you will be paid per article and you can use your portfolio as a resume. Do not expect to be making thousands each month here as you have seen it does not happen but use your work as leverage to get real paid work.
Good LuckYou can earn money here. If you count the residual income over the years, it adds up to more money than you would earn from any magazine article. If you aren't earning payout, you need to find out why. You are writing about the wrong subjects with the wrong keywords or something. Experiment until you find the right niche.
28 articles isn't going do it in most cases. I didn't start doing well until I had about 70. Then the income started growing as I added more.
No, the money doesn't come quickly and no you won't earn thousands a month. You can earn if you learn SEO and experiment until you find the right niche. Best of luck.I personally couldn't spend my days writing about something I am not passionate about. That would be very dull for me. I suppose the passion for the subject is a lot more important to me than money.
That has certainly been true for me, Barbara, but as time goes by the "residual income" is becoming less and less residual, don't you think?
When I joined HubPages you could write a Hub, and never need to look at it again (apart from approving comments). They didn't even need promoting. Nowadays, Hubbing is a lot more work, with the need to monitor Hubs to ensure they don't go unFeatured, constant vigilance to catch thieves, revising when rules change, etc - and before you know it, it's closer to being active income than passive income.
So, while an article here will ultimately earn more than if I sold it, I am constantly spending extra time on it - so it needs to earn more, to make it worth the effort. That's why I spend a lot more time on my blog these days than here, because posts there can't go unFeatured, the article spammers don't target blogs, and I don't change the rules!With Panda and Penguins, no you can't earn the money you could in the beginning without working really hard for it. Then sometimes you just don't know what to do.
I agree with everything you say here.
Hi Barbara
Thanks for reinforcing my point. You suggested to us we need to find the right niche. This implies changing subject matter away from what we want to write about not what I intend to do ,
Yours and others wrote this is "passive income" or "residual" income there is nothing farther from the truth these articles need to be constantly refreshed and updated to draw attention and the more you have the more time consuming it is .
You suggested we needed 70 minimum so I should write fifty more articles at about 300 plus hours of work for I can write for others at $20 an hour or more, are you suggesting I will make the $6,000 in earning back on hubpages ? How many years will that take !
Additionally being published in a major periodical is much better for a resume and career than having an article farm on hubpages the only one making real money here is hubpages.
I suppose as a hobby this passes the time and pays rather than doing something non creative but it is not a career and it does not even pay minimum wage'You don't have to change subject, but you do have the find the right "angle". For instance I love writing about dance, and it was a case of working out which articles on dance did best, and focussing on that aspect of my subject.
However, I agree with your main point. Anyone who is able to freelance would be crazy to join HubPages as a serious income source. As you say, the difference in hourly rate is staggering.
A few years ago, there were many freelance writers here, because it was a great adjunct to their freelance work. They could write whatever they wanted (instead of what the client wanted), it gave them a place to post rejected articles, and it gave them a writers' community. Little or no tweaking or refreshing was needed so income was genuinely passive. My best performing article has earned around $400 in six years, and for the first three years of its life, I didn't even have to look at it (apart from approving the occasional comment).
HubPages is a very different place now, and you'll see very few freelancers actually writing here - though some still take part in the community.Nick, If you can earn $20 an article writing for periodicals and get as much work as you want, go for it. I doubt I would have that opportunity. I've written craft articles for magazines and earned just above minimum wage. I wish I had the opportunity to earn $20 an hour.
$20 an hour is very low for good freelance writers. I've gotten a lot of my freelance work, including ongoing clients, through Elance.com, where it's not unusual to get paid several times more than that for an article or other types of content. If you're really good at copywriting, for example, you can earn even more. Generally, freelance writers don't charge by the hour but, rather, they charge a fixed rate or by the word. Yes, it's competitive out there, but if you're good and you stand by your rates, there are plenty of clients/buyers who are willing to pay for quality work and will keep coming back time and again.
I credit Squidoo (because that's where I started with all this) for a great learning experience -- and years of a nice income from my articles -- and I am thankful that our lenses weren't just deleted with the end of that site and were instead transferred here, but I stopped writing new content for sites like this awhile back (these days I just do maintenance on my lenses-turned-hubs) and focused instead on freelance work for clients as well as on my own projects. It took a couple of years to build that into a consistent, full-time busines, but it was worth the effort. And I encourage others who really want to earn an income from writing and content marketing to consider freelancing. I suppose creating content on HubPages would be considered freelancing, but of course I'm talking about the "other" kind.Can we just be clear that $20 an article is not the same as $20 per hour!
Absolutely. That was my mistake. I meant to say "per article." But per hour applies also. $20 per hour (though most writers don't charge by the hour) would be on the low end also ... though not unreasonably low for a beginner without much of a work history/portfolio.
Hi Marissa
Thanks for your feedback and I don't want to give anyone the impression I am not satisfied with what hubpages is. I write fiction and personal experience and the subject matter will not change or can be reformatted. What I will need to do is find a forum for readers looking for new fiction or creative stories unrelated to products etc.
That all being said Hubpages does give a very professional look and feel better than any other place I have seen. I have been able to place my work in a public forum where I can direct my friends from Facebook, Twitter etc to come and view my writing. Further its an excellent online resume for being hired, all I need to do is direct potential employers to my portfolio so they can see the samples of what I have produced. It is a powerful presentation and does not require the investment in expensive websites etc.
I am experimenting with SEO etc it would just be nice if Hubpages had their stats working so I can measure the impact of changes I make. I am not sure why the issues occur but it must be related to their new hosting vendor and acquisition of Squidoo. I understand these breakdowns happen it would be appreciated if they clarified the whys and how's of what the issues are.A website is not expensive. If all you're seeking is a showcase for your work, and you're not interested in earning advertising dollars, then Wordpress.com is the perfect solution. It gives you a very professional website FREE, and it also has a community so you can make some useful connections.
I would suggest your own website with your own name would be a better portfolio platform than a shared site, where you can't control what "related Hubs" appear at the bottom of your Hubs. It would look even better if you attach a proper domain name to it, which on Wordpress.com costs only $13.
As I said, its limitation is that you can't put third party advertising on it, although you can promote your own work.Whereas if you use Blogger then you can not only introduce third party advertising they have a module which makes it very easy for you to add Google Adsense
True, but the OP was talking about creating a professional-looking portfolio website, to showcase his work and attract freelance work - not to earn income directly.
For that kind of purpose I'd go with Wordpress.com simply because the navigation is superior and the templates are slicker.
Yes I agree I have four domain names purchased and already created Facebook pages its just a matter of finding the time to create the sites and posting the material. I still have to work to pay the bills and handle the family but eventually it will get posted. What hubpages helped with is my characters, the books etc are on the first pages of search engines so when I move to deploy the sites and books it will already be there.
Being a writer is all a time balancing act, because becoming a writer meant I became a web designer, graphic designer, editor, and had to learn epub, seo and processes I never imagined existed. I have thousands of pages of content and ideas for a thousand more and I am glad I stayed awake in marketing class because its such a key element.
I admit seeing your stories in print is quite a rush.
Thanks!!!- OrhanGokkayaTRposted 9 years ago0
In the long run (earnings) would it be better to own your own website?
I earn much more from my website at this point. It just depends on how much traffic you can get and that takes time.
OrhamGokkayaTR, Something you need to keep in mind is that I started my website in 2001 and it has a couple of hundred pages. After all this time, I have a lot of other websites linking to it. Online writing takes lots of patience either gathering followers or rising in the search engines or both.
No, you will not get rich here, that's for certain.
This may not apply to you, but I write because I enjoy writing. Call me crazy.
I do make some money, but because that is not my primary motivation. The good news is that, even though it isn't a lot, or even much for that matter, it is steady.
I try to write "evergreen" articles. Articles that don't age much.liam im writing here for the sake of practice with pointers.
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