In answer to some of the questions posted in the hub comments:
@watergeek "I'm realizing more and more that marketing my site is as important as writing hubs"
Yes and no. I generally don't seriously market my articles unless they are content I want seriously appreciated (such as personal or very long hubs). Much of my content I've never shared anywhere - writer, throw on an MFP, rinse and repeat. If you follow the tip about Google Suggest/Low Competition, this can work well.
@Shrouds "u are right,in some situation we don;t need google if we answer a few niche topic or discussions among Hubpages members." ... " I went back just now to change the title and intro to include the phrase "pregnancy problems" and posted it on my Google Plus account."
I would never advise marketing based on Hubpages members as readers. Your readers should all be from outside the site, unless you are writing something specific for hubbers (such as this hub was).
In my experience, pregnancy does not go very well on Google Plus - photos, clickbait, opinion pieces and groundbreaking inventions/ideas work best there.
@ThePracticalMommy "is Google Suggest an actual tool or do you mean to just type in your subject in the Google search bar and see what people are searching for?"
Yes, what you type in the search bar that creates a dropdown. Narrow it down as much as you can, though. Don't type "Eggs" when you can type "Eggs make my" or any variation you can think of.
@Oztinato "All good if you want to spend your entire life on a phone with thumbs flailing walking into everybody. How about caching one big fish instead of millions of little ones while just having fun in your spare time?"
I'm lazy. Very lazy. I use a lot of automated methods, including scheduling, revive old post, edgar and others, so that some of my Facebook and Twitter pages actually might get checked say once a month. Yes, just like learning to write online, alternative methods of promotion are a big learning curve. However once you have your head around most of them, many are either set and forget or check every week or two (or longer).
@suraj punjabi "To be honest those tips sounds very time consuming as it involves doing research and all that"
I definitely don't recommend doing ALL these things for one section of content. The only reason I've tried them all is due to the amount of content I have across many types of readerships. Not to mention, I'm also working on building my own name as a brand, which is much harder than building reputation on a particular topic. Pick 4-5 which sound workable to you and appropriate to your readership and do those.
@Stella Kaye "As you don't go into detail on how lucrative your online writing ventures have been, I can only assume they must be, purely from the amount of traffic you receive."
Traffic does NOT mean money. Having the right methods of monetisation does. That was another huge learning curve for me (which I'm still on, for some of my content).
@C L Mitchell "Do you keep track of all of the promotional activities that you do?...If so, how do you do it?"
As mentioned above, as many things as possible are automated. Then, when I think of something I want to post, I don't have to worry about when to post it to schedule - I just post when I want. Some of the things I mentioned I only use now and then. For instance - Empire Avenue. I have about 20,000,000 eaves there thanks to building up my portfolio (login 5 mins a day and do all the 'investment quests' then use all those eaves to pay others to invest in you). For 5,000,000 eaves I can usually buy about 25-50 actions (by actions I mean Facebook engagements, retweets etc).
Some sites I definitely use more than others, depending on who I want to get attention from.
@TimothyArends "I would like to know what promotional methods using Fiverr you find to be worthwhile"
Generally I look for gigs which are run by people who have well known and have either a blog or social media following with high engagement. If they aren't willing to publicly state the account name on Fiverr, I generally avoid them. Even if they have 100,000 followers, it doesn't mean those followers are active or legit. There are also a few good "buy more followers" ones which are legit, but many are NOT, so be very careful taking this route (I only do when I want to make a new social media account look popular enough to look legitimate).
Unfortunately I have no interest into being an 'SEO guru'. It's much more fun applying my knowledge to my areas of passion - particularly pregnancy and mental health. Hubpages has a special place in my heart as the place I learned to write online, however there are far better guides than I could write, available online.
@aliciaharrell "I agree with you that one needs to be cautious as they pick their traffic venues, especially with the pay per traffic sites for some deliver while others do not."
So true! There are many sites out there who make big promises but can't deliver or even worse, break Google TOS.
