My HubPages Earnings vs My Own Site's Earnings
Does my site make me more money, or does HubPages?
I have a few of my own sites. I will describe just the one site's earning here, and, yes, it is a site that makes me more money than I make on HubPages. Please note that not all of my sites make me more money than I make on HubPages.
I have not yet found the time to put more effort into Amazon or Clickbank or any other affiliate program and my earnings from these affiliate programs are not yet worth mentioning, so it will only be my Adsense earnings that I describe - my Adsense earnings from one particular site of mine vs my Adsense earnings on HubPages, directly via Adsense, or through the HubPages Ad Program.
History
This hub, my 57th hub, was published in April 2012.
I joined HubPages 21 months ago in July 2010.
I started a website about work from home ideas 28 months ago in December 2009 - 7 months before joining HubPages. This work from home ideas website was not my first website.
The work from home ideas site is a simply designed html site, designed by myself and my boyfriend Tony. We got a domain registered and ordered hosting, and uploaded our files. We added Google Adsense ads. From time to time we wrote and added more articles to it. We weren't too bothered with it until we saw that traffic to it was picking up, and Adsense earnings were increasing.
15 months after having started the site, in March 2011 (13 months ago, as I write this hub in April 2012), we added a WordPress blog to the site - on the same host server. We had to slightly upgrade our hosting package to a larger hosting package to accommodate the WordPress system and extra pages of content we'd be adding. It was now easier and quicker to add new articles that we'd written. From time to time we still add a new article to the html site itself, just to keep that part of the site fresh, but we add more articles to the WordPress blog part of it.
Mathematics
The html site part currently (April 2012) has 46 articles, and the blog part has 128 articles, giving a total of 174 articles. (yes, in 21 months I've added only 57 articles to HubPages, and during the last 13 months of those 21 months also added 128 articles to the WordPress blog part of my site.)
174 articles is only 3 articles more than 3 times the amount of articles I have on HubPages (57 x 3 = 171) To make calculations easier, we'll say that the site has three times as many articles as I have on HubPages.
Averages: (if I was earning roughly the same on HubPages as I am on my own site),
then, if I was earning say $10 a month on HubPages, I'd times that by 3 (because the site has 3 times as many articles) to get my site's monthly earnings of $30. Or, if I had earned a total of $210 (21 months) on HubPages, then $30 per month on my own site would total $840 (28 months)
But are those my HubPages and my site's earnings?
Does triple the amount of articles on my own site earn me triple the amount I earn on HubPages?
No. Triple the amount of articles I have on my own site does not earn me triple the amount I earn on HubPages. My articles on my own site earn me more.
In 21 months on HubPages, I've earned a total of about $55 from Adsense, and about $58 from the HubPages Ad Program in the last 11 months to date = a total of about $113
So, if I have triple the amount of articles on my own site, and I say it has earned me more, what is the figure I have to beat? $113 x 3 = $339
By how far has my own site's earnings beaten $339.?
(Can you tell I'm writing this hub as I go along, instead of writing it ahead of time before publishing it?)
After fiddling around in my Adsense account to find the right places to click to view all my earnings from just one URL channel for the entire time that I've had Adsense ads on my site, I'm back to report that my site has earned me a total of $1 386 in 28 months - this beats $339 by far.
$113 for 57 hubs vs $1 386 for 174 articles
57 articles x 3 = 171 articles
$113 x 3 = $339 vs $1 386
Life Orientation
So what am I doing spending time on HubPages if I need to increase my income and my own site earns me considerably more than HubPages earns me? Shouldn't I be spending all my time on my own site?
Well, this is quite easy to answer:
- HubPages has an amazing and wonderful community of writers I'm proud to be a part of;
- HubPages is addictive;
- I am at least earning something on HubPages, and I see that the more active I am on HubPages, the more my earnings on HubPages increase over time;
- Although many people outside of South Africa do visit my site, I can reach more writers (and those writers who are trying to earn an income or extra income from writing) right here on HubPages. I like to help others with my ideas and tips, even if these ideas and tips are not coming from an expert, or from somebody earning a fortune (I'm not an expert and I'm not earning a fortune.) I like to try and help where I can.
- I am always learning something new and handy from reading the hubs of other writers on HubPages, and sometimes I just enjoy reading a good story on HubPages too.
Geography and Biology
Tony and I are proudly South African, living in South Africa. Although our work from home ideas site is a .co.za site (South Africa) and is aimed at anybody in the world, we feel that the ever-increasing traffic to the blog part of the site is because although that too is aimed at anybody, it is more targetted to South Africans. The youth unemployment rate in South Africa is high, and we try to write articles that can help these people realise that they can work from home for themselves, often starting for free, if they can't find a job.
Biology? Tony is male, aged 52. I'm female, aged almost 43.
We've been together 4 and a half years, living in part of my parents house because we are not yet earning enough to move out and get a place of our own. I was going through a divorce and moved to my parents' house without a job, and without even knowing how to copy and paste or send an email, but with my two wonderful sons. Then I met Tony. We fell in love. He didn't have work either and couldn't get a job even after applying for over 100 jobs. We had to do something. Tony taught me a little about the Internet, and together we learned so much more. We became freelancers and passive income earners, and although we still have a long way to go, we have no regrets.
We have discovered that hard work pays off, and that just about anyone can work for themselves. Not being able to find a job is not the end of the world.