Make Money Online With HubPages!

Over the last month or so, I’ve been conducting a make money online experiment to determine if HubPages is a viable tool that can be used to make money. The official start date of the experiment was May 11, 2009. This experiment didn’t come out of nowhere, in fact the main reason that I wanted to do this with HubPages was because I had created a few hubs here and there and they had done surprisingly well for me. I decided that I would create 100 hubs in 30 days and track the results to see how well those hubs could produce.

Before I got started the Marketing Manager (Ryan Hupfer) at HubPages contacted me and got involved with the experiment. We turned it into a contest and a lot of people that already use HubPages joined in.

Week 1 Recap
I worked really hard the first week because I knew that in order to make anything within 30 days I would have to get a lot of work done in the first week. I was able to create 40 hubs during the first week. I knew that the hubs would produce some money during the first week but honestly they exceeded my expectations. By the time I published the week 1 update I had already made $56.20. I didn’t start tracking with Google Analytics until after week 1, so the best I can do for the first week is a screen-shot of the Adsense channel I used:




Week 2 Recap
The second week went amazingly well – read the week 2 update here. Between May 18 and May 24 my hubs produced $112.56 with Adsense. I had a day during that week when the hubs produced $23.21. The performance during week 2 was definitely more than I expected when I started the experiment. During week 2 I didn’t create as many hubs as I did during the first week, but I had over half of them done by the end of the week. Here’s a screen shot of the results, taken from Google Analytics:



Week 3 Recap
Since I didn’t create as many new hubs during week 2, week 3 didn’t go as well. I had a pullback in the income from the hubs I made during the first week and didn’t have many new ones to take their place. The pullback didn’t really surprise me because I have had this kind of thing happen on almost every experiment I’ve ever done. The income for week 3 was still solid and the hubs made $88.88:

A ton of work was done during week 3 and I completed all of the 100 hubs. Originally I thought that I might be able to create them all in the first two weeks but that didn’t happen. Fortunately I got them done in the third week and that led to a solid fourth week.

Week 4 Recap
During week 4 I was able to focus on making the hubs more useful. I did this by creating a lot of links from my hubs to other hubs that had related content. This makes it more likely that a reader finds information that they’re looking for and also allows them to see multiple sets of Adsense ads. It also provides an SEO benefit.
During week 4 the hubs made $164.11. Google Analytics wasn’t working when I created the week 4 update so I had to use an Adsense screen shot for the results:



I have now run a report with Google Analytics and that’s returning slightly different results because Adsense resets at 1:00 in the morning where I live and my Google Analytics resets at midnight. According to Analytics, the hubs produced $160.04 during that week:

Overall Recap
The total amount made during the 30 day experiment was $475.26. This includes the income from the first four weeks plus the income from days 29 and 30.

By my standards this experiment went amazingly well. A lot of other people have also created a lot of hubs in fact I know of more than one person who took this experiment bigger than I did. This makes me really happy because those people learned during this month that you can do really great things if you’re willing to work harder than other people.

Things That Contributed To The Success Of The Experiment

1. Keyword Research. I never could have done as well as I did without choosing keywords that I know I can rank for. My basic philospohy is that you need to know whether you can rank for a keyword or not before you decide to use it. You should also know how much you can make with a keyword before you go after it. Some of this information is available in The Keyword Crash Course ebook, which you can download by entering your email at the top of our right sidebar. Guys choosing keywords is huge and honestly if it isn’t clear as a bell for you, you need to become a member of  The Keyword Academy. It costs a total of $1 for your first month and you can cancel at any time. We get email after email after email gushing about how clear keyword research became for people after watching our first video.
2. Keyword Targeting. Targeting a keyword with a page really isn’t rocket science but it’s definitely something that I used. Look for the four steps in that post and follow them. Along with this I tried to create value with my hubs. Most of them are around 800 words. Some of them are longer and some of them are shorter. Part of my goal for this next month is to make them more useful and longer.
3. Links. The Keyword Academy members know exactly what I did to get links for my hubs and I’ll say this: If you can get a clean link or two for your hubs you’ll be able to make more money. Hubs are strong on their own but a solid link or two will only increase that strength.

The Future Of The Experiment
I’m not done with this experiment, in fact I’m just getting started. I have a new goal to turn these hubs into a full time income ($3000 per month) and think that I can do it within the next three months. I’m going to be adding content to the hubs and as they get older they will definitely do better with Google and other search engines.

To be clear I won’t be creating any new hubs for a while. I am going to increase the income by improving the hubs that I already have. I’ll provide updates as I go and am also looking at a few other experiments.

Source: http://thekeywordacademy.com/make-money-online-with-hubpages-experiment-complete/