How to Improve Your Hubpages Earnings

I was reading a recent blog post that Court wrote in regards to improving earnings on Hubpages. This could also relate to a number of other parasitic hosts as well that can rank fairly quickly out of the box such as infobarrel. They can also work for literally any web2.0 property that has trust rank and it is something that I think those that do article marketing will agree on.

In Court’s post, he has chronicled both the failures and successes of adsense marketing hopefuls.  Let’s face it, for every one person who has made money with hubpages, there are probably 20 or more that either haven’t done made much money or those that have assessed that perhaps the amount of work that they have to put into it far exceeds the reward they are getting.

And if you have experienced more of the latter (no money…too much work) and less of the former (decent passive income using hubpages), then perhaps you need to spend a little more time learning the ins and outs of how to make money with these types of websites.

Creating Squidoo lens, Hubpages, Infobarrels, ect…ect. is a lot like being in School

You are essentially learning things.  People like Court make it look very easy because they have a better understanding of how the search engines work in regards to trust rank, SERP placement and authority.    To get there, you have to experiment, keep an open mind and watch how things work as they go along.

Ben, from makemoneyonlinewithseo, and I once had a conversation about this.  Basically, he explains it as a process in which every bump in the road is a new discovery.  The more you discover, the clearer things become and the easier it is to figure out your chances of ranking and what works and what doesn’t.

This is clearly a problem for someone that wants it and wants it right now, with a very limited knowledge to boot.

Yet, I see hubpages or even article marketing as a great entry point for anyone that is either hoping to sell something or to use adsense as a cash generator via organic results.  In fact, I think that anyone just starting out would benefit more by spending a month or two writing content on these sites just to understand SE behavior in regards to long tail keywords.

Personally, here is what I use these parasitic hosts for:

• To get a better idea of ranking potential within a market
• To judge a market’s responsiveness to whatever I am selling…
• To judge how much internal link structure effects rankings in regards to websites with trustrank….
• To judge the interest and interaction possibilities of the niche….
• To create a traffic funnel to other websites…
• To network with other marketer’s on the fringes of my niche for linking opportunities.
• To analyze what keywords may be justified in looking into within the market (through analytics)

How Important is Keyword Research?

It should be noted that while Court advocates solid keyword research, I don’t necessarily see it as a make or break for a campaign.  I do advocate keyword research though in terms of adsense since it will help you determine the likelihood of response (higher CPC generally means that the market will be more responsive, or more importantly, those that click will be most likely to buy).

However, all that said, keyword research as an end all solution is tainted leaving you with a lot of conjecture.  There have been cases where the CPC is drastically lower than the indications and traffic volume can’t be counted on.  There are ways to cheat your way through the process if you know what you are doing (hint:  Your competitors who use web2.0 properties give a lot of information away).

There are more ways to skin a cat on hubpages…..(lessons you can learn from hubpages or other web2.0 properties)

One of the tactics that I use when creating pages is to simply crawl the web for signs of other web2.0 properties that are ranking.  This includes article directories by the way.  Any kind of verifiable evidence of traffic will give me a clearer picture on whether I should run a campaign or not. While traffic isn’t the end all, most traffic can be monetized. It is just a matter of figuring out what the visitor is searching for and matching an offer to the majority. This is done through testing both link placement as well as the verbage of the offer itself.

I have mentioned this before in regards to article marketing that the potential of dual listings on the front page is a huge possibility to leeching traffic and as long as there is only one listing of a web2.0 property, there is always room for one more listing.  I have actually done this for a variety of hubpages with very little in the way of linking.  For instance, you can see here that my site for “remove skin tags” is ranking pretty well (at least in my datacenter).

Using these website with high trust rank and authority also allows you to throw caution to the wind in terms of linking.  I have, on more than one occasion done tests with Xrumer, a popular forum spamming tool, in which I pummeled a page with links just to see if it got deindexed, banned, or gained rank.  I have had private discussions with some of you via email to share my results (some gained rank…none lost rank).

I have done these tests for article directories as well, by the way.  In all instances, none lost rank.  In a few, they actually propelled me to the front page.

I have also played around with link schemes to see what works and what doesn’t without the fear of it hitting my sites that matter most.

Understanding internal link structure-  One of the bigger lessons you can learn from using hubpages for a while is how to link your hubs internally to help improve your search engine rank.  There have been many instances where I have been able to abuse things such as “hot hubs”  to not only rank higher but also get yet another funnel for a visitor searching for information to enter from.

Understanding the Google Dance-  I have had hubs that rank very well initially and then start to fall off.  It is at this point where most panic.  In reality, what will typically happen is that you may lose spots in the SERPS but over time, regain them.  It is a waiting game though.  I have had initial bursts, followed by a harrowing disappearance, only to reaapear 4 months later.  It happens.   A new marketer will panic when this happens and blow it off as an impossible challenge.  As you start to mature though, you start to do the reverse;  you count the things that actually stick as being very fortunate and kind of wait it out, all the while waiting for your page to reappear.  Links will expediate this process.

The 80/20 principle comes into full effect-  The biggest problem that most new hubpage hopefuls have when it comes to monetizing their hubs is that in a lot of cases, it is just a matter of throwing up as many hubs as you can to see what sticks and what doesn’t.   Currently, I have hundreds of hubpages (I lost count after 400) spread out across a dozen or so personas.  Out of all those hubpages, I would say that maybe (and maybe is putting it lightly) 20% of those sites get any amount of significant traffic.  40% of those sites get very little to no traffic at all.

This is the same as article marketing, by the way.  The best article marketers in the world understand that it is all about volumes of content.  If you can pump out as much content as you can, you stand a much better chance of making money.

The notion that great content wins every time is far from the case.  And while I talk about remarkable content (and live by it when I attach my real name to it), the reality is that if it truly worked that way, there would be far more internet millionaires out there.  In truth, the internet is not a meritocracy.  And when it comes to hubpages (or any other web2.0 property) volume beats meritable content most of the time.

Using what you are given to find more potential hubs to create-One of the smarter ways to improve your chances is to use analytics to see how your visitors are getting to the page and creating more hubs using the exact search phrase.  This in effect, will give you a two-fer in a lot of cases (dual listings), although you could do it “howie style” and use more web 2.0 properties to overtake the rankings completely.  Sometimes, it is worth it.  Other times, it isn’t worth anything at all.

The only way you can verify whether it works is to test it and see what happens.

Hubpages and the Dip

If anything is not clearer when it comes to making money with hubpages is that most new marketers aren’t willing to do what it takes to make money.

• The problem is generating lots of volume.
• The problem is where to find links.
• The problem is what conversations to target.
• The problem is finding the keywords with the most response.

If you are new and are unwilling to experiment then you will never be able to solve these problems and you won’t be able to make money online…at least not significantly.  The answers or solutions to these problems come with figuring it out as you go, taking your lumps and actually learning from mistakes;  discovering radical insights and asking the “what if” questions that most of us don’t ask.

Many people try to build blueprints for success for newbie marketers and I applaud them for their efforts.  But what I have noticed is that when push comes to shove, people who really want to make money online don’t want to do the work that is necessary.  They want it spoonfed to them.

They get hung up on things that don’t matter.

I say, you need to build a second tier or support system for your money sites.  The crowd goes “but how many exactly do I need?”

I say, you need to build backlinks.  The crowd asks “how many backlinks can I get without falling out of favor with google?”

Those are answers that no marketer with sense can answer for you.  Those are answers that you need to find for yourself.

There simply isn’t a book large enough that could teach you these things.  There isn’t a membership site that can give you those insights (although a few may give you a clue or two to go by).  There isn’t a video that will define you as a marketer.  All these things come with maturity and recognizing what is working and isn’t working for you.  And the only way to discover what works for you is to test it and find out for yourself.

This isn’t what I would necessarily consider marketing, by the way, although it is a necessary beast if you are using the internet as a medium to present offers.

While I am sure that those of you who read my posts appreciate these posts more than posts like how scarcity creates value (which is a marketing truth), I have to be honest and say that these kinds of posts kind of bore me.  I mean, how many times do I need to say the same thing over and over.  How many times does Grizzly, Ben or Court have to say the same things?

The reality is that if you want to make money online, you need to take things that you learn and run with them..make your mistakes…learn from your mistakes..innovate old ideas…and then make more mistakes along the way.  That is the key to actually creating an online career out of thin air.  Build, innovate, make  mistakes along the way…innovate some more.

Hubpages is a great place to learn and experiment to discover what works and what doesn’t in terms of organic search.  Article Marketing will do the same thing.  And it is primarily why I would highly suggest creating pages on these sites first to figure out how things move and shake before running out there and building sites with little knowledge and know-how and hitching your wagon to it.

But the real key is you.  What are YOU going to do?  Are YOU willing to go there?  Are YOU willing to throw away a couple months to figure it out on your own?

If you are, you are in the minority.

And like it or not, the minority makes money online.  Everyone else is simply hoping for concrete answers, of which there aren’t many.