How to Make A Consistent, Healthy Income Writing Hubs At HubPages

In the last eighteen months I have received a number of emails from hubbers asking me questions like “how much money do you make”, “how much money can I make,” “how long will it be before I make money” and “how can I increase traffic to my hubs”? If you are interested in making money writing articles at HubPages or you are a hubber who would like to make more money then this hub is for you.

(Updated 12/18/2011) There are several ways to make money at HubPages which include the HubPages Earning Program, Google AdSense, Amazon and Ebay. My earnings have been a combination of the first three with the majority coming from the HubPages earning program in the last couple of months.

There have been many articles on the internet as well as hubs published at HubPages about how to make money writing articles online. I have had the opportunity to read many of these articles and hubs. Some of them have great ideas. Others have not so great ideas and others have ideas which will get you in trouble with the search engines. It is important to test everything you read by learning what methods of search engine promotion are acceptable. Read the quality guidelines section on the Google webmaster page for details.

To become a successful hubber takes time and a concentrated effort. It took me about a year before I made my first check over one hundred dollars. Like any venture, the hubber seeking to make money as a HubPage author should have a two to five year plan. This is the amount of time needed to make most business ventures profitable. Have a goal to publish at least one hundred, original, high quality, targeted hubs per year. The more high quality hubs, the greater the income potential.

In order to potentially make a long term income from each hub, quality content alone is not enough. Evergreen content is necessary. If you are committed to writing long term and to producing evergreen, quality hubs, how many hubs could you write in 5 years? How about 10 years? Imagine being the author of more than 1000 hubs. Some of the best HubPages authors have well over 1000 hubs and were able to accomplish this in less than 5 years.

The most important component that makes a hub successful is quality content. Quality content give the consumer the information needed to make an intelligent buying decision. Providing quality content requires research even if you are an expert in your field. Research should be collected from a minimum of three qualified sources in order to provide accurate material.

Part of quality content is being able to write effectively. If this is not a strength you possess consider taking a writing course at your local community college. Personally, I focus all my energy on quality content. I have never promoted my hubs through one way link building or at relevant forums and blogging sites.

A successful HubPage author is one who creates hubs with original, targeted, quality content which meets the needs of the consumer. How is this accomplished? The best way to reach your target audience is to have the title of your hub match as many words as possible that consumers are typing into the search engines. Using the Google keyword tool can give you helpful suggestions but these suggestions should not be used as your title if you want to receive the maximum amount of traffic possible.

Typing keywords into a search engine search box will bring up a list of popular keyword phrases which will also help to put together an effective title. After using these tools to give you ideas for an appropriate title put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and try to imagine what he or she would type into the search engine box. Don't be afraid of long titles.

Long titles allow you to include more key words and target a greater number of consumers. HubPages recently incorporated a highly effective tool called title tuner into each hubs stats keyword page. This tool can be used several days to several weeks after your hub has been published to add keywords that consumers are using in their search but are not found in your title. It can also be used to improve older hub titles. Just go to your "my account" page and click on the title tuner beta link. It will bring up a list of all hubs that are missing keywords in the title that are being used by the consumer. All of these hub titles can be fixed quickly and easily on this page.

The most interesting aspect of making money at HubPages is that money earned is like residual income. Once you have written a large number of hubs you accumulate income without doing any work to produce the income. The only work you do is creating new hubs and updating existing hubs. Update (2/29/12) - Updating existing sites (for HubPage authors updating older hubs) in Google's eyes is a huge part of providing quality content. They have recently introduced a freshness algorithm which gives higher ranking to sites with fresh content.

Providing quality content will compel many quality sites to link to your hub over time. There is nothing wrong with promoting your hub at relevant blogging sites but I would rather use the time to create more quality content. I believe this is quickest way to increase long-term earning potential.

HubPages has a feature on the stats hub metrics page that allows hubbers to know if they have many or few incoming links using a one to five star system. One star meaning few links and five stars meaning many links. Many of my older hubs as well as some of my newer hubs have five stars without any form of promotion.

Niche writing is another effective way to increase traffic to your hubs which will increase income. Some of the top hubbers at HubPages often write within their field of expertise and become known by consumers as an expert in that field which keeps bringing them back for more.

If you are in hurry to make lots of money in the next few months, HubPages isn't the right place for you. If you consider yourself an author who plans to be around for a long time, and you are willing to work hard and smart, your earning potential will be great and eventually all your hard work will pay off.

If you are not a HubPages author but would like more information about becoming one, you can go to my main page and read my profile by clicking here.