Money 101: Hubpages, Your Online Business,Making More Money Online: With "My" Account With Associates and Affiliates

This is a start of a series on Money and Hubpages. So on to Money 101 which should give you the basics about google AdSense, amazon and eBay. In this hub I'm assuming two things: One you are writing for both fun and for money, and two you've already got yourself an account for hubpages, amazon, google, and eBay. If you don't have these you won't make money, so get a google AdSense account, and the eBay and Amazon affiliate accounts.

The most basic thing about hubpages is this: yes, it is possible to make money, but it depends on what you consider money before we go on with this hub. you need to do a bit of online marketing, and think of your work as a business, but in the end this will help you make money.

If you get even one penny from your hubs, yes you've made money, but I am certain that isn't what you're thinking of. You're thinking how am I going to make enough money so that I never have to work outside the home?

Sorry can't help you on that one, that for another hub. We'll work with fixing a hub so that it makes money for you for a long time.

With hubpages the main thing you need is good content on a hub and something interactive and a bit of luck. If you get traffic, then you will most likely get clicks. Now here is the important part, I am referring to individual hubs, not to your total hubs count. You don't write hubs without publishing them, and I assume you don't publish 100 hubs per day. Traffic come from many sources. Google, Yahoo, hubpages, and email. You want -like a good business -diversity.

A lot of people make this mistake, for example I'll read someone saying "I have 100 hubs and 1,500 visitors to my hubs but no clicks on my ads." At first I was asking the same question until it dawned on that there is one thing I wasn't taking into account.

Clicks are based on individual hubs, so let's say that you have a hub that has 10 visitors, well that usually won't get you many clicks on AdSense, or amazon or eBay. It won't, and it will only make you frustrated. The ads won't produce much and at this point you'll find that you are only making "ad cents."

Think of each hub as one small piece of a big picture, some will do better than other and some won't. Now, while I do recommend deleting those hubs which aren't doing well, I make one big proviso: If you are deleting the hub, and simply replacing it with something exactly the same content, don't. Wait for a bit and really see what's going on. (thanks to several people for that suggestion.)

Replace it with something different and new, and better. But bear in mind that traffic does come and go, so don't delete too quickly. See if the search engines are finding your hub. See if you can help with search engine optimization-- seo.

So work on each hub to make it work and then you should make some money, not much perhaps, but some. Look at your keywords and hub metrics to tell where a problem might be. Do this with each hub. It often made a big difference for me. For clicks to be of some value, you need to have on your hub metrics as many of "$" as possible 5 being as high as you can go. Aim for at least three "$". If not go back and edit.

This is based on your keywords, too wide, and you'll not get much traffic, to narrow and no one will think of it, so try some out and look at the hub metric as you do this. Some words will do but also some phrases of two or three words. This helps again with search egeine traffic, and the old search engine optimization-- seo. This won't happen right away. Keep writing.

So what does a good hub look like?

Now I keep mine a bit standard these days as I've found some success with them: Text, a picture, amazon, links a poll, and more text. I split them up so that people don't see all sorts of either pictures or text, but I try to make sure they are willing to read it. when your traffic comes you need them to stay a while.

My links have at least three links that you can go to. I try to put one or two of my hubs on there, but also others hubs whom I've bookmarked, or think people might find interesting. It is all a part of community. It also is a part of search engines since they do find links better than no links, so you'll get better traffic by having a few links.

I have a responsibility to showcase not only my work but others whose work is just as valuable. So I take the time to allow for this to happen. In this case I'm not concerned with money or SEO or google search or anything like that. Yes, to make money on each of my hubs is important but in the beginning I need to work on the content.

I believe it is good to the community on hubpages.

Amazon is one there, and for me, I try to give books that I have in my own library and this way I've read them, or at least have heard good things in regards to the books I recommend. I know I've heard people say they don't get much out of amazon, but the thing is when you do it's good when you don't it's not so great.

Polls make the hub a bit more interactive and so do comments, I try to make sure I have them on a hub, in fact for me a comment capsule is a must, even if people don't like what I say or disagree it's allowed, provided there are no personal attacks.

Hubpages is about links, and money and traffic if you really boil it down. You can help yourself but making the content easy to read, and the links in one section, and also encourage traffic by writing in your comment box.

Still how does this make you money?

From my experience, between this and my blogs, the more traffic you have going to a blog or a hub the better the chance you will get clicks on Google AdSense, If you can make several articles interrelate then you might get some clicks from these.

Now, clicks from Google AdSense is one of the ways to make some money on hubpages. There are three other ways as well: eBay, Amazon and Kontera. This far, so you don't think I'm joking about this November has been my best month in terms of both amazon and AdSense.

Quick Recap:  Google AdSense: In general this has made the most for me, followed by amazon.  I don't use eBay or Kontera, so from what others have said eBay needs something special to get clicks, same as Kontera.

My "Fix It 101" hub was even found in google when typing in the words fix it 101, which admittedly was luck and a bit of Keyword knowledge. I'm thinking a bit like a writer and a bit like a business person.

Thinking like a business person is vital to making money on hubpages. I know we all have some of our most beloved hubs, and some that under no circumstances would you delete them, but this isn't about them, although if you add one or two of them in a link on a hub with higher traffic you might get a few more clicks on that hub.

Just remember two of your hubs or your blogs or whatever for links (either in the link capsule or in the hub itself.) So think about what you want before adding one of your hubs as a link!

Traffic is a piece of both time and effort, and of course luck, it didn't dawn on me how much a title needs to grab people until the fifteenth hub or so. It is the thing that gets people to read a hub. Then comes content, in and easy to view manner, so no 5,000 word, one paragraph hub. Small paragraphs broken up seem to work best. And some networking, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Digg, FaceBook.

Hub Scores also count, but in this case that's a bit more than what Money 101 is for, but suffice to say that you want your hub to have a score of at least 75, to start getting really good traffic, figure out some words that keep the traffic coming back to your hub.

Plan to network the new hub as best you can, and that is helped with links between hubs that work well together. Encourage people in leaving comments, and answer back, politely, and everything.

So recap: Traffic, Links, and Content will help you make money from Amazon, Google AdSense and eBay. Without these three, and a good hub score for the hub, you'll need to work at it. It takes time and patience, but in the end, a great hub or two is worth the effort.