My Earnings Suck! Five Reasons Why and How to Fix Them

The most important thing to many people is making money online. What most people hate is when they lose their money from whatever program or revenue sharing site they are on. They lose money, and then complain loudly "my earnings suck!"

Then there are the other ones, the new writers on a writing site, who make exactly one article or page or whatever and bemoan the fact that they are not making any money. They have not even begun their business and are already whining. "My earnings from (insert affiliate program here) and I can't figure out why!"

So what if your earnings "suck"? At some point in this world you have a choice: are you going to fix them or are you going to continue to whine about it?

If you are going to fix them there are five major points that you need to fix, and they are not easy fixes, but they need to be done.

You are either using too many keywords, or have not used them properly. Too many keywords and the search engines will ding you in the end, too few and you will not be found on searches.

Keywords: If you have not used Google AdWords Keyword tool now is a good time to do so. You will also need to be linked in with Google Analytics. These two are important steps to fixing your keywords. You will need to have a hub which you think should be preforming well and you will need to read it out loud.

It should "sound" real. If you use the same word over again in less than two sentences you are keyword stuffing and it is not worth any one's time to even read for a long time. Unless you have traffic, which does not read your work, then most people have a need for something of value.

Fix: Copy and paste your work on any word processor. next print it out, this is where you can edit your work anywhere you like. Once you have done this, edit your writing (your content) on hubpages. This is important as the next step means that you will use a keyword tool. ( any sort will do, but using Google AdWords keywords tool is a good one)

* Using a keyword research tool and your actual hub compare and find out what specific keywords you are using and what, if anything should look strange, having too few keyword choices, then you need to add more original content to make people actually feel your work is of use.

* Improve your layout on your site, you need to focus on your content and then on your keywords and your title. Content and layout before anything else. If you use amazon capsules be very specific and write content to go with them.

Earnings oversight: This is not a simple fix, but the problem is that you either overestimated your potential earnings from Google, or you underestimated your earnings. Either one is a problem.

Fix: Since over estimation of earnings is a much more common problem than underestimation, I am focusing on the former.

* When using a keyword research tool, understand what is a good keyword, versus what is a high priced keyword. For example, a keyword which seems to get "high earnings" might with a bit of common sense, be a poor choice, after factoring in click through rates and overall types of competitors.

* You are focusing too much on daily earnings, whereas you need to take a long term look at what is covered with your Google AdSense or other affiliate programs. In other words, you need to use Google Analytics or other analytics tools to see where exactly you you are getting your traffic.

* Plan. You have been talking about it, and looking at stats and fixing yoru work, but you have to have some sort of plan to get better.  This means writing out a basic long-term plan, which should follow the stats you have aquired fromy oru blogs and websites.

Too many choices: You have a million websites out on the Internet and you need to get people to your work, and you have to make some choices. At this point you have not. You don't have a plan. In fact you are not sure about how to increase traffic to your many websites in any coherent plan.

Fix: Write out a plan. This is also in fix it #2.

* Create a Niche, and decide how long to focus on that niche. If this is writing, or money or a larger niche which you want to target, you will need to learn to promote several things over the course of years. Keyword research, SEO, and marketing in general are a must for larger niche categories.

* Build a brand, it is like writing a book if you know the idea behind your books, you can build a brand. One only needs to mention a last name such as "King" and people know whom you are talking of in this case. Build this brand for yourself.

* Build another niche, fnd a smaller niche such as publishing online or a niche like that, then expand. This way you can learn on a smaller scale. Having 20 hubs on online publishing is a lot easier than needing 100 hubs on writing.

You don't know and/or you don't care: This is a knock not on the people who have just started, but rather the people who have been around for a while, and nothing that they do seems to make money or increase their earrings.

Fix: This is by far the hardest fix for anyone who has been online for a while and then finds the need for change to their websites or blogs. While change is constant, it is not easy.

* Go back and re-edit your websites and other information.  This can include where you place your AdSense ads, to spelling and grammar.

* Ask people to be honest, after a fix up.  Sometimes, it is a matter of asking people to say "a looks good, but "b" does not.  Fix it again

* Care again.  No, this is not about money, rather it is getting your passion back for your business.  "Everything" can be either your business model or cyclical slump, care enough to find out and fix it.  Care enough to figure out what is working, and fix what isn't.

Traffic and Traffic, and T-R-A-F-F-I-C! If you are trying to focus on making money online, or more specifically trying to increase traffic. Trying to increase traffic can be a challenge, but then again, you need traffic to make money... or do you?

Fix: This is complex and yet at the same time it is not. Diversification is key, or your earnings can take a huge hit. So if you are having trouble with traffic start by doing these few things:

* Diversification is key, for example: Adding an online article to e-zine is good, but adding several different articles to e-zine is better, but the best is adding several articles to several article directories, which allow you to link to your websites. If one of these directories take a "hit in traffic" then you still have other to rely on.

* There is more than one search engine you need to think about. While Google does hold about 70% of the searches, there are other search engines as well.  You would be advise to look into them as well as into the Google search engine.

* Traffic comes and then drops, so do not expect it to always rise.  It will go up and down, but use as many analytics as you can to find out what works best for you. 

* Interlinking your websites is also meant for traffic and not just for SEO.  The point is that the longer people STAY on your websites, the more chances for money.  Sometimes, it is about your readers.

It is often the changes that you can not control which have the biggest effect on your business. Yet, if you have knowledge of what does work for you, which is writing content, building links, having a plan, you will do better than most.

Learning a business is not a simple as some make it out to be.

If SEO scares you then you have a long way to go. Learning keywords and how they can effect your writing is a primary concern. Learning how to increase traffic, or maintain traffic is as important as before.

It is a learning process, and while you are publishing online, you are also build a business, and also thinking long-term your business as a way to make a living.

To your success.