HubPages Expert

HubPages is similar to any website in that to make money you first need traffic, and then you need to convert that traffic into money.  HubPages is not your typical blog or website, however, so there are some specific things you should be aware of if you’re going to learn how to make money on HubPages.

Traffic Sources

Since traffic is where it all begins, traffic is where we will start.  For the most part, your traffic sources will break down as follows:

• Search Traffic - Visitors searching for various topics and keywords on search engines like Google, your Hub shows up and they click on it and read what you have to say.
• HubPages Internal Traffic – You will get some traffic by the HubPages community itself as users browse various topics or check you out yourself.  This is a major difference between the HubPages community and simple article directory sites.
• Referring Sites – This is rare, but you might have a website or blog that links to some of your hubs (in an effort for backlinks possibly) and users on these sites then click through to your Hubs.

Now, for the most part we’re going to focus on search traffic, but we’ll briefly touch on the HubPages Internal Traffic.  To boost your internal traffic, you need to boost your presence on HubPages.  I’d encourage you to read the tutorial on How To Boost Your HubPages Presence for more information.

Now, let’s get back to search traffic.  Almost all successful Hubbers who make good money get most of their monetizable traffic via search traffic so this is where we will spend most of our time.

Keyword Driven Writing

Now, the most important part of generating lots and lots of search traffic is keywords.  It is here where we get fact #1 for learning how to make money on HubPages:

FACT #1: YOU MUST START WITH KEYWORD RESEARCH

While there are tools out there that you can pay for, there’s no need to pay for them in my mind since you can use Google’s free keyword tool to get all the information you need.  You need to find specific keywords that have at least a few thousand searches and the less competitive, obviously, the better.  Once you find your keywords, you’re ready to begin constructing the Hub on HubPages.

Now, when you’re doing keyword driven writing, the titles are super, super important.  We’re getting into some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) material here, so I won’t go into detail here since there are millions of sites on the web discussing SEO.  With that said, SEO is important but don’t kill yourself over it.  Often times, my highest performing and highest rankings articles/Hubs are some of the ones that I spent less time focusing on SEO.  If you have good keywords, you should be set.  With that said, there are a few things we should take care of in the SEO realm mainly titles.

FACT #2: YOU NEED TO DESIGN CATCHY TITLES WITH YOUR KEYWORDS

You need to include your keywords that you’ve selected in the title and definitely create a catchy title.  You need a title that someone will click on, remember that.

Now, make sure you use the keywords but definitely don’t “stuff” the piece with the keyword – it’s not even effective anymore so you can just forget about that.  It will do much more harm than good.

Writing Quality

Now, it’s important to have very high writing quality in your Hubs.  Text-rich or content-rich Hubs will often perform better.  Also, the longer Hubs I believe from my own personal observations will also perform better.

FACT #3: WRITE LONGER HUBS – 500 WORDS AND UP

Long, content-rich articles that are well organized and aesthetically pleasing will be succesful Hubs.  Add some quality pictures in there that make sense (don’t over do it) and consider adding some interactivity into the Hub with a poll or something.  Also break up the Hub into modules – separate long sections of text and add appropriate sub-headings.

Look, just write how you would want to read something.  Put yourself in the shoes of the reader and you’ll be in good shape.

Backlinks

Now this is an area that many people don’t consider, but adding backlinks from other websites to your Hubs is a good way to help get your Hubs high on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).  If you don’t have your own blog (with good authority) in order to add backlinks, consider writing an article for one of the bigger article directories (i.e. ezinearticles.com, articlebase.com, goarticles.com).  This means writing two articles for everyone, however, so make sure you’re able to generate enough unique content in multiple places.

As I continue here, I’ll post some hard data on this backlinking thing comparing various Hubs and the performance of them.  Stay tuned…

Now To The Money Making Part

When it comes to making money on the internet, it typically breaks down into two areas: advertising and selling.  The most popular advertising platform on the web is Google Adsense – which is the platform that is used on HubPages.

Now, when it comes to selling on the internet, you can either sell your product or someone else’s product.  When you sell someone else’s product, it is called affiliate marketing.  Affiliate marketing is a huge industry and one that both internet marketers and product retailers are more than willing to partner up on.

On HubPages, you can make money in both areas.

For advertising, make sure you get accounts with Google Adsense as well as Kontera, then go into your HubPages account and hook up both of your accounts.

On affiliate marketing, the most widely used platform is Amazon.  It is easy to setup your Amazon.com affiliate account with your HubPages account and you can immediately start offering products from Amazon in your Hubs.  Another popular affiliate account is eBay where you can list live auctions in your Hubs.  With each sale that a user from your Hub makes on Amazon or eBay, you’ll get a cut of the sale.

Affiliate marketing is tricky and if you’re new, you’re going to have to spend some time playing around with it.  If you can get one of your Hubs to place at the top of search engine results for a high-priced product review (or something similar), then offer than product via Amazon on your Hub, you might have a recipe for some big bucks.  Sounds easy?  It’s not.  It’s very tough and there are tons of people on the internet fighting for these same sales.

FACT #4: YOUR BEST BET IS TO EXPERIMENT WITH BOTH ADVERTISING AND AFFILIATE SALES – TESTING MULTIPLE STRATEGIES AND FINDING OUT WHAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU

Other Ways To Make Money

Lastly, I want to point out that with HubPages, you can really use your Hubs to promote your other websites, services or products which might be your main business goal in this picture.  This is a great strategy.

Perhaps, you have some websites that are fine-tuned and ready to convert traffic into sales.  You just need the traffic.  Well, HubPages might be a good opportunity to funnel traffic that way.

For more information on incorporating your HubPages presence and content into your larger online business structure, make sure you read How HubPages Fits In To Your Larger Online Business Picture.