The 10,000 Hubs Challenge

I have been a freelance writer since 2002. For me, the internet really came into the picture in 2006 and in 2007 I gave internet and affiliate marketing some serious thought. Fast forward 4 years, and I've done more thinking than doing.

In other words, I haven't been consistent with much of anything concerning making money online.That's here hubpages comes in. This is an exercise in consistency.

I did some research and I started to wonder what it would take to make $10,000 in one year from hubpages. So I researched what typical "average" per hub per year were. The figures I found were anywhere from $1 to $10 per hub per year.

So, in order to make $10,000 in one year from hubpages I would need anywhere from 10,000 to 1,000 hubs. With this line of thought, the 10,000 hubs challenge is born.

In case you were worried or wondering, I vow not to compromise quality. I would rather have 100 well written hubs than 10,000 terrible hubs.

Over my nine year career, I have learned that unless I am passionate about a topic, I won't want to write about it. The same is true with hubpages. Choosing topics that I love to write about will increase my success.

An insight into my favorite topics:

• Travel
• Beauty
• Food
• Herbal Medicine
• Learning Language
• Music
• My hobbies, like crochet
• Writing
• Making money online

You can look forward to hubs on any of these subjects! When I see my favorite topics written out like that, I get excited to start the challenge.

Challenge Start - June 7, 2011

Right now, I have 41 hubs, 42 if you include this one. I just fixed some broken links and also signed up for the hubpages ad program. For the rest of the day, I will research making money on hubpages and also create a few new hubs. I also went through and wrote down all the keywords that people use to find my existing hubs.

June 8, 2011

I haven't made money, it seems, from Hubpages at all. I appear to be behind the curve - I have almost 50 hubs and there are some people who have 80 or 100 hubs who are make nearly 1000 a month. I've had a late start today. It's nearly 4 PM and I am just starting to work. My goal is to create ten hubs today. Earlier, however, I did come up with some keywords for my "passion topics" - or the things in life I most enjoy.

June 9, 2011

I am about to start working on my hubs for the day. I checked my stats and I have made $.04 since this venture started - it came from he Hubpages revenue share system. I checked my other stats and haven't made anything yet. I feel good that at least I've made something, even though it's only 4 Cents and not anywhere near what my goals are.

June 10, 2011

So far, I have made $.13. It is gratifying to see my earnings start to add up. Each day I seem to earn a few more cents. Part of me thinks it's nice, the other part of me thinks it is depressing. I have no revenue coming in from any sources other than the Hubpages ad share program. I am currently researching Adsense and how to choose good keywords to make money from it. Since the challenge has started, I've created eight new hubs.

June 11, 2011

Okay, I need more traffic. I only made $.01 over the night. I shouldn't rely on the ad share program here on Hubpages. I need to pull my income from other sources as well, such as Adsense and Amazon. But you know what? I won't bring income at all using any of these thigns unless I have traffic. I created a hub about it offering my thoughts on how I plan on getting traffic to my hubs.

June 16, 2011

I took a break from creating hubs and watching my stats. As I w as gone, my earnings increased to a whopping total of $.29. I haven't made money from any affiliate programs either. I was thinking about it, and I think I need to start creating backlinks so that people can come visit my hubs!

June 17, 2011

I keep creating hubs. I have 56 published hubs right now and I have almost nothing to show for it. Seriously. I made .41. I have an additional .42 cent commission that is up for debate. I can't tell if it came from one of my Hubs or from Squidoo because sometimes I leave the link in my lenses (I don't do that to my hubs though). I don't know. I guess making anywhere in between 41 cents and 83 cents is at least SOMETHING. Humph.

June 24, 2011

Oh yes, my earnings are on the rise. Check this out: three sales at amazon totaling $1.66 in commissions, and now I am up to $.58. I am about to work on some Hubs. I am experimenting by taking my passion topics and finding keywords that have low competition and high CPC. Total earnings so far: $2.24

I haven't done anything since my last update. I have been working on The Keyword Academy. I went ahead and signed up for it and have been making forward progress with that.

I should tell you that the Amazon sales came from the "cute car accessories for girls" hub that I have. For me, those kinds of hubs convert well on Amazon.

I need to clarify that I chose "10,000" as a worst case scenario. My goal is to make $10,000 this year, 2011, using Hubpages. If I seem to be on track with fewer lenses, I will stop creating them and move on to my next "make money online" challenge.

Remember that the goal is to start from scratch learning how to make money online. If I get to the point where I want to be faster, then I will count myself lucky and consider this an income stream well developed.

Okay. My dismal numbers tell me that I am not approaching this whole process correctly. I have just been creating hubs randomly. I have been making money online since 2007. Granted, I am doing this experiment because I haven't made much money since then. So obviously, my old methods aren't working.

What do I think I need to do?

Keyword Research

First of all, I haven't been doing keyword research. What was I thinking? Okay, so I just dug up an article from The Keyword Academy. Back in 2009 he did a hubpages experiment. I am wondering if his advice is outdated?

Assuming it isn't, he says to research for keywords that have a high CPC and low competition, and then create an authority hub optimized for that keyword. Okay, it is worth a shot, right?

Backlinks

I haven't created backlinks. I know, that is a bad thing. I need backlinks. So, I will start doing that. However, I need to figure out which backlinks are the best. I don't want to waste my time because that would kind of stink.

By the way. I am so impressed with The Keyword Academy, I think I might join up. If this experiment with the high cpc and low competition works, I will definitely join up. I think keyword research is the key to everything.