I just got paid by eHow this week for the month of April; $22.94 was deposited in my Paypal account. For me, eHow has been totally passive since last October. I haven't written anything, nor do I promote in any fashion. 100% passive income.
Contrast that to HubPages. I have been writing Hubs in April as part of a challenge. Granted I didn't get the 30 Hubs completed, but it was still a lot of work and a substantial amount of effort taking up many, many hours of research and writing. Furthermore, this month I will be doing some promoting of the Hubs that I have written trying to stimulate traffic. For the month of April, I earned $22.59 from HubPages.
I am actually surprised that the totals are as close as they are. Considering the amount of effort devoted to HubPages and the number of articles (141 vs 38), I would have thought that I could have earned more than eHow.
And look at what has happened so far this month. eHow is at $4.50 so far and HubPages is at $1.97. I am incredibly disappointed and surprised that I am not earning more considering the effort. Traffic seems reasonable. It is certainly not decreasing. It is actually slowly improving. The amount of search engine traffic seems to be reasonable as well. HubPages is showing over 75% search engine traffic according to Google Analytics.
I have tried to keep a decent attitude and haven't had near the number of emotional ups and downs as when I first started. But, I must admit that 3 months of declining revenue after a decent February is starting to take its toll. I suppose this could all be related to my lack of effort during the early months of this year. Maybe all of the effort now will be paying off this fall.
But I am really getting down and having some difficulty getting motivated to keep plugging away considering we are almost halfway through the month and I don't even have $2 of earnings at HubPages. That is quite depressing to think about considering how much I earned last month. I would think that increasing traffic with a decent proportion of search engine traffic should at least allow my earnings to hold steady.
Anyway, thanks for letting me vent. I will start promoting several of the Hubs that were written as part of the challenge and report the results. So far, I think writing and publishing has helped generate a little more traffic but, as you just read, no improvement in earnings.
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I'm not surprised you're frustrated. I did 95 Hubs and decided not to do any more. I do earn some money from them each month, though a lot of that comes from Amazon commissions rather than Adsense. Sometimes you just have to step back and think about whether it's really working. I would definitely suggest having a think about creating your own sites and doing writing for that, then adding links to your Hubs back to your own site to give it a boost. That way they are still very useful
ReplyDeleteIt can get frustrating I agree. This was the reason I stopped writing on Hubpages originally. However, the fact my hubs kept making earnings (in fact they increased) made me go back. The last couple of months I have done a bit of backlinking and I am starting to see the benefit - I am on track for this month to be a record month.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best people I know on Hubpages though is Bloggerdollar - last month according to his blog he made over $300 from 45 hubs many of which have been up for 3 years!
Kidgas, the HubPages numbers do seem to be quite discouraging. You put forth a lot of effort for little return. Maybe you should take a break from HubPages and concentrate elsewhere for a while. Give the articles a chance to mature a bit to see if they begin to pick up steam.
ReplyDeleteBristolboy’s comment is encouraging, but I see he also took a break from HubPages for a bit and then came back. In my experience, HubPages requires a lot of work and the rewards are minimal (my opinion). I’ve had better results with Suite 101 and one of my free blogger.com blogs than I’ve had with HubPages.
I also like Ruth’s idea of creating your own site and using the Hubs for backlinking. Since you’re getting traffic to your Hubs, use it to your advantage even if you’re not earning money from them.
Sorry to hear that HubPages is getting you down after all the work you've put into it. Although, with so many articles, I am sure, over time, you will see a good return. At least you are continuing to make money from your eHow articles without putting any effort into them. You may want to try putting some effort into a different site for awhile. I've noticed Triond's Google earnings (at least for me) have picked up quiet a bit over the past couple of months. My opinion is you can earn more Google income from Triond than Hubpages - but that is just my experience. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I want to say thanks to you all for your encouraging comments. It makes me feel good to know that you all empathize with my current state.
ReplyDeleteRuth, you do make a great point and I am certainly leaning in the direction of making my own site. I fear a lot of wasted effort, however. Although I can't say that the effort would be any more than what I am currently doing.
Bristolboy, Felicia, and DeAnna,
I do wonder whether some time away and allowing the articles to mature would be worthwhile. Even before the most recent push, I noticed that the traffic was starting to increase without any effort on my part. February was a good month for AdSense and so I thought it was starting to click. Guess not.
I will continue working with the promotion aspect of the challenge since I want to follow-through. That will take me to one full year online which should offer some good comparison data going forward.
Thanks again for all your valuable comments. I certainly appreciate them and value you all highly.
Buy New York Times Best Sellers List Books Cheap said in October 19th, 2010 at 2:03 am
ReplyDeleteI’ve been writing for Hubpages since July 2010. I’ve not earned a penny. I’ve received little traffic. I’m encouraged after reading your article and recent revelation in using the community to gain knowledge, support, interest, and the whole nine! I’m going to keep striving as the ability is there. I am earned an expert author status with Enzine my first article!
HubPages biggest points of differentiation is their ability to help you earn revenue, optimize your page’s ad placement and help you bring in traffic. It’s good that several of their improvements circle around these points in order to bring more value to their users. Their new feature set not only increases value for existing users but entices new customers as well. HubPages is sticking to t
ReplyDeleteYou can use your own affiliate links too. If you do, the revenue from those would be 100 percent yours. There’s also an opportunity to build even more residual income by signing up other authors under you. The payment formula is a little complicated, so I won’t cover it here. You can read about that in the hub I’ve linked above.
ReplyDelete