Celebration On HubPages - 1 Month, 10 Hubs And 22 Cents

Happy One Month

Fellow Hubbers, join me in my celebration of one month on HubPages. It was an eventful time, packed with learning and getting to know all the rules here. It was also a pleasure of meeting you all and deciding that I want to stay here for longer. The community is absolutely fantastic, so helpful and encouraging. HubPages is a great system but without its people would be just another article directory.

Why did I choose HubPages over Constant Content, Triond or similar sites?

I was actually looking for article directory or a system where I could earn money writing. I have done my homework, looked around, and checked other systems. I've registered with Constant Content and Triond.

Constant Content is a kind of an auction where people bid for your articles and buy them. The plus side of it is the money upfront – once the article is sold.

The minuses: there are no other incentives, if customer buys full rights the article doesn’t belong to you anymore and my English is not good enough yet to pass revision process which itself takes a week. I may start writing there again at one point just to differentiate my potential sources of income, once my writing improves.

Triond is very similar to HubPages in this aspect that it pays from adverts so there is no upfront quick money. The interface is very poor though and there is not much one can do to make the article look pretty and well formatted.

The rights to the article are also lost once it's published. They publish it on various known sites so potentially the income could be bigger but I cannot say anything about it with only one article published.

I have also read a lot about Suite101 but as the process of signing up required proving that I'm a good writer already, I gave up on this for now. There was also a rumour they were hit by the Panda update and have done nothing to recover yet so I guess it wouldn't be the best choice anyway.

So I ended up here on HubPages

• with easy registration process,
• wonderful tools for hub creation and
• huge learning centre supported by
• countless hubs about HubPages written by you.

So thank you very much for all this help, it's invaluable! Also the fact that:

• I have so much control over the articles and
• the rights stay with me for whatever it's worth, makes a big difference.

No quick money and hard work

I have read many hubs discussing the earnings process on HubPages and the two things stand out. It's a hard work and it's not a quick money scheme.

Hard work involves:

• writing a lot, and then even more, high quality hubs,
• searching for keywords that people look for in google search and
• working on backlinks to your hubs.

The last two activities are all about getting traffic.

Creating a hub takes a lot of time

I may have only 10 hubs but they weight like 100. I have spent a lot of time working on them. I've got a feeling, that I actually spent all my spare time in last month on HubPages. So I'm very proud of those first 10 hubs like parents are proud of first steps of their baby.

I read somewhere that it should take no more than an hour to write a 1000 words long hub with editing. Well I have a way to go then.

Maybe the typing bit takes only an hour but then comes the editing and dictionary checks. After that – a couple of hours on keyword tool before I settle on a proper title and have a list of keywords to use. Finally there is formatting and making hub pretty. All together takes a few hours of work for sure.

I know it's too many but I'm still learning. Not only how to find and work with keywords, but also how to write. English is my second language as you may easy tell from grammar and style errors I make. I can only hope that the more I write the quicker and better it will be. And I should be able to reuse my keywords once I create a descent set for all the topics I cover.

My first money earned on HubPages

I've read more than once that it's not a quick money project and that it takes about a year and 100 hubs before one can see any profit. So I was actually in shock when I started to see some cents being added to my account. I know that for most of you it's not even worth mentioning but for me it's simply awesome.

It was a pure luck that I have joined HubPages after they introduced the HP Ad program where we are paid for impressions not clicks. Thanks to that my earnings simply exceeded my expectations and they keep doing it.

For me it's a great motivator as it means that I can see instant results for my effort. So I want to raise a toast to the HP team for giving me an opportunity to earn my first 22 cents.

I would never imagined that I will not only publish my writings at all, but also do it English and earn money out of it – unbelievable!

Another 11 months till 1 year badge

It's the beginning of the journey for me. I hope my motivation won't decrease and I will keep writing. I believe the bigger money will come along with improvements to my writing skills.

But even if they stay on 22 cents level, when I will be celebrating my first year here I will become richer in other ways. I can say for certain that

• I will know much more about SEO,
• My writing skills including grammar and style will improve,
• I will have a good record of content writing,
• I will know a great bunch of people and be part of amazing community,
• And of course I will get my 1 year badge.

Wish me luck in getting there!