As most of you probably already know I have been on Hubpages for a very long time – it will be three years in October actually. I knew Hubpages very well, I liked the site, the community and my ability to publish there – I thought it was an adjunct to my “real” money sites. I was wrong.
Over that time I saw it more as a hobby than serious online money making. In fact hubpages has earned me thousands of dollars -indirectly – by getting me several freelance writing gigs – but I’m not talking about that.
I also used hubpages to jump start this blog as my earliest readers were fans who followed me over from hubpages – thanks guys. Its a good place to build “a brand” – but I don’t mean that either.
I knew hubpages was great for backinks – I have PR4 and PR3 pages there and they were easy to get.
I knew I could make some income on HubPages – April was a good month it was the first month I hit over $100 in Adsense – from hubpages alone.
But I didn’t realise you could make serious money on hubpages – I was an idiot.
I started the HubChallenge but used the wrong approach. I started again focusing on Adsense income. I have, since the 29th May I’ve made $51 from my 40 new hubs. In fact of those 40 only 9 have made more than $1. Most of the hubs that have made money I published in the first week …Do the math and you will understand why I am very,very happy.
What was my secret – two things: keyword selection and building backlinks. What are the details on how to achieve these results?
I’m following Court’s approach as detailed in broad terms on his blog with his final posted titled: Make Money with HubPages Experiment Complete he made $475 in the first month, his aim is $3000/month – I’m not as experienced as him – I’m aiming for $2000/month to start.
You want more detail? The details are available to Keyword Academy subscribers. Am I going to repeat them here – no I’m not. One because the technique is Court’s IP and two because if you really aren’t prepared to spend a $1 to have a look – you don’t really want to make money online.
Oh and if you have been on the fence – or you still not convinced that you can really make more than hobby money from hubpages then sign up before Thurs 25 June 6pm MDT because that’s when Court is doing a live webinar on exactly how he made his money on hubpages. (The content will be available afterewards as a video download for subscribers if you missed the date, but you won’t be able to ask live questions obviously). That self-serving affiiate link again: Keyword Academy
There is a great debate about how much those of us who build online passive income sites as to how much you reveal of your niches. There is every opinion out there – some people don’t care who finds their sites – others go to great lengths to conceal their niches.
Its at tricky balance in my opinion and part of the answer lies in people’s underlying personalities and some in their business model. Its an issue that anyone doing passive income blogging has to deal with at some point though.
I resisted the idea of having multiple online personas for a long time. Eventually though I realised that I wanted to start a couple of new personas on hubpages for the hubchallenge – having a few more profile pages which I could link to my sites seeemed like a good idea. Then of course if I build backlinks to those hubs from other sites such as article directories then I need the same persona to link there, and so it goes as they say.
Here’s some points that people do confuse themselves with – who are you hiding from Google or your competitors. If you are running Adsense you are not hiding from Google because the sites are linked with your pub-id – you might as well run Analytics as well and use a gmail address.
If you are monetizing with Affiliate sales or otherwise yes you can “hide” from Google – though if determined they will still track you down unless other people own your sites, as a domain registrar they have access to this information even if you have privacy enabled.
What do you do – do you think hiding your niches is important – do you make a cursory effort to do this – or do you think its really important and you go to some effort and expense to do so?
Today’s post is a little different – because I didn’t write it – a reader did so this is my first ever guest post on Passive Income.
The Thinking Man - Rodin's Original
I don’t know Ray but he wrote to me asking to put this post up because although it was originally published on his SBI! site – it was about to be lost to cyberspace because he’d been unable to liberate it from the clutchs of the evil one (well he didn’t actually say that because if you continue reading you will realise he is much better at the English language than I am, but you get the general idea!).
The post deserves much better than that so enjoy –
My One Year With Site Build It!
by Ray Harvey
This post is not a phony review with a sales pitch at the end, and I am not writing this so that you’ll buy SBI! through an affiliate link.
In fact, I’ve never been an SBI! affiliate, nor would I ever be an SBI! affiliate, because I think SBI! is a very mediocre product. I now speak from one year of actual experience. Definitely, “for what you get,” as the SBI! folks like to express it, it’s not in my estimation worth the extravagant price tag, which is $300.00.
The $300.00 to renew is a complete joke.
I will tell you also, right here in the beginning, that making money was not my primary motive in building my SBI! website, though I was certainly open to that possibility. My site, the-thinking-man dot com, was written entirely by me, and it cost me a great deal of work. Counting the blog, it contained over 200 pages of real content, covering all the four major branches of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics) as well as the two main sub-branches (economics and aesthetics), with numerous articles that elaborate upon each of these subjects.
After one year with SBI!, I can confirm that my initial impression was correct:
There is unquestionably a cultic aspect to the program.
SBI! is not, in my estimation, an outright cult. It’s cultic in that self-help, motivational-speaker, twelve-step sort of way — as opposed to, for example, the more in-your-face type of cults, like Heavens Gate.
And yet as Eric Hoffer taught us in his excellent book True Believer, cults are never the same in terms of specifics but are almost always united in principle. There is, in my opinion, something decidedly Amway-like about SBI!
My second biggest regret is that I missed the deadline for a full refund. I say that in all seriousness, because as soon as I was able to begin building this website in earnest, it was approximately six weeks after I’d made the purchase; I realized immediately then (reading the so-called Action Guide, the SBI! Forums, and especially a long and unpersuasive article by Ken Evoy himself which attempts to pigeonhole anyone who doesn’t like SBI!) that SBI! was a $300.00 mistake. That conviction has only deepened as the months have passed.
Until four days ago, however, I had not planned to write anything about any of this and had even resolved to forget all about it. And then I saw Ken Evoy’s comment on a blog I’d never read before, a blog someone forwarded me the link to because, as coincidence would have it, I’d asked this fellow if he could help me transfer all my work to a new location, since SBI! offers no Import/Export function (among a litany of other things, like a decent blog or the capacity to attach a forum). I was simultaneously stupefied and sickened by Ken Evoy’s threat to sue for “defamation and slander” — not (Evoy hastens) that he’s a litigious person by nature. Yes, of course. He was just so incensed by this obscure blogger (I, at any rate, had never heard of her) daring to speak poorly of him that he almost got litigious, even though he’s not that way by nature. It’s all perfectly logical. That lady, after all, wields a great deal of influence and holds so much sway over so many people that Evoy is justified to sue her for defamation and slander — not, of course, that he’s litigious enough to actually do it. Just saying …
I wonder: Does Evoy realize the magnitude of his miscalculation? Does he know what a fool of himself he’s made? I honestly do not know.
Does he know how appalled I and so many others were to see his comments and the subsequent comments of his sycophants? Does he know how thoroughly he beclowned himself, despite the fact that the majority of points this blogger made against him were incontrovertibly incorrect? I do not know.
The fact that Evoy even bothered to reply to this post at all — at the SBI! forums or her blog — tells us everything we need to know. It tells the entire story and then some. The ensuing comments — beginning with Evoy’s — changed everything.
To the reader who does not know SBI! but is curious about it, there are a number of specific examples I could give from my personal experience after one year with SBI! to illustrate precisely why, in my opinion, it is cultic in the ultimate purport (and I’m not just referring here to those well-documented cult signs such as, for instance, exclusive jargon and neologisms, like as “Action Guide,” “BAM,” “Brainstormit,” and so on); and yet only one example is I think required. It happens to be the one that first tipped me off, about 40 days after I’d purchased SBI!, and candidly my heart sank when I saw it.
It turns out that Ken Evoy is an explicit admirer of a New-Age pseudo-self-development quack, a half-militant vegan and fanatical raw-foodist named Steve Pavlina. Steve Pavlina, incidentally, has also toyed with some very extreme quackery like breatharianism and inedia.
All this, as you know, is standard procedure for cults of all flavors and varieties, and there is absolutely nothing original here. Indeed, it affronts us with its banality.
The jaw-dropping part is that anyone, let alone a medical doctor like the owner of SBI!, Mr. Ken Evoy, could be duped by such an obvious fraud. And yet duped he was — and is, apparently, at least to judge from his comments on the previously mentioned blog, which set Evoy off half-cocked in the first place and precipitated his very misbegotten comment.
I was familiar with Steve Pavlina long before I’d purchased SBI!, and I greatly deplore the fact that I didn’t realize beforehand that Steve Pavlina and Ken Evoy were as cozy as lice. Had I known, it would have saved me a year of folly.
To give you a few other relevant facts about Steve Pavlina, whom Ken Evoy admires so much, he has also admitted on his blog that he has no good understanding of economics or politics, both of which, however, are significant components to the science of philosophy — a fact I mention only because self-development (like everything else) is deeply rooted in philosophy.
Pavlina’s metaphysics are a sloppy admixture of New-Age neo-mysticism and astrology. He admits openly that his metaphysics cannot be proven or verified by any ultimate test, and he is correct: it’s all arbitrary assertions without hard data. That fact alone should make you run in the other direction.
Accordingly, his epistemology places “intuition” above reason, and he often speaks of such things as “psychic pings” and other like nonsense, all of it bunked a billion times.
Pavlina is also fond of such fashionable quackery as numerology, which is why he displays 11:11 at the bottom of his web pages.
Steve Pavlina tells his readers how to find their purpose in life thus:
1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).
2. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”
3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.
This is the sort of pablum that appeals to charlatans and sheep, but it is hardly sound doctrine. The writer of that pablum, Mr. Steve Pavlina, is the fellow whose sentences Ken Evoy was finishing, as he never tires of telling us, the first time the two ever talked, and vice-versa. Touching, isn’t it?
Yet it may not be what you want from the owner of your business-in-a-box.
Site Build It! is not a scam, in my opinion, and it’s not, strictly speaking, multi-level marketing, but it has elements of both. It is, in any case, not, as far as I’m concerned, worth a fraction of your time and money.
Please visit me now at my brand new website, which cost approximately $220.00 less per year than this mediocre SBI! site. And don’t forget to buy my new book, published by Pearl Button Press.
Yup I did it again – I failed! But its a glorious failure let me explain! You probably heard about the 100 hubs in 30 days challenge and I want to say up front – I failed I didn’t make 100 hubs: I made 62 hubs spread over 3 accounts.
Now to date only one of those accounts which has a grand total of 14 hubs in it is the money winner. The hubs specifically targets long tail keywords with a high cost per click and little competition. The hubs are long – 800 words and I have been building backlinks to them as well. They are using this Adsense placement layout.
The first hub I published on that account was on the 29th of May – to date – 12 days later I have made $14.60 in Adsense from that account. I have virtually no Google traffic to the hubs yet – I have build a few backlinks, not enough. Now $14.60 may not sound much but do the maths. I am making that sort of money because I am getting clicks worth up to $5 not 5c. That’s the difference – and to date I am nowhere in the SERPS. When I get to the front page of those SERPS suddenly Court’s claims of making $1500/month on Hubpages don’t sound like good luck at all – just hard work and understanding.
If you want to read about someone who is really making money online with hubpages he’s going for 200 hubs in 30 days! Is he for real? – yes he is, I know that for a fact. We hang out in the same forums. For the last 2 weeks I have been confused as to why my Adsense figures didn’t add up – he’s the reason. With HubPages affiliates your Adsense ID is served on 10% of their page impressions and his ID is making me so much money it was causing a serious gap between my channels and my overall Adsense figures LOL!
So what’s the secret formula for making money with Adsense on Hubpages?
Keyword research – that’s the number one most important thing – find high value/low competition keywords. How do you specifically do that – well to be honest I’m not telling you cause I am using the system taught at The Keyword Academy which is a paid program – and its their system I’m using. Its a legit above board and logical approach which happens to work. Its nothing new but the detail is what made the difference for me. Its their system so I’m not spreading their IP all over the Internet – sign up and try it!
Write an adequate amount of unique content – the debate is raging as usual about what is adequate content of course.
Throw a lot of shit against the wall until something sticks. I feel that I got lucky getting such quick success – statistically I could have done 50 hubs before I started to get some income.
If you decide you need a new ID for this experiment – feel free to sign up with as my HubPage affiliate!
This will be brief – the hubchallenge has got bigger – I am really trying to optimize some hubs for Adsense – you might want to check out my thoughts on Adsense placement on HubPages. The reason the challenge got bigger: I’m now doing 800 word hubs not 400 word – and also articles for backlinks – so that another 450 odd words per a hub. I don’t think I am going to make the “deadline” of next week – but I am determined to have some income producing hubs not matter what! Some of the writing will be outsourced but I am planning on a serious writing fest for the next few days as well.
If you think I’m mad check out Ban over at make money online with SEO he’s attempting 200 hubs in 30 days – how he quite manages to produce that amount of content plus the work finding the keywords of course is a little bit beyond me – but I’m very impressed.
