My How To Spot Opportunity article got a lot of traffic and comments. I hope some of you are implementing what you learned. This is a Part 2, of sorts. It’s a completely different method, and it’s free. This won’t make you rich, but it can easily pay for your utility bills every month. :)
If you’ve got more time than money than one of the best ways to make money online is utilizing free traffic methods. I test everything at least once and, over the past couple of years, HubPages has been one of the more promising methods of generating traffic and cash.
HubPages are really easy to create (seriously, it will take you less than 15 minutes to create your first Hub) and the traffic they generate with almost no work on your part is pretty impressive.
BTW, there are NO affiliate links to paid products in this article. While I have no problem recommending products with my affiliate link, for this particular situation it isn’t completely necessary.
(Side note: What I mean by Paid Products is products you have to pay for. Yes, the HubPages links in this report are “affiliate” links, but HubPages is completely free to join!)
Steps to creating a profitable Hub:
1) Pick a keyword phrase using the free Google Keyword Tool (more on that in a bit) and make that phrase the name of your Hub.
2) Write a 400-500 word article on that keyword phrase. Make it informative and helpful. Don’t try to sell anything. No affiliate links…yet.
This is important, so I’ll repeat it again: provide quality content in your article.
While HubPages doesn’t really police their site so you can do what you want, it’s a much better idea to make your content good.
3) Use SocialPoster.com (free) or any similar service to submit that Hub to the Social networks.
4) Once you start getting traffic pepper in an affiliate link at the beginning and end of your Hub.
This whole process will take you less than an hour once you have all your social posting site accounts in place.
I know it sounds too easy, but that’s really all there is to it.
Let’s get to the details...
Hub Settings:
Just follow the settings above for your Hub. Since HubPages splits the Adsense with you 60/40 (60% to you 40% to them) you may not want to include any ads at all. That’s up to you.
I’ve found that Adsense is not taking away at all from the affiliate revenue my Hubs generate. And hey, you’re helping HubPages out with the 40%.
I’m on board for helping quality companies like them. If they don’t generate revenue they won’t be around to help us generate revenue, get it?
Keywords:
Just like in my How To Spot Opportunity article, use the Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
People seem to get stuck on keywords, but it’s really not that difficult. What you want for your HubPages are keyword phrases that have a decent search volume (at least 10,000/month) and low competition (under 50,000) when you do a phrase match search in Google.
For example:
As you can see this particular keyword has an Average search volume of 12,100/month. Important to note the Match Type on the right side. The default is Broad, change it to Phrase when doing your searches.
And here’s the competition in Google for the same keyword. Again it’s a phrase search (the keyword in quotes).
So this keyword has 21,500 competing pages in Google.
12,500 avg search volume and 21,500 competing pages is a pretty good keyword to use. I’ll show you the exact stats for this keyword in the Proof This Works section below.
I know what you might be thinking “well that’s all well and good Karol, but where do I get my keyword ideas?!”
And this is probably where you think I’ll throw in an affiliate link or two. :)
I’m not gonna play you like that.
Let me repeat what I stated at the beginning of this article…
There are NO affiliate links to paid products in this article. While I have no problem recommending products with my affiliate link (and there are ways to make this whole process easier with paid software) I’m going to give you the free method.
The easiest way to quickly generate keyword ideas for your Hubs is to look at other successful Hubs. :)
Here’s a list of Hot Hubs: http://hubpages.com/hubs/hot/
Yup, that’s it. Just take their keyword phrases, check them out using the Google method above to find the best ones, and write YOUR OWN Hub on that keyword phrase.
Checking out other Hubs in the Google keyword tool will give you other keyword ideas so don’t feel like you can’t use them too.
What I’m trying to say is use your brain a bit. Get those synapses firing. :)
Got it? Good…
Proof This Works:
Because, for whatever reason, nobody believes anything anymore without proof. ;)
This is a screen shot (from my PrimaryAds.com account) for the month of January 2010 for the affiliate links in a single Hub. $24.80.
A screen shot from Google Adsense for that same Hub. $18.70
The total this Hub made for all of January 2010 was only $43.50.
Does that excite you?
It should.
Here’s why:
That Hub has been around for more than a year. 1 hour of work and hundreds of dollars of profit. It’s repeatable. It’s easy to do. And it’s completely FREE to get started.
Let’s say you only create 10 Hubs that make an average of $1 per day and it takes you 2 hours of your total time per hub. That’s 20 hours of time for an extra $300/month. Realistically, every hub you make won’t make money. But even if you had to create 50 hubs to generate $300/month that’s a great start. It’s not just about the money. It’s also about the learning experience.
Is that all worth it to you? I hope so. Because if not, I don’t think I can ever help you.
(I am NOT checking my Feedburner stats for a while due to the subscriber loss that last sentence will bring! haha)
Coming Soon!
In case you didn’t read Monday’s post: I’m launching 3 things within the next 11 days.
This coming Monday, March 1, 2010 comes the free Freedom Fighters e-course/newsletter.
Next Friday, March 5, 2010 (Midnight Eastern Standard Time, using time.gov) comes the How To Live Anywhere eBook. The price starts at just 10 cents and goes up 10 cents after every sale. All money received (+ matching by me) in the first 24 hours will go to third world entrepreneurs via one of my favorite sites: Kiva.org.
Then on Monday March 8, 2010 comes the RidiculouslyExtraordinary.com Over-My-Shoulder-This-Is-What-I’m-Working-On Membership Area. (Catchy name.) This won’t be cheap and I don’t expect to sell too many seats (how is that for honesty? haha), which means you’ll see some things that few others will see. I’ll show you an actual niche project I’m working on using something I call “Product Leasing.” Essentially that’s selling an information product you don’t own and it has nothing to do with affiliate programs.
If you want to be notified of the eBook and the membership area just fill out this form (don’t worry, I hate spam, and you won’t get any from me). BTW, you’ll get a 15 minute head start on the eBook (remember, the price increases after every sale) and a discount on the membership area.