Blogging Way of Life

My favorite writing platform Hubpages is running a contest starting from Feb 14 and will last until Mar 15. The prizes for the contest is worth nearly 5000$ and winner gets all.

For those of you who don’t know what Hubpages is; Hubpages is a writing platform where you can publish your own articles and thanks to Hubpages high Google ranks you can get organic traffic without any effort. Hubpages will give a clue on a topic for each day during the contest and you have to solve the clue and publish an article at least 300 words. The quality of the articles and the first one who solves the clue will be awarded points. At the end of the month the winner with highest point will get all the prizes.

The Hublove Contest

Sign-up for Hubpages

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For maximizing your earnings you shouldn’t just go on and write whats on your head. You should go for the keywords inside people’s minds. The keywords you choose determines the traffic. You don’t need to sign-up for high cost SEO services for finding your path. The best tools you need are already at your service for free.

•  Google Trends

Google Trends is a free Google service for looking up Google search statistics. You can compare similar keywords and choose which one to go on with. For example you want to write an article on “PlayStation 3″. You can choose between writing PlayStation3, PlayStation 3, PS3, PS 3. By comparing those keywords you can find out which term has been searched the most. In this case as you can see PS3 has been the most searched term.

• Google ADWORDS Tool

After determining your keyword (In this case let’s go on with PS3), you can find out which combination gives the best CPC. When we check the PS3 keyword with the Adwords tool Google Adwords gives us keyword ideas with search volumes. From the menu we can choose to display the average CPC of the keyword combinations. For PS3 example; “PS3 forums” gives average of 2,02$ while “PS3 forum” gives out 0,76$. So if you are going to publish a post about PS3 forums you should choose “PS3 forums” instead of “PS3 forum”.

• Adsense Top Paying Keywords

If you want to go out to the big league and compete for the highest paying keywords, you can look for that list. However the competition for those keywords is too much and it’s not a piece of cake to get those earnings. For example “Domain Name Yahoo pays out maximum CPC of 520$ and average of 97$. If you can get good rankings for some of those keywords it’s sure that you can earn big money.

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This month I’ve focused my attention to Hubpages. (You can check my review of Hubpages) Regarding that I don’t have so much time from my day work I choose Hubpages because it offers good organic traffic without any effort at all. It also gives me the freedom to write on any topic. This month I created two new Hubs:

Solar Power - Ways of Producing Electricty from Sun

PES 2008 TRICKS & MOVES

Both of them started generating Google traffic immediately. My Hub traffic is rising constantly and I expect double income in 2 months. Let’s cut the talk and come to the facts:

Earnings for January: 9,57$

My adsense earnings slightly increased from last month but my Amazon affiliates not producing any income somehow. Although I created a Hub about science fiction movies which seemed perfect for Amazon ads, I couldn’t get any orders.

I expect to find some time from my work this month and put some effort on my blog at the same time with my Hubs and at least earn more than 15$ in February.

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December has been an awful month in terms of earning money. At the first half of December I couldn’t actually deal with my blog or write on Hubpages because of my day job. Anyways I couldn’t create much content but I surely learn a lot of stuff in terms keyword targeting and SEO. I focused much more to my Hubs this month which creates me organic traffic without much effort and will propably convert better in future. I’ve written Hubs on higher paying keywords so there is an increase in my eCPM. December has been a bad month for CTR and I am taking this on Christmas spirit Last month I earned a few bucks from Amazon even though I didn’t intend to. This month I intend some Amazon earnings but couldn’t make any sales so I guess this is my bad luck this month. Please note that most of my adsense income is generated from Hubpages, and I expect a linear increase in my Hubpages earnings as the number of my Hubs go up.

Earnings for December: 8,74$

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I’ve been working at my day job which requires many travelling and I haven’t been able to find time for blogging lately. I was thinking of buying a laptop for using those times I spend on roads. I am spending at least 3 hours a day from my house to job and job to house and instead of sleeping all the time I got this laptop to create something. Actually I didn’t buy the laptop (don’t worry I didn’t steal it), my boss gave me one so I didn’t have to spend any money for my blogging actions. My boss is funding my blogging from now on. (Although he doesn’t know it:) Yes, Day jobs can be good sometimes.

If you are living in a crowded city like I do, most of your time is spent for nothing. I have a writing passion and I’m happy that I will turn that time into something I like doing. My first road project is a Hub about the top ten science-fiction movies, which was a topic I was craving to write for but I couldn’t find the time. If you spend so much time in traffic or travelling like I do look out for being a mobile blogger like I do. I will publish my hub soon (If I spend some more time at traffic it will be finished). If you are a science fiction fan like I am, keep an eye on my Hubpages.

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I don’t like to say “I knew it was coming” but I knew. I’ve written a post weeks before Agloco - Dead Already??? I was questioning how people could fall into the idea of getting rich by doing nothing. The real question to be asked was how did the big guys like John Chow got into this.

John Chowpublished Agloco’s mail to him telling that they can’t fund the operations anymore. It wasn’t a big surprise after-all. I was expecting better from them at least in admitting that they have failed. Agloco home page doesn’t show any signs of this catastrophe. An internet user can look at the page and still get the feeling that Agloco can make them rich. The ship has already sunk and captain (I guess we can consider John Chow as the captain of the ship regarding 29.668 people in his network)

I wonder when will the new super pyramid scheme idea emerge after this disaster and how many of those who believed Agloco will also believe in that brand new pyramid scheme?

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This is the first month my blog is published and I have started monetizing my blog. In the first month of the blog I wasn’t expecting any income actually because of the low content and no regular visitors at all. I have started this blog with 100$ spending (for my hosting and domain name) and the worst case scenario for me is losing that money. Looking at my earnings I won’t lose that money even if my earnings stays same. (which isn’t likely because as the content increases and I gain regular visitors the traffic is more likely to increase in an exponential graph)

Earnings for November: 15,76$

• Google Adsense Earnings : 13,12$
• Amazon Affiliate Earnings: 2,64$

 As you can see I don’t use Amazon Ads in my blog because it’s not an item/product related blog. I am publishing my Amazon ads at my Hubs. I have sold 4 items and this is a good amount as a beginner at Hubpages. I have earned from Adsense from my blog and my hubpages account. I have accomplished my first amount with a decent amount for the first month of a blog and I am expecting the 100$ limit in a few months.

My blog has been visited 1,813 times with 3,034 page visits. The best traffic source is StumbleUpon for now. Referring Sites has %86 percentage in my traffic while search engines are %4,5. (Which is normal for a new blog) For a new blog social networking sources seems the best way to start driving traffic.

Regarding all the effort I am spending on my my Hubs created 1,620 visits in November with %60 of the traffic is from search engines. So you can use Hubpages if you want to benefit from free organic traffic without any effort.

Thanks to all supporters and followers.

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Hubpages is a multi user writer platform where you can create hubs (similar to blog posts) and publish. The first question you will ask is “Why should I publish my articles in Hubpages instead of my own blog?”

There are numerous answers to that. You can (and should) use Hubpages if you are an amateur writer or a blogger running your own blog. There are other platforms similar to Hubpageslike Squidoo and Helium. I don’t like the money system used in Squidoo (At the end of the article I explain how Hubpages arranges the money) and Helium isn’t as popular as Hubpages. You can see on the Alexa graph that Hubpages has an increasing visitor trend.

I have chosen Hubpages because I am blogging about blogging and there are many other subjects I would like to write about. I discovered Hubpages at that point. You can check on my sidebar the Hubs I have published which are all on different subject. I can’t start a blog on each topic I will only write for once, in Hubpages you have the freedom to write on any topic and the Hub gets categorized for the related topic.

The out-most feature of Hubpages is reaching a large community. I have my own blog BloggerDollar and I know the effort spent to gain an audience. In Hubpages you don’t have to spend an effort to drive traffic. Hubpages is already high-ranked by Google and you get the privilege to write on a high traffic site. If you look at my stats you can see that my visitor count is going up and I’m doing that without any effort. As you can see from my traffic sources most of my traffic is from organic search engine traffic.

The Hubpages uses a royalty system which differs from other systems. You submit your own Google Adsense, Amazon and Ebay ID’s and your own ads are shown %50 of time. You can trace your own statistics by submitting your Google Analytics code so you can track your account. This is a huge difference from other platforms because you get your money from Google or Amazon or Ebay which is the most reliable method. You can also make money by using the referral system. (If one hubber signs-up through your account you get %10 of ad displays for his page but he/she still gets %50 so you get the extra amount from the Hubpages) If you are interested in writing you can sign-up.

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Do you still remember the name Agloco? They tried to gain success using the same old story, “Get rich by doing nothing”. I am turning my spider senses on if someone proposes me getting rich by doing nothing. In my opinion Agloco was another pyramid scheme and I didn’t think of signing up before I see a cheque signed by them. I don’t know how an expert like John Chow got into this (money tastes sweet) but I think that he lost his hopes also. John Chow’s Agloco Page have been updated at the beginning and mid of each month until July and no more updates since then. I don’t think that even he has the toolbar installed but he was relying on 21.000 referrals in his network.

 You have to study some human behaviours before getting in a project at this scale. Agloco managed to get huge number of users following their announcement. (1.000.000 sign ups as last statistics) The idea of earning money from referrals attends people. While each individual signs up and make other people sign up as referrals, those new users will also see that the way of earning money depends on earnings from referrals so they look out for referrals too, but there comes a time when the community is saturated and no more users are signing up as referrals. No more chains added. What happens next? The last ring of chain breaks-up because they aren’t making any money actually and the links get broken from bottom to top. What you get actually is the reverse chain reaction. Agloco could prevent that by distributing cash immediately and keeping the chains connected but they are promising income in a very far away future. You can’t expect people to be patient in such a system.

Everybody knows that systems based on pyramid schemes don’t last long. It only makes the links at the top rich. I guess that John Chow knew that and he tried his luck. If Agloco ever pays out money, John Chow will be the one getting it.

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I am a supporter of Google Adsense for bringing quality to the online ad services and they have set the standards higher for advertisers and publishers. I am using adsense units because of the confidence and believing in their good intention to provide a good experience for both advertisers and publishers. I can understand their tendency to look out for advertisers because they are the source of money. The latest news already created some buzz for publishers even before officially announced.

According to Problogger’s news Google will announce shortly the new ad click system which disables the clicks to background and texts, making clicks only available through title and url. According to Problogger Google is explaining this situation by telling :

“We’re rolling out a change to our text ad formats to help reduce accidental clicks and increase value for advertisers…..This new format will match the changes we’ve implemented on Google.com to help decrease the number of accidental clicks and increase the number of ad conversions. A reduction in accidental clicks will keep users on your pages, interacting with your content until they choose to click on an ad. This change will enhance the user’s overall experience with your websites and improve advertiser campaign value, but it’s likely that your click-through rate will decrease.”

I have no objection to increasing targeted clicks but doing this by disabling click-able areas doesn’t seem okay with me. Google will also cancel some targeted clicks by the way. I tried to figure out the effects by making an experiment myself. I looked at some ads in various pages and I realized that I was trying to click the ads through backgrounds mostly. That’s because Google Ads has been a brand itself and our eyes are perceiving whole ad unit as a block. You can argue that people would find a way to click ads somehow but this is ads we are speaking of and people won’t be so persistent to click ads.

There’s an opinion that advertisers are going to increase the rates and the changes won’t effect publishers but I think that it will create bad results in short term and will push publishers to look out for new sources.

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