HubPages HubRank Minimum to Avoid NoFollowed Links

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Dollars

I’ve started up a bit of an experiment regarding the all comers content publishing site called HubPages.

Recently, there was a bit of a hub bub (Hah!) when a well known Internet marketing website personality suggested that writing 30 Hubs in 30 Days could lead to improved search engine rankings for a website.

At the time, I was too busy to look into it, and frankly, I’m not really the type to jump in and do something because everyone else is doing it. However, at the conclusion of the experiment, not only were they able to get their search engine rankings to improve, but they were also actually making money off of the published Hubs.

I put it in the back of mind as something to check into at a later date. That later date, is now.

HubPage Nofollow Rules

There is a catch. As some sort of method to weed out spammers and other unsavory publishers, HubPages automatically nofollows the links of all Hubs from starting authors, or Hub Builders. My HubPages NoFollow Guide is a good place to get the juicy details.

Each Hubber, as HubPages authors are called, is given a HubRank. Your HubRank is essentially an automated ranking of you as an author. Everyone starts out low. (I don’t remember the exact number, I’ll have to look it up.) By publishing Hubs, and by “participating” on HubPages your score rises. Until your score reaches at least 75, all of your outbound links, like those being bragged about during the 30 hubs in 30 days posts, are nofollowed.

Each individual Hub is also ranked. This individual Hub rank is called a HubScore. Rankings seem to start at 50 and then work their way higher based on things like how much traffic they get, how many people vote them up, and so on. So long as the HubSocre is above 40, the links will not be nofollowed and the power of writing for HubPages is now within your hands.

According to my profile, I joined 5 weeks ago, but I only wrote my first hub 4 days ago. So far, I have published 5 Hubs and commented on a dozen or so posts. My HubRank has risen to 71, so I’m 4 away from the promised land of 75 and all of my links having their nofollow tags removed.

HubPage AdSense Challenge

While reading various hubs, I came across one where the author noted how many highly ranked (several #1 results) pages he had in Google search results and yet how little money he made from his AdSense ads.

It didn’t take long to see a couple of common misconceptions in how online advertising programs like Google AdSense work. I wrote up a Hub (nach) describing the misunderstandings many people have about working with AdSense, and as challenged by the original Hub poster, I also laid out step by step instructions for how to make some AdSense income based on his hubs.

Basically, it is finding a better paying keyword with low competition and the leveraging those high ranking website’s authority to drive higher and better paying traffic to a new Hub with a better keyword. Hopefully it works for him and help make money with AdSense.

Drop by and check out my profile: Hub Llama

If you have a HubPages account, do me a favor and add me as a favorite so it doesn’t say no one has added Hub Llama as a favorite on every page. I don’t need to be favorited by thousands, but the “no one” think isn’t very fun :)

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Writers Making Money With Affiliate Programs

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Dollars

There are hundreds of ways for a writer to make money online with their writing. The most commonly used is advertising. The most commonly used advertising network is Google Ads, called AdSense. AdSense is the easiest ad program to use.

Google advertising is sold through the Google AdWords program. The ads sold there are then published on Google’s websites (like search results) and also on other websites. Getting those ads on your website is easy. Just sign up for the Google AdSense program. (Notice the similar, but different names to avoid being confused.)

Google does the rest for you. You don’t have to pick which ads to show on your web pages, Google selects ads based upon the content of the page. Theoretically, this makes it more likely that people will click on the ads, which in turn means that you will make more money from the advertisements displayed on your websites.

Google Ads, both AdWords and AdSense are some of the most talked about and studied ad programs on the planet. Take that plus the fact that Google is a big, well regarded company, that makes a ton of money already, and it is a pretty good bet that they won’t be screwing you over by not counting your clicks, or not paying you, or whatever.

The downside is that as the most studied and examined advertising program online, there are many people out there, both website owners and advertisers, who have the whole Google Ads thing down to a science. That does not mean that you won’t make money with Google Ads, but it does mean that it isn’t quite as simple as it seems. Just plugging the Google AdSense code into your HTML code isn’t good enough. You need to keep studying, reading, and analyzing to ensure maximum profit.

Grab the Make Money Writing Online RSS Feed and we’ll keep you constantly up to date on all the latest REAL, CONFIRMED, Google AdSense tips, tricks, and advice.

While Google AdSense may be the easiest advertising program for webmasters to use, there are few people who thing it is the most profitable. That makes sense. Generally, earning more money requires more skill or more effort.

Affiliate programs are the second tier of website income that you can build by writing online articles and content for your own website publishing empire. The most well-known of these is Amazon Associates.

Much like Google, Amazon is a large, well-respected online behemoth, that makes plenty of money without having to cheat a tiny little website owner like you. Again, this provides a measure of comfort and confidence with using the Amazon affiliates program.

Each month, the guys over at Amazon push a specific product or category of products by offering a higher than normal payout, and sometimes improved tools to make putting affiliate ads for those products on your sites that you make money by writing online with.

This month, the category is "Digital" for whatever that means. One of the featured tools is a MP3 Widget which provides an active, updating ad for your site. I built one by selecting "Alternative Music" to get a feel for what they look like and how they perform. You saw it earlier in this article.

If you are planning on buying some music, or anything else, from Amazon, click on that ad and go buy your stuff. It won’t cost you any more, and it will help generate some extra data for our research which means that our reports will be even more helpful and accurate. You get to help yourself, and make some money for us at the same time :) We’re also running some experiments on our sites to see if things like putting a big fat widget like this in the middle of your post messes up your search engine rankings for that article.

Stick around, or grab that RSS Feed.

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Keep Making Money Online By Writing Ahead

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Dollars

writing-ahead-graphicIf you target the right keywords and focus your writing just so, you might be able to rank highly for a specific phrase or set of key words without updating your site regularly. But, doing so is really more the realm of those make money fast types who want to convince you that you can make big money on the Internet by doing virtually nothing. All you have to do is throw up a couple of websites that you can build in minutes. Of course, you will never figure it out on your own, so you’ll have to cough up $49 for an eBook, or subscription, or something.

But, since this site is about helping writers make money online by doing what they do best, that is writing, I’m not going to go there right now. Instead, I will tell you that the three-word phrase you see on everyone’s how to make money posts, Content Is King, is 100% true.

I am currently in the midst of an ongoing project to build a big money making empire of websites. I could use all those SEO tips and webmaster tricks out there to try and make crappy sites rank high, or I could just do what I do best, write quality articles and posts for these sites and let Google do what it does best, separate crappy MFA sites from good ones.

That being said, it would take very fast typing fingers to write daily content for even a dozen websites, let alone several dozen. Trying to do that while running a small freelance writing business would require the aid of some form of time stopping ability.

What is a budding writing web entrepreneur to do?

Write ahead.

Every day, you will be writing. After all, you are a writer, and that is what writers do.

However, some days you will fill like writing about certain topics and not about others. Save the forcing-it writing for paying clients with deadlines and use your want-to writing to write for your sites. You’ll write faster and better.

Don’t just write one post or article and move on. Write three. Write a dozen. Heck, write 20. Then take advantage of WordPress’s scheduling ability to meter those posts out in nice search-engine friendly increments. Personally, I like to publish every other day, not including weekends. That makes a Tuesday-Thursday publishing schedule fairly attractive.

Sticking to this schedule gives you two major benefits. First, your content is always new and fresh, which Google loves.

Second, since you know that your “automatic posts” go out every Tuesday and Thursday, when you need publish something a little more timely, or you just don’t want to put what you just wrote at the end of the queue, you can set it to post on any of the other days of the week and know that you won’t be overlapping without having to go into your control panel and look it up.

Do this for each site as you set them up and have maximum enthusiasm for the topic. You should easily be able to crank out 5 posts. With the 2 a week schedule, they’ll last 2 1/2 weeks before you have to come back.

Chances are, you’ll have plenty of good ideas before then.  Keep going and pretty soon you’ll have enough posts queued up to take a vacation and not miss a beat.

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Increase Traffic to Your Sites Easily With Images From Ads and Affiliate Links

Posted on August 28, 2009 by Dollars

Ask anyone and you will find that graphics and images make your websites and blogs more appealing and easier to read. Websites that are good looking will keep readers around longer and build more web traffic. But finding suitable graphics and then getting them uploaded, re-sized, linked, and listed with the proper HTML code and ALT tags can be time consuming.  Here is a quick tip to make posting your writing with images faster and easier, whether you are building a full website from scratch, or posting to an established WordPress blog.

You can do this all of the time, but for those instances where a customized graphic or image just isn’t going to be worth the time or effort, consider using graphical ads as your images instead. Amazon’s affiliate program, Amazon Associates, offers numerous types of advertisements that you can place on your website. You earn money when people buy something at Amazon based on the ads you put up on your site.  Choose a graphical advertisement under either "Links" or "Widgets" and past the code into your post. Maybe like, oh say, this one :)

 

Use Relevant Ads to Make Your Site Better

Make sure the ad is relevant to your posting. Check out this recent post at a Dad Parenting Advice blog about how cargo shorts can help with a young child’s collection of sticks and rocks. A few minutes at the Amazon Associates site and a colorful graphic of cargo shorts is ready to go on the website.  And, since the article is about cargo shorts, the images fit perfectly; they certainly look as good as any shorts picture you would find laying around in a clip art gallery or stock photography website.

While it is by no means a certainty, it is completely possible that a Dad or Mom reading that article would think to themselves, "Hey, he’s right. Cargo shorts would be a great way to help carry around some of my baby stuff." In that case, the reader might actually appreciate the useful link to find some of those shorts.

As an added bonus, if someone does happen to be moved to buy something from that link, either because of the site’s persuasive prose, or because of the catchy ad served from Amazon’s own web servers, then the author makes money from their online writings.

Isn’t that the whole point?

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