Take The $100 Hub Challenge

Otterbox iPad 2 Case And Other Stuff

2011-12-14T23:21:00.000-08:00

I've been expanding my writing portfolio in recent times.

Ive been using other sites to get more traffic (always helpful) and ensure that all of one's eggs in not just in a single bucket or two. I feel that if you expand and look after your work and spread your presence around the internet, if one site closes down then you still have your work in many other places. So the net loss will be much limited.

Ive been using more content creation sites like Wizzley & Squidoo. I have also been updating my presence again on places like Ezine Articles and Redgage. I will check out Infobarrel in the future and see what that holds. Speaking of content creation sites I was surprised to see that Jennifer aka PotPieGirl has recently joined Wizzley and has already loaded up a couple of new articles, like this one here, Otterbox iPad 2 Case

Now for those of you that don't know PotPieGirl started out like most of us and clawed her way to earning an online income, but still whilst not having a computer at home, holding down a job and raising a family and not (in the initial stages) having any money to spend on site creation. She started also with NO knowledge of what she was doing. All learn't 'on the job' so to speak. So these days she works hard to share her knowledge with others that are in the same boat as when she started (like all of us lol)

Post Panda 9 Months Down The Track

2011-10-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

Its has been 9 odd months down the track now since Google slammed many large sites for the content they hold containing articles, hubs, lenses and blog posts. Most sites now have claimed they are making a comeback and for many they are. Some others have slowly been crawling back, only to be slammed again and in some instances much worse than during Panda 1.0 and Panda 2.0 releases. Many individuals have also been reporting better results in the last couple of months on their own individual sites and blogs. This can be seen as a good thing for many of us. This is also something that needs to be of exceptional value to those who use these sites and their own, to earn their living. There are several items to come out of all of this. Learning. Learning to never hold all of one's writing in one basket only. Learning to raise the bar with articles written in a manner that's useful, shows insight, creates good value for the reader, is providing something new or the same information conveyed in a different and pleasing way. There is the challenge now for us writers. It is not so much the emotional roller coaster of seeing our work go down the tubes. This also means it is not a personal vendetta against us from Google either, cue conspiracy theories here. I can appreciate and understand that Google does not want useless and poorly written dross high up on the search results. This means that the challenge for us writers is now we need to get ahead of the game. Not ahead as in more keywords or more linking or more material across the internet, but in a manner now where we need to view ourselves as a brand and showcase our writing in a manner that interlinks everything we write. Writing for profit for writers that earn income through using the internet as a means of generating that income now need to become more resourceful and better equipped to do what needs to be done to become better, not quite writers, but presenters of information to our audience. That prospect excites me as it presents new challenges that we are, or will be equipped to take our brand - to the next level for you, our audience.

Post Panda-monium And Other Fun Stuff

2011-07-16T22:03:00.000-07:00

Realizing I haven't posted on any of my blogs - including here - for 7 months relates to many things happening in life for that time period. Meeting someone special and growing that new relationship. Outbreaks and cries of anguish and despair over at Hubpages from writers from post Panda changes and major and time consuming site changes. Periods of time spent working slightly longer than usual and stock take takes up so much energy.

Anyhow, for anyone who writes a blog, posts articles or has websites geared for garnering traffic knows the outcome of Google's most prolific and largest algorithm change since their inception has helped some sites, and caused pandemonium in others. Many sites, especially revenue sharing article sites got hit and hit really hard.

The farmer update - later called the Panda update, for those of you who dont realize what happens in the background of looking for information on search engines, was a major change to the results returned for search. If you search often, you most likely came across many articles from places like Hubpages, Squidoo, About.com, Ezine Articles and many other places.

Some of these articles were just content created to be easily found and generate revenue for people clicking on ads. Now this is fine and dandy and a great way to earn a (decent/second) income. The problem was, it was open to massive amounts of abuse and the Panda update is the first major update by Google, to combat this on their search engine.

So less crap, more informative and better search results.

The other issue is almost all of the writers around the world got hit and hit hard and now the rules have changed. One aspect that hasn't changed is if you are doing this shindig for the long haul, you can and will succeed.

Things Are Looking Up

2010-11-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

Content is doing well on HubPages. 3 Hubs are shooting for the stars, yet with these being movie release Hubs the traffic will soar for a while then come back down to earth with a crash and burn.

Other Hubs will do very well over the Christmas period I feel and this will bear out come January. Overall I'm happy with the total traffic that's coming my way and seeing that my $100 Hub hasn't taken off yet. Thats fine, I don't expect squillions of traffic on it for quite some time. It should be from large amounts of slow burning organic traffic over a very long period of time.

But I may just have to tweak it a little

Review Of A $100 Hub Day Hubber - Misha, On The Hubpages Blog

2010-10-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

Go and read the blog post by Jason Menayan where he interviews Misha, a Hubber thats been using HubPages for around 3 years and has at least one Hub that has earned $100 in one, single day (hence the plan for some of us to do the same and why I have this blog).

Interview with Misha on HubPages

Google Analytics

2010-09-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics.

Have been adding each and every hub made to this process and reporting tool every time I have written. Since the middle of May 2010 I have seen a steady increase in my readership yet also in the number of clicks. Both in terms of AdSense and Amazon revenue, these have also increased. As a matter of fact I have seen over the last 4 weeks a four-fold increase in my Amazon click through. Most likely as half of my hubs now (22 out of 43 at the time of this writing) are Amazon specific hubs.

Analytics is a very useful tool, it tells you where your traffic is coming from, how many visitors your getting each day, week, month, how many people are clicking on more than one page and which pages they are starting at and where they are leaving. It also tells you how much AdSense income is coming in on a daily basis. The other cool aspect all these items and much more info, are supplied as graphs, so you can visually see where your going with it all.

If your not using it, your missing out on using a valuable tool. Link supplied.

Lots Of Work, Building Now To Gain For The Future

2010-08-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

Writing Hubs, writing articles, writing more hubs, writing more articles.... sometimes it just may seem unending. Why do I do it? Simple, as I know the work I do now will have very little if any immediate effect and start to traction great gains in the future.

From what I have been gathering learning wise from SEO so far, is three things to keep in mind, and tweak these for better results.

Unique and original, quality work.- Articles, Hubs, Xomba's, Squid Lenses need quality, originality and uniqueness. No matter where you write, my reckoning is this is absolutely critical.

Fresh work - Adding content when required or necessary to existing works. May help improve SERPS in the short or longer term, I will only know this after I see a results with the next big Google Dance update.

Links, links, links - Adding links to get results and backlinking to your main sites seems like this will happen no matter what Google dance does. Why? I feel if I have my critical keywords about right, each time there is an update, some keywords hold value higher than others and will always remain so. I will be looking out for those 'articles' that have been ripped from me and respun and see if they or my own ORIGINAL work gets the better result SERPS wise.

Another thing I have up my sleeve, is I still write original articles, so my own work will eventually rise to the top rather than the spun crap (Google don't let me down) and I write consistently, in many, many places and NOT all under the same name and NOT all in the same niche.

Quiet Days In Hub Town

2010-07-31T08:34:00.000-07:00

Traffic has been down for across all my hubs over the last week. My best performing hub so far is my review of Predators, the new (at time of writing) movie from Nimrod Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez. The film is a reboot or re invigoration of the franchise and is seen as a direct sequel to the very first film , starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Happy that my $100 hub is up there with views as well. Sloooooooooooooowly getting traffic

Am I concerned at this time? No, have to give the hubs enough time to percolate in Google world and let my backlinks get found.One may get impatient but you have to give it time to grow.

So in the interim, I shall write more hubs and more articles.

If You Think You Can Or You Think You Can't, You Are Absolutely Correct

2010-07-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

As of Sunday 25th July 2010, finally cracked my Amazon cherry :)

Happy about that fact for two reasons.

Firstly finally nailed my first Amazon sale after 15 months of displaying Amazon on various sites I have. Customer made a purchase through one of my Hubs on HubPages.

Secondly, happy that although it wasn't through my $100 Hub, it was a closely related Hub.

You can make money online, and it will happen through many pennies per day, if you build it, and back link it they will come. You have to work hard, and work smart to achieve your goals. You have to put your 'brand' out there.

You $$$ will slowly trickle in and over time it will grow and build. My AdSense is picking up as well, it has taken time to get pennies in on a weekly basis, now there trickling in on a every 3 day basis, and soon I expect to gain something just about everyday.

Your income will be small and seems like its coming in like a very small leak through a water hose, yet you have to hang in for the long haul. There are occasions when money may take months and months to come in into any significant amounts. But you will get it. Places like Squidoo, HubPages and similar sites, even your own blogs, are a great way to start. But don't expect to retire any time soon, building a good, solid foundation is key.

If you think you can or you think you can't, you are absolutely correct.

Articles Articles.....And More Articles

2010-07-21T05:33:00.000-07:00

Articles, I have submitted 37 articles on 5 sites related to the $100 (potential) hub over the last week. All original articles, all hand typed.

I have come across many 'guru's who claim that using article submission software is a great way to blast your articles to many article sites, even up to 80 sites at one time.

It is usually done by actually using two types of software. The first item 'spins' your original article, and rephrases certain words and corrects the grammar so you end up with 'various' versions of your first article.

For example, take the opening of this post, after spinning it (those changes shown in red text), it may read like;

Articles, I have submitted 37 articles on 5 websites related to the $100 (potential) hub over the last week. All original articles, all typed by me.

Articles, I have produced 37 articles on 5 sites in relation to the $100 (potential) hub over the last week. All original articles, all typed out manually by me.

I have an issue with this, certain words and/or phrases may be changed, but after that fact, those articles are still not unique and the intention is to have 'original' articles on each of these article sites. Another issue I have, is unless you actually start working out the PR rankings of your targeted article sites, you may just end up spinning articles to hundreds of sites either banned by Google, or of low PR.

My articles are ALL original and I submit them to quality, high ranking PR sites I know. My traffic may take months and seem slow in progression, yet I feel that as evergreen content it will certainly be around a much longer time. And time will tell.

Social Networking - In The Real World

2010-07-11T02:18:00.000-07:00

Spent a whole weekend of socializing with friends. Well after a flurry of articles written and submitted to various article sites in my daily dose of 'bum marketing' on Friday night.
Had a great day in the city playing board games with a bunch of regulars on Saturday and went to the Melbourne Zoo on Sunday, wanted to see the newly born Tiger Cubs, but alas, they were still asleep with mama contained away from prying eyes. Yet did get to see the new edition Mila, an African elephant born at the zoo a few weeks back.

This is an important step along the process to the $100 dollar Hub, all work and no play can make for a boring time and even more miserable person. Don't forget quality time with family and friends. Yes you work hard with your online presence, but one also needs to work hard with juggling family time too.

One also never knows when one is out and about on social time and you may hit on a new idea with 'hmmmm, could write a hub about that'

Milestones - Many Achieved In A Single Day

2010-07-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

On HubPages today , I achieved many new milestones, no not $100 in a day, that is months and months away. I logged into my account and before hitting bed, I checked my details on what is happening across all my hubs. Well, what a day it was.

Here are some of the milestones achieved, after six weeks of joining and being active on HubPages;

Highest single day views across all hubs - 70 views
The The $100 In A Day Hub Challenge Hub - 2nd highest overall views
Achieved 1,000 total views since joining
20 total Hubs published

So, very small fry in the Huge Pond of HubPages so far, but that will build slowly and incrementally each day. I would also like to thank each and every visitor so far whom has taken the time to come by and read one or more of my hubs, and have commented.

How I Spent My Time Tonight

2010-07-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

Spent most of the time after work (yep still doing the 9-5 at this stage) working out a long term strategy for pure article writing and submissions. Have planned to write, edit, polish and submit 4 articles per day, as an average. An average I suggest for me, as some days I may write only one or two, other days I will write up to ten.

I also looked at a plan for the next 12-24 months for this challenge, with looking even longer term for up to 30 months.

After six months I will have produced over 720 published articles. I expect a click-through-rate on these articles of about 10% (I am an established author of a few Article sites and some generate a 14% CTR and some generate a 6% CTR) and a potential CTR of AdSense on the Hub of about 4% at about $0.75 per click. So I may be looking at hitting the goal at about that mark. That should churn about $100 to $300 per month just on AdSense. Not sure until the six months has passed about additional income from flow on to other Hubs, Amazon sales, affiliate sales etc.

After 12 months I will have 1440 articles, and after 24 months 2880 (or more) articles floating around with an expectation of many doing well in SERPS.

The difficulty will also lie in the fact that the niche is broad, yet there are many, many sub niches I can exploit within the main broad niche.

Finally, I have setup an Excel spreadsheet with the article goals set out on one section and another section for actual articles and results produced. This will help me see if I am achieving target or not.

Finally Have Those Pesky Keywords

2010-07-03T08:21:00.000-07:00

Have finally researched and nailed down about 100 keywords including long tails. The niche I am exploring is quite saturated with competition, but since I am looking at article marketing as the main drive for backlinks (not the only way, but one of many). I am happy since most (competitive) sites are rather static, so they may end up with doing the Google Dance. I am looking at these article to be achieving better results as they enter SERPS. Only time will tell if this strategy is sufficient to work or not.

As time goes on, I can tailor more defined keywords, tighter niches, and more keywords as well as new articles. Oh and I have built the hub and published it too. Again, over time, this will be tweaked and polished, and modified as required. Not telling you which one it is though :)

The Saga So Far

2010-06-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been a busy little bee, or beaver, or interneter <<<--- is that a word? Ack, don't care.

Have setup the Hub as a WIP (work-in-progress) in Word, on my hard drive, so it doesn't even exist in Hublandia yet. Still searching and looking at keywords and keeping track of what I am finding in an Excel spreadsheet, I have the niche I am targeting just not the final keywords, etc that I want ot nail down. Still love this app, it is one of the best items of software that Microsoft has created, but I digress...

The benefit I am finding is double, I can play around with certain keywords, long tails, and find whats the best ranking to date, competition, so on and so forth (all that fun keyword research). The other benefit I am finding is that I can tailor change my long tails and certain other words around as I can link specific words in Excel, to those I have in my WIP Hub in Word.

How does this benefit? Well if I change a keyword in Excel, they change and update in my Word document, so all I am required to do then is check the Word doc for grammar and spelling corrections as required. Yep I still need to type for mistakes, spelling, grammar etc, but saves flicking between two applications and a high amount of copy-switch app-paste.

The final aspect I like with Excel is that I can provide graphs on my data, this will give me snapshots on various tables highlighting data in certain ways to see trends, volumes, searches, competition keywords, etc. So at a glance I can also quickly see some results that may need further investigation.

Is It Me? Or Just What I Am Seeing So Far?

2010-06-30T05:16:00.000-07:00

Since the inception of my hub about this project, I am getting a feeling it's resonating with some folk. Its gained the highest amount of views per day compared to my other hubs. It may be folks in the forums being aware of this, either blog, or forum post or hub or all of it. Or maybe even Google once it hits the SERPs (this blog has for the title of the Hub, I may be finding I am competing with......myself, lol)

Maybe its the $100 tag in the title, maybe its about the challenge and some people know they want to stretch their wings and try for something big, yet do this over a long term period.

I don't know yet, the Hub is still very green and will know better when it has stewed in the Hub pot some more.

Interesting....What Am I Talking About? Polls...

2010-06-29T02:57:00.000-07:00

Today I did the usual of what I do just about everyday, log into Hubpages, check my stats (on the rise overall, cool), checked the individual hubs (some on the decline, bummer), checked for comments/fan mail, you know, the usual stuff.

When I went into the $100 Hub and had a look at the stats on that page, I have found an interesting tidbit so far, in the poll module, five brave souls (so far) have taken the poll with these results.

Ok, so far, four out of five pollsters feel they would currently be happy with earning $10.00 a day or less. Now we cannot read to much into this as statistically, it's not enough data to provide a clear picture for a suitable result. If we look at the majority vote so far, four people would be happy to have $10.00 a day or less.
Thats Ok as well, putting this into perspective, $10 a day is $300 a month. What would an extra $300 a month provide in addition to your existing income?

A nice vacation?
Extra to pay off the mortgage or credit card debt?
Future funding for college?
Pay off that personal loan quicker?

So if we worked up to one Hub earning $100 a day, what sort of provision would that provide to your current lifestyle? Food for thought.

I will revisit this next month, to see if more brave souls have taken the poll.

Wow, What A Week So Far

2010-06-28T04:47:00.000-07:00

A week has gone by and after I have created a Hub about the challenge, it now ranks as my best performing Hub after less than 48 hours 'in the wild'. Go figure, it's getting traffic that I didn't expect. Yet some good things also have come out of it.

Silly me, made some assumptions about the way the 'rules' have been established. There are no rules for this challenge, so in my initial post here, ignore the word 'rules' and change it to 'guidelines', otherwise think of;

The goal is to make one hub to reach 100 bucks in one day, it has been suggested not to give away the name of the hub, so others will not possibly use your keywords for their own. That's it, that's 'the rules' as such. So if my initial post has confused anyone, apologies in advance, it was never my intent to mislead, in my excitement about this challenge, I made some assumptions. Ok, we live we learn....

Ok got a 'brace of keywords' (is there a collective noun for a bunch of keywords?????) that I have tagged and bagged, that I will start to use to explore further for long tail keywords, searches per month, CTR and all that jazz.

My only bugbear, which also may be an advantage is traffic via back linking. I have had much success (although it would be very modest success compared to some very successful hubbers) via articles on directories. I will most likely pursue this the first trial for back linking, considering I have had good traffic previously. Only time will tell.

Starting to Gain Traction

2010-06-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

More people are joining the challenge.

Every time I go into the forum now, the excitement is almost palpable. More people are noticing this particular forum post and 'want in'. Why not, its really an informal challenge and does not require anyone to be locked in.

The only caveat is an establishment of a few ground rules, and these are rather straight forward anyway. Also Hubbers are starting to post up how they are tracking, which is great as it gives an indication of how serious some people are taking this challenge.

Over the next six to twelve months, it will remain to be seen how many stay in for the long haul, some will stick it out some will fall by the wayside. This is life and it happens.

Me? I don't have much of a choice, I know where I want to head with my online marketing 'career' (I really need a better word for that) and I REALLY don't want to close down this blog, so I'm committed.

So keywords are being researched, SERPS are being heavily investigated, backlinks are forming and the challenge is bubbling along nicely for all those involved so far.

Added An Honour Roll To This Blog

2010-06-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

With the posts within the forum on HubPages starting to collect lots of people wanting to join the challenge. I decided to produce an honour roll, on the top right of this blog. Each and every person listed has also kindly given me permission to show their name here.

Why? Because, I for one, would like to see how many people are wanting to participate in this challenge, and with a simple list, it's VERY easy to see how many have decided to take it up (and the fact that it saves time combing the forums posts looking at who is interested in participating :) )

There are very other simple benefits too, anyone who see's their name here will know others on HuPages as well. Its that type of community (hmmm should write up a post about Hubpages here, what do you think fellow Hubbers?)

It is also a very simple 'pay it forward' approach, people just appreciate having their names appear. Do I get any benefit out of this? No, its just my way of showing my appreciation, we all help one another, I scratch their back and they mine. One can give without expecting anything back in return.

And that readers, is what the HubCommunity is about.

Bum Marketing - Effective And Accurate? Or Just More Affiliate Hype?

2010-06-21T04:35:00.000-07:00

Bum Marketing, I know about this and although I haven't joined or subscribed or what have you. I understand the theory behind it.

If you haven't heard of bum marketing, it is essentially, writing articles about a niche and submitting each one to as many article directories as possible.

Now there are some caveats as well. Each article has to be unique, as article directories will punish those who try and to submit identical articles (and so will the Search Engines).

Effectively, the other advantage is that the search engines will pick up on the key words in your headers of your articles as well as the keywords within. So your articles will become available to appear in the search engines and the theory is, also gain traffic and backlinks. Why additional backlinks? Almost all article sites allow you to have 'dofollow' attributes in your bio section on your Authors section in each article directory.

So, again, like Keywords, something else I will need to spend time on to discover if this also helps the hub gain traffic. Since I write articles often and in many places, this should not be too much of a hassle, anyway.

Keywords - Researching The Research

2010-06-21T04:17:00.000-07:00

Keywords, important yes, easy to score? no.

This stuff is not one of my current strengths. Most likely will be one of those areas that as a current novice in understanding the most effective ways of choosing the right keywords, its getting the balance to have the right number of views, searches and long tail keyword support as well.

Well, thats Ok, I am happy to spend some time on this. Do some research and then when I have a grasp of the basics and discover what other people do best and determine their strategies, then I can research the research. So in effect I will become better educated and have that time discovering what best works for me.

Only time will tell.

Taking The Challenge

2010-06-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

If anyone has membership at sites like Hubpages, Squidoo or eHow and similar sites, then many of you know that these 'crowds-sourcing' sites work on the basis of you submitting information like an article, within a module, containing text, music, video, affiliate links (like Adsense and Amazon) of which then visitors come and read your information.

I have been using sites like this myself for some time with some very low income generation. Thats fine, it takes time and patience.

The main focus of this blog is to update my progress of a challenge initiated in one of the Hubpages Forums. That challenge is to have one single Hub and have it generate US$100 in one day.

The rules? not many and fairly easy going

Must be one hub
Must generate US$100 in one day
You may use your existing Hubpages account or start a new one
You may use an existing Hub or start a new one
You must not tell people WHICH hub it is
You can use any and all ways to generate income for that one hub, Adsense, Amazon, affiliate links, articles, etc
There is no time limit to completion

In the Hubpages forum most people will update on a regular basis, and since this will take an indeterminate amount of time for fairly new people to accomplish, it should be an interesting journey.

I shall return here often to reflect on that journey myself and advise of the progress