Publishing On Other Sites

Beyond the blog Living a Life of Writing I have spent time writing on other online writing sites.  For the most part, they are needed for the simple fact that they allow me to build my network- and with Roy Marko build our YouTube presence.  In the long run, it is important to grow your network both in the real world and online.  I’ll be using the old website Hubpages as an example, but now with all the challenges it has faced, it is also one where caution should be taken.

The important thing about online writing is knowing when you need to leave things alone.  For some writers, it came as a huge surprise when Squidoo went out of business. The model was good for a long time, but it was abused, there were more and more people who knew what they needed to earn a quick dollar, and they did this with impunity.

This is possibly the first sign things are going wrong and this is a good time to consider the alternatives- your website and your blog and even YouTube- but when it comes to money, Your time and Your business are what come first.  Money is needed, and you need people coming to your website to earn more income.

Here are a few tips on some of the online sites I’ve learned over the years:

1) If you aren’t getting a lot of traffic with your articles, you are either too busy to fix them, or too lazy. If it’s because you’ve admitted to the latter, then there isn’t much sympathy given to you by any of the writing communities.

Google might not care about your grammar, but you aren’t talking about Google, it’s about people and what they think of your published articles.

2) Face the fact there are more people doing- or trying to do exactly what you are doing right now- they have a plan to earn a lot of income, but no matter where you go beyond your own blogs, you’ve lost a lot of control in earning income.

Some will say you simply need to read a book like How To Make Money Blogginghowever, if you don’t have a network of people it doesn’t matter- you won’t be found and you won’t make more connections.  If you have 10,000 people who don’t do anything for you, it still doesn’t matter.  People count, and it’s not how much you think your work should paid.

Relationships are the key to survival in the large world of writing.

3) Ever heard of networking with other writers? It’s basically how you gain your money and your readership.  This means that you use twitter and other methods not to promote your writing, but another authors.  Then, the theory is, and was, the same author would mention you and do the same.  This rarely happens these days, and most people are more willing to engage you in conversation as opposed to book or blog promotion- because it’s now like a sale.  Publishing on other sites is much the same- if you are focused on them, you’re not focused on your main writing page.

4) Content is king, but so are relationships with your followers.

A good example is Hubpages- a company which is still around, and one I used to write and still have some articles left there. You can make money but unlike many other online websites, the way you make money is through people actually clicking upon your Google AdSense Ads or buying something from either Amazon or eBay- the bounce rate is not as good as some of the other sites- such as your blog or website.

They also have a Hubpages Ads Program which can pay you by impressions but it will reduce your AdSense income, and you will need to have an account with AdSense and a lot of general traffic to earn income with this program. The key thing to making money with Hubpages is that you need to build upon your work and then focus on keywords and building an audience to get paid.

Below is a list of thing you must know about Hubpages:1) There is a 60-40 split based upon impressions on Hubpages.  You might find the numbers are different, but this is because of the income splitting.  They need to make money to keep up this business, and without some of the other smaller sites, there is a lot of spam that isn’t controlled like it was.

2) The more hubs you have does not mean you will make more money, as you need to build quality hubs, that people will spend time on.   It’s good to have a lot of hubs, but if only 10 are getting traffic, it’s best to find new homes for the older hubs.  Redoing them, and making them into something different on your own blog is becoming popular.

3) Knowledge of SEO, or search engine optimization is a must to make money and build you business.

4) Participation is needed to make a go on hubpages.  Some people worry about publishing hubs, there is a need for some type of vision– in this case, people need to see you.  If you aren’t commenting on other people’s hubs, you are not going to get readers, so plan at least 4 hours a week to build this up.

5) Links are dofollow, but you need a hub author score of 75 and each hub has to be above a hub score of 40.  In other words, write a minimum of 750 words, and you’ll be on your way.  The point of the 750 words is to make sure you have enough content, or good writing, to allow for affiliate links within the article.

This is easy to do, but if you don’t have some quality writing or a lot of traffic with a low bounce rate, your chances to increase your income is slim.  Most people on the forums will comment not on the great income, but rather a lack thereof.

6) The numbers on hubpages, the hub writer score, the personal score of a hub, how many years or accolades you’ve had, mean nothing if you don’t have something to say. It’s best to focus on 10 or 20 articles, to see success on hubpages, it’s an all too frequent occurrence to see hubs “disappear” and re-appear days later.

In the end, a good plan is to have some articles on sites like hubpages, but first focus on your websites and blogs.  These matter far more.

You can also find my writing at and Things About Transylvania, Romania, these websites focus on specific things I enjoy, and also find Roy Marko on his YouTube sites: Roy Marko’s Garage and MarKo Custom Build Models