Strange Things Are a Muck, With My Hubpages CTR and My Huge Windfall

Wow. Either I am a walking statisitcal anomoly, or there is something SEIOUSLY wrong with the ad's Hubpages is serving up within my Hubs.

Or... I Don't want to throw out any accusations of wrong doing. But perhaps there is a bug in "my system" or logorythem because: On three occasions now, I've jad over 300 impressions on my Hub's in one day. Pretty decent traffic for a guy that had only 25 Hubs total.

Now back to this statisical glitch I believe is happening with me. I have heard a 1 to 2% CTR(click through rate) is roughly the AVERAGE. But just to really show you how abomitable this is; I will say 1% is average. My Hubs are average. I am average. My keyword research is average...Well, you get it.

In those three, 300 = impression days over the last four months, I HAD NO CLICKS sccording to Hubpages tallies. I know there is a 68% chance for me to get the ad click and all that. But in 932 impressions one percent would be 9 clicks. Rounding down, 68% of those clicks in theory belong to me; which rounds DOWN to 6 clicks I should have got.

Even give a huge margin of error of 30%. Ungenorouusly, to say the least, I am short 4 Clicks. What happened? I guess it is possible that in 932 impressions, NOBODY clicked an ad. Or they clicked 2 or 3 and Hubpages received all those clicks.

Or they didn't serve up ad's on my Hub on that day. Whatever the reason, it is very disheartening and confusion. If there is an error in the way Hubpages is counting the Hubbers clicks, this is extreamely bad.

Almost as bad: Everything is on the up and up, and people just do not click on ad's over a big sample size of 932, well then why even bother monetizing if Hubpages is serving up boring, unclick worhty ad's.

Supposedly some people have an amazing 3 and 4% CTR. I'd be happy with 1%, honest, all accounted for CTR. Mine is an abysmal .068%. It just doesn't ad up, and is very discouraging!

It's true. God had a presser today and said, "I give.Google is God. The Bible has a horrible SEO and page rank. On top of that, they banned my AdSense account!"

Wow, if God throws in the towel, a skinny little ,from Cleveland has NO CHANCE!!

But, here I am. Pounding out that 20th Hub, my 30 followers are certainly dying for. That will make 2 Hubs published today, and 3 in the New Year so far. I'm not a prolific hit maker like like Ichiro Suzuki, or Phil Spector; I am slow and steady, like Robin Yount or Wilco. Those baseball/ record producing metaphor's only work with a certain crowd.

What I am trying to say, is I will never be that guy who can crank out 3 Hubs a day for a month. I started this journey in earnest about 2 months ago exactly. I joined 2 years ago, wrote two Hubs, and literally forgot I was even registered. It wasn't 'til I got fired from my most recent McJob, that I began to investigate HubPages, AdSense, Squidoo, etc...Imagine my happiness when I went to register for HubPages and I already had an account. Yea!

The whole setting up with Adsense and getting the affiliate programs going was quite easy and painless. That was the last time things were totally painless for me on HubPages.

I did some internet research about HubPages. I tried to read both positive and negative sides. Amazingly, there wasn't anything too negative. The worst thing I read was that HubPages was a little oversaturated with "not real writers" who wanted to "get rich quick" overnight. Can you blame them? I also read that while people do make a living on HubPages, these people you could count on 2 hands, and they have written 100+ hubs and have been members for 3 years or more. Oh, they where also pretty good writers as well.

On the postitive side, I read many stories from people making $50 bucks a month, meeting new people, and doing something the loved for a hobby. There are quite a few of those out there.

Well, I figured realistically I feel somewhere in between. Between the $50-$2,000 would lie Napetv. I could deal with $500 a month Hubbing. Then I started to learn how elaborate(ok complicated the HubPages game was)

Whoever wrote about there being just too many Hubbers was correct. Every idea I had was written literally 100's of times already, and more than half better than I could have written. Original ideas I had leaned more toward, fiction and poetry; which I read several places doesn't "pay." Well, I didn't want that!(Although I caved and wrote 2 poem & one non-fictional short story.)

Somebody told me I needed to do extensive Keyword research. That was the main trick. Or secret. Wasn't really a "secret" cause now I know about it. So I looked for low competition, high CPC keyword that had 4,000+ monthly searches. I put them in the summary, in the title, tags, in the text. Then I waited for the magic. Not so much magic. Because...

I was doing it wrong! Another advice Hub told me go for low CPC with low competion and global monthly searches of 2,100. His theory was everybody else is going for what "used" to be the norm, now you go where they ain't looking. He claimed his earnings doubled when he ditched the high CPC keywords that advertisers couldn't afford anymore. This of course would require much more traffic of course...Traffic I could only garner through...

LINKS!! Links, the bane of my Hubxistance! You need incoming links. You need to be linked to high quality people and material. Some places don't like self-promoting links to outside Blogs, etc...This was more confusing than trying to calculate 12 separate checks when all the ladies had different coupons and gift cards(Ruby Tuesday flashback) So I linked a few of my Hubs to each other, and had the HubTool suggest links to other worthy Hubbers, in the hopes all that HubKarma would come back to me some day.

AdSense Questions: If I ever met someone from AdSense, I would have a few questions for them. I would want to know if there is anything I can do to make sure all my valid clicks get tallied?

I also want to know why they kick people off AdSense without explanation, or evidence of your wrongdoing. I hear many complaints about this.

Then I read some woman who was on the HubPages staff. Her take was simple. Write good Hubs with the main purpose of writing the best, most original, and the lengthier the better(Google ranks Hubs with greater content higher in it's algorithm deelio, than a short hub)She warned about writing strictly commercial hubs. And her main point was write as much as possible at first, get the material out there. In due time things like keyword tweaking, and linking, and back-linking will come to you. You can always rework a Hub.

Then from further reading I found when you first join, do some serious Hub Hopping to get followers, comment on Hubs, ask questions, etc...This is a great way to get your profile score or HubScore up there. Traffic takes time, but if you are persistent, I can see how that would increase. Mine has, little by little, but it's getting better.

Traffic is the most important element involved with making money on HubPages. With greater traffic=greater income potential. No traffic=no $ potential (no ad clicks, impressions,etc..) If you write some really good hubs 85+, people will eventually read them. Some will follow you. If you link your Hubs correctly and in the right context, people will read those.

One thing I almost forgot. I read a great scentific article written by some guy who used to work for Google and HubPages. He said it's best to follow people that have high HubScores. Better still, have them follow you. His thoery was the more people you linked out to that had high Hubscores, then greater chance your HubsScore would go up, and you would in turn have high numbers following you. I've kept that in the back of my mind, and it has seemed to work.

Only one of my 20 hubs is ranked in the 80's, yet my HubScore is 92. It has been as high as 94, but not lower than 88 over the past month. I know if it goes below 75, your links on your hubs, and your hubs supposedly become "no follow." Meaning you are worthless until you get above 75 again. Just don't dip below. Keep writing, don't expect to get rich, and be grateful with what money you do make.

Some of you were probably going to ask, so I will just tell you. $4.43 in two months in impressions from a 13.90 CPM and another $11.18 from 5 Ad Sense Clicks. My grand total with this HubPage endeavor: $15.61

Still beats dragging my old ass into Ruby Tuesday to wait on even older , more annoying asses - let me tell you!