A Hubpages Experiment 2012 - How to Set Traffic, Income and Earnings Goals to Make Money on Hubpages

How to Achieve Your Traffic and Income Goals on Hubpages 2012

I started my Hubpages journey on the 24th of April 2011. I have called it a journey because it really has been a voyage to get to where I am now.

I am not claiming to have all the answers. In fact, I am well aware that I don't. But I do know that I have more of an idea of where I am trying to get to now, than I did when I first started writing Hubs.

Now I have a plan and an idea of how to achieve my Hub target, to increase my traffic and income from Hubpages. I have just achieved 10,000 views and the majority of those views came from Hubs written in January 2012.

The Hub philosophy is that you need lots of Hubs to earn a living and you need time. Time for those Hubs to mature and age, so Google sees them as having Authority. Time for you to backlink your Hubs and see them moving up the search engine rankings. I can't backup these theories, as I haven't been writing Hubs long enough to prove these points valid. However, I can prove it's not the only path to success.

In the month of January alone I wrote 10 Hubs and with those 10 Hubs I managed to garner 4,900 views, to take me to the 10,000 level. Bear with me as I descibe the journey I took to achieve my first goal, and some of the other goals I have achieved along the way to making income from Hubpages.

I joined Hubpages initially because I was told if you write articles you will earn money. Of course I was skeptical and didn't believe a word of it. I couldn't get my head around the fact that someone would pay me to write about something I wanted to write about. It was irrelevant what the topic was, as long as I wrote it well and it was original content. I could understand someone paying me to write something they wanted an article written about!

Of course, in the beginning I didn't understand that Hubpages makes money through advertising and that I would be able to get a share of that advertising revenue (60%), depending on how much traffic my Hubs received, or how many of the Ads showing on my Hubs were clicked, Amazon sales and even Ebay sales.

I plodded along, lost in the wilderness not really sure what to write about, how to write or if it was even worth my time.

Everything changed at the end of 2011 and I set myself a New Years Resolution. Instead of wasting my time making the mundane resolutions that I never stick to, such as losing weight or learning a new language, I decided to dedicate myself to learning as much as possible about Hubpages.

At this point, my account was roughly 9 months old and I had approximately 3,900 total views. It was demoralizing and I just hadn't done enough to get a full picture of what works for me on Hubpages. I thought to myself, that if my new efforts don't work then I will have given it a fair chance. If it fails to work then I could throw the towel in and look to try something else.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Turning on Hubpages Ad Program

At the beginning of 2012, I decided to turn on the Hubpages Ad Program. I had tried to activate it before with no success but saw the signup process had been streamlined and I could actually join.

I already had the Adsense Program activated along with my Amazon Affiliate ID and had earned less than a dollar, in the whole 9 months I'd been a member of Hubpages. I didn't think turning the Ad Program on could do much damage, and I was right. In fact, it made more money than I have ever made writing online before!

I was stuck as to what to write about and slowly came to the realization that it was a New Year, so I could write about things people would be looking for in 2012. I realize I watch a lot of TV and films, so decided to turn my Hobby into earning potential.

I began writing Hubs about upcoming movies and TV shows. New people to Hubpages are discouraged to write in the entertainment category, as the revenue potential is less per click. However, I didn't know what else to write about and needed to start somewhere. I'm not saying everyone should start there, but I think it is easier and best to start with something you know about.

I wrote some articles and shared them on some Social Bookmarking sites. That's all the backlinking I did.

I chose topics and keywords where the competition and click value were low but the number of people searching for the information was relatively high. I used the Google Keyword tool to check the search volume for my chosen Hubs.

My goal was to get more visitors to my Hubs and see how that effected my revenue. I decided to pursue traffic as I felt it would give me more data to work with.

Choosing topics with higher click values but less traffic or more competition meant I would have less visitors, it would be harder to rank and I didn't know how long I would have to wait to be able to assess my performance.

I didn't want to be demoralized further so I went in search of good traffic topics with little or no competition.

The Results of My Hubpages Experiment 2012 - January

The results of my Hubpages experiment 2012 is that I have now achieved my 10, 000 views Accolade. I really didn't think I would achieve it so quickly when I set out on this experiment but I managed it. Before fully committing to writing Hubs, I was getting about 20 views acrosss all my Hubs a day, if I was lucky. Now I am getting around 600 total views a day.

As an added bonus, although a small bonus so far, I have earned more money from Hubpages in the month of January than I ever did in the 9 months preceding January!

My success came from writing about popular topics, with little competition and turning on the Hubpages Ad Program. I made over $8 with the Ad Program and although this does not sound like much, this is 8 times as much as I made from March to December 2011.

An even better bonus has been the ability to connect with other successful writers on HubPages and see what they are doing. Checking out people's writing style, the type of Hubs they are writing about and seeing their passion has really helped steer me in another direction. This has really helped in the layout and planning of my Hubs and has allowed me to learn better ways to use videos and pictures in my articles.

I am planning to updating this Hub monthly with new information as my experiment continues.

Future Plans for Hubpages Domination

I realize I still have a lot to learn and although I have increased my traffic it may not last long. The topics I have written about are not Evergreen and the traffic will die in time. How long or short will remain to be seen. However, the 10 Hubs I have published have given me a taste for what I can achieve with Hubpages and has given me the motivation required to continue to test and experiment further.

By earning $8 in January, this means I averaged 26 cents a day. My goal is to increase my daily income to at least $1 a day. On the basis that I average around $3 per 1000 views, I know I have to achieve at least 555 views a day to achieve my $1 a day target. (1000 views/$3 = 333 daily views. 333 daily views/0.60 = 555 daily views).

For the sake of this experiment I have assumed the average CPM is $3. I am not saying what my CPM is as I believe that can be construed as a breach of terms and conditions. But for the figures to make sense, I have to provide an arbitrary value. When calculating these figures for your own account it will be most helpful to use your own CPM value, which you can find in your own earnings report.

Although this sounds difficult, I know this is achievable and have already had my first dollar day in February. If I am able to continue at that level of views I should achieve my 100,000 Views Accolade in 6 months. I am aiming to achieve that number of views in less time by writing more Hubs. However, it will also depend on the staying power of my existing and future Hubs and also if they do move up the rankings as they age, and thus gain more traffic.

I am aiming to write at least 2 Hubs a week and perhaps more if I find the time, and the topics to write about. I can clearly see the benefit of writing Hubs regulary now and the difference it can make to the income generated. Now I understand the benefit and rewards of the writing 30 Hubs in 30 days challenge. Although I really don't know if it's something I could manage to do at this point in my writing career.

This is my first Hub about Hubpages, so most of my traffic comes from search engines such as Google. Therefore, rankings and SEO are very important to this experiment.

Longer term, I am hoping to continue with my experiments on Hubpages to see what gets good levels of traffic versus income potential and also what Evergreen topics I can come across that haven't been done to death. I already know that if I stand any chance of succeeding in an Evergreen market I am going to have to find something new, unsaturated and something I can bring something unique to.

In the meantime, my next goal is to continue to increase my traffic levels to the point where I make at least $1 a day.

The next goal after that is to make $3 a day (1000/0.60 = 1666 daily views required). I will continue to write on different topics and niches to see if I can find a niche that works well in terms of traffic and income.

This month I was able to write 11 articles in total. I know this still isn't a lot but it is still meeting my target of 10 a month and allows me time to find out more information on how to make my Hubs more successful.

In February, I continued to mostly do what I did for January. I wrote about more TV shows and the characters. I am happy to see my traffic has continued to climb. Most of this traffic came from search engines and was mainly for the Hubs written in January. I have also noticed that the visitors come in waves. There tends to be more visitors the day that particular TV show airs and at weekends.

February 2012 has been a great month on Hubpages for me. I have made my first payout through the Hubpages Adprogram!! (I am telling you, if you haven't activated it yet then you are missing out on earning with your Hubs. As long as people are actually reading your Hubs from start to finish, as they are doing with mine, then you'll make money using the Adprogram. I'm not going to promise any kind of amount, as it will depend on too many factors such as number of Hubs, topic of Hubs, traffic to said Hub etc. What I will say is that if I can make money with the Hubpages Adprogram you can too.)

So apart from earning my first $50 on Hubspages I have made many more friends and have received more Accolades. I did not go looking to achieve these accolades and they are a great plus along the traffic and earnings journey.

Accolades received in February

1. Lauryallan has answered at least 10 questions

2. Lauryallan is a level IV commenter (this was an upgrade from level III)

3. Lauryallan is popular among readers

4. Lauryallan's Hubs start great discussions

I know you are interested in finding out my actual figures and I can now share them with you.

This month I had over 30, 000 visitors to my Hubs and I made over $50. When you compare that to January's figures I am pleased. That's over 6x's as much traffic and earnings. I am doing something right as the stats are moving in the right direction.

I have achieved the goal I set last month to earn over $1 a day and there were a number of days where I made over $2. Some people might be saying that I achieved this goal too easily but I have read on here that many people struggle to make even $1 a day, and I had never made that consistently before either.

I also believe small achievable steps are better than just having a huge goal and no goal posts in-between. Afterall, my overall goal is to get my 100, 000 views Accolade, increase the number of Hubs I write and also increase my earnings along the way. I am on target to achieve this so lets hope it stays that way.

I am now striving to make $3 a day and this will be a challenge as I will need over 50, 000 visitors a month to have any hope of achieving this goal. Also, I haven't had a single $3 day yet so I don't expect to achieve this goal in March but if I do that would mean $93 earned and I would be ecstatic. If someone told me when I left the Bank that I would be happy earning $90 a month I would have thought they were crazy!!

I realize this is still pocket change, but I am glad to be going in the right direction and to see that earning an income through Hubpages is achievable.

I am really pleased as well because one of my Hubs has had over 10, 000 views a month. Crazy that a third of my traffic comes from 1 Hub article.

At the time of writing this article, Hubpages stats tells us that only 730 Hubs managed to have over 10, 000 views in the last month, and one of my Hubs has joined this group. It will be interesting to see how long it can continue to receive those levels of traffic and if I can find other Hubs to write that could join it.

If you would like to become a writer and make some cash in your free time then please sign up to become a Hubpages Author.

The Results of My Hubpages Experiment 2012 - March

March has been a strange month for me on HubPages. Although I should rightly be thrilled with my results this week I find that I am far from that.

I have achieved my goal of 100,000 views on HubPages and received my accolade. I have even managed, by sheer luck, to have over 100,000 total views in March alone.

Yes I wrote more Hubs but not as many as you might think. I was lucky and chose popular topics and was able to rank for them. I expect the traffic to decrease to many of these Hubs over the next few months.

I have still failed to find Evergreen content.

I managed to reach payout again and then some. According to my earnings report, I have made more on HubPages than ever before at over $200.

However, it's not all rosy this month (I did promise to report the good, the bad and the ugly truth). I have lost some of my accolades and can only guess this is due to my account being on probation, for making a simple error. I have since made efforts to rectify the mistake but am still in probation. Basically, every Hub I write has to be moderated before it can be published. This can take a few days. If I edit any Hub that was already published it is automatically unpublished, because it has to be re-moderated. Again, this takes time as most of my Hubs need updating a little each week as new TV show episodes come out.

I am not blaming the Hub team for this. I understand the rules have to be followed. It was an easy error to make and I explained myself to the HubPages team. However, I have no idea how long probation lasts. However, repeated rule violations can lead to a permanent ban. I really hope that doesn't happen as I do my best to stay within the rules.

Although the goal was to earn $3 a day, clearly from the table below I managed to surpass that. No-one is more astounded than me and I hope this can continue to be the case. My goal for April is to get out of probation (no idea if that's even possible) and aim for $5 per day earnings from HubPages.

I realize this is below what I earned this month, but I really don't know if this months earnings are a fluke. This experiment is about sustained earnings and not a flash in the pan.

Also, since I have achieved my overall goal of 100,000 views in March, I now have to find a new goal to keep me focused. I have noticed from the HubPages success stories that most of them get at least 6,000 visitors a day, on average. My new goal will be traffic related but I will have to think on it.

I expect any improvements from here onwards will be smaller. It was relatively easy in the beginning as my figures were so small. Now with bigger figures it will be harder to continue to improve in such multiples. Also, TV viewership numbers tend to reduce in the summer as people spend more time outside in the sun. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on my Hub traffic and the number of Hubs I am able to produce.

I have managed to reach payout again this month. Although my earnings this month on HP were lower I did actually meet my goal of $5 a day. It was a bit of a struggle while on probation.

Luckily, I am now out of probation and hope it stays that way. People have been asking why I was put into probation and I haven't answered this yet as I am still trying to figure it out. I was initially told it was because I was linking to unrelated products/topics. An example of what I was doing was linking from a new TV show review hub, such as Alcatraz, to other new TV show review hubs I'd also written on HP, such as Touch and Awake etc. I was instantly put on probation, no warning, no discussion nada. As you can imagine, it came as a surprise as a number of experienced and influential hubbers discuss writing in the same niche, so you can link to lots of your content.

I had to write to the HP team for clarification and it's been explained to me that I should only provide links to hubs that are about the same TV show. So for example, Alcatraz TV show review could link to the cast and characters, but not to other TV shows. I find it hard to understand why the links I was doing before are unrelated when in the Related Hubs widget in the sidebar comes up with links to other new TV shows. Ironinc??

On top of that, I have since discovered many experienced hubbers doing exactly what I was doing. After all, that's why I was doing it. I was following the example they set. I have flagged them, but they don't get put into probation and more often than not nothing happens with their accounts. There are many examples out there and it doesn't take long to find them.

Back to the main point - This month my traffic decreased. This could be for a number of reasons. A lot of shows have come to an end, Google had 101 updates this month and now I am unable to interlink my hubs together, which has had a massive impact on my traffic figures. According to my Google Analytics, my bounce rate has soared. It makes no sense to me why HP would want to do this, but they have chosen to. If you want to keep writing on the site, you gotta do what HP tells you or you'll get banned. It's their site and you are just a guest. A guest that pays them with a share of your views... but still only a guest.

Just goes to show the importance of not keeping all your eggs in the HP basket. I've found the weave to be inconsistent, full of holes and frustrating.

On the plus side, I have my accolades back and managed to keep cool with the HP team, even though it was a struggle at times, especially when you see other HP members clearly flouting the same rules you have been slapped down for. However, you gotta keep your head up, concentrate on your own account and write your articles that are going to get you organic traffic from the search engines. These are all just more obstacles you may be faced with in the future.

Next month, I have to write more hubs and will have to find more topics to write about. New Summer TV shows tend to be less popular as more people spend time out in the sun. I'd expect sports and other summer type activities to be popular. Maybe in May I will try a few recipes. I am aiming to reach 1 million views before the end of 2012 so will need to increase my monthly viewing figures to over 100,000 per month.

Happy hubbing.

The Results of My Hubpages Experiment 2012 - May

So far I have mostly earned an income from Entertainment style hubs.

Please read the hub I wrote which is about making money from entertainment hubs, if you are looking for further insight into what I write about to earn some extra money on HubPages.

You'll learn some tips and tricks and how to avoid the 4 common pitfalls many new writers dive head into. FInd out more about other Hubbers who also like to write hubs from the entertainment category and their successes - All of them have been on HubPages longer than me and have really interesting tales to tell.

And for those who can't wait until the end of June to see some of my traffic stats then this hub gives you a view up to the 6th of April 2012!

Ok so I continued writing about New TV shows as I have since the beginning. It seems to be getting harder to rank for these topics now and I'm not exactly sure why. it could be because of the recent Google updates but will monitor the situation and try to figure out if I need to tweak my methods a little.

My traffic seems to hover between 2.5k - 4k daily views. Even when a hub suddenly takes off, it seems that other hub viewing figures shrink so I still end up around the 3k daily views mark. I think the real issue is that I need to write more hubs and I need to write them nearer the beginning of the month if they are to have any kind of impact for that months figures.

Although I wrote the 10 articles I was hoping to I am finding it harder to stay focused on HP. The sun is out and I find myself outside more often enjoying the weather. If I am doing this, I can bet millions of people around the world are spending less time in front of their computers and more time outside.

I also found my CPM seemed to plummet in the middle of the month. At one point I didn't think I'd get close to what I made last month, but then my CPM increased again.

This month I managed to have a slight increase in overall traffic, but really only because there's an extra day in May than in April. This means my income is very slightly higher than last months. I have had approx 350k total views to my HP account. Of course some of those are my views, but it means I am behind on my 1 million views goal for 2012. I will need at least 100,000 monthly views to reach this goal and can't let any Google updates get in the way.

If I plan to increase revenue for June then I really need to write more hubs. I might even try and write a few hubs for the recipe contest that HP are having. Even the lowest prize of $50 would be welcome and would make a huge impact on my HP earnings. It would probably account for over a quarter of my monthly income and is something to get excited about.

I think a lot of people are skeptical that I am actually achieving these traffic levels and as June marks the halfway mark in my journey, I will post a picture of my HP traffic.

First of all, let me say I started off the month with good intentions. I had planned to write as many hubs as possible this month and try and participate in the recipe contest, but events conspired against me.

Firstly, my gran got sick and I had to take her to the hospital. She was there for 3 weeks and I visited often. While visiting in the hospital, I caught a bug which had me in bed and on the toilet for about a week.

Then my internet went down for a few days - broadband provider has been updating their cabling across the whole of the Uk so there's nothing I could do about that.

And to top it all off, my clutch went in my car while driving on the motorway! For those that only have automatics - you can't drive a manual car without a clutch.

So to say I have had a pretty crap month is putting it midly. With that being said, I managed to finish 6 hubs. Doesn't sound like a lot, I know, and is below my monthly target. However, my traffic only went down by about 10,000 views so it hopefully shows that my older hubs are the ones bringing in the traffic.

My hubs over the past 2 months really suck and aren't getting views yet. I think this might be because the TV show season is really boring in the summer months. There are a lot of repeats and not much that people are googling or looking for information about. At least I hoping this is the reason and that traffic will pick up again in the Fall TV season.

If you want more information on the new HP layout changes and how this is probably the cause of your plummeting Google Adsense revenue then read my hub asking Is the New HubPages Layout Killing Your Google Adsense Revenue?

You'll also discover some neat tips and tricks to try and improve your HP income, in light of the new challenges.

However, I did manage to make more money from HP this month. Surprisingly my CPM seems to have increased. This is probably because HP have adjusted where the Google Adsense ad shows up in our hubs now. Before it used to be in the side bar. Now it's one of the ads at the bottom of the page (where far fewer people are likely to click).

So although my Adprogram income has increased, my Google Adsense income is now virtually non existent. I know I don't normally mention my Adsense income as part of this experiment, but it was climbing steadily before the layout changes.

Check out my HP traffic graph below to see how my traffic has progressed in 2012 with a little effort. I also managed to get a Hubber score of 100 for the first time on HP this month, and it seems to be consistently betweek 95 - 100 in the past week or two. You can click the graph below to make it bigger.

I have to admit that I am really happy with my traffic levels and revenue this month, especially when I look at the HP success stories.

The HP success stories have just been updated with their recent traffic graphs, and surprisingly I think I may be getting more traffic than a few of them. I feel bad for them and don't wish for them to fail. On the contrary, their stories are an inspiration and a reason to keep motivated to put the work into HP. I hope their graphs are just showing a seasonal effect (rather than a Panda, Penguin or HP layout changes effect) and that things will improve again for everyone soon.

Would I like to make more money from HP? Of course I would, but I know it's all up to me. I have to write more and consistently. But I really can't complain for effectively being paid $200 for writing 6 hubs this month. (Technically, it's for the hubs I wrote before this month) Will this payment cover the cost of a new clutch? No it won't even cover half the cost, but it's a step in the right direction as my income is starting to increase again.

Ok so my lack luster effort over the last few months has finally hit my account and my traffic declined quite a bit this month. I can't blame anyone else for the reduction in traffic.

On that note, this month I did my minimum 10 hubs as originally set.

My hubs have also had over 500,000 views now too! Although there's no accolade for this milestone, I feel the need to celebrate and try and keep myself motivated on this journey.

My CPM declined again this month. So although the new HP layout seems to have led to an increase in CPM last month, this month it has almost fallen back to previous levels. Unfortunately, my Google Adsense income has drastically fallen off because of the new layout.

Now that I've had a full month of the new HP Adprogram layout, my Google Adsense click rate has reduced by half. However, my adsense income has fallen by almost 2/3rds. Basically, clicks that far down the page occur a lot less and they are also worth less too. I've gone from making an average of $20 a month to a few dollars a month.

Since I've given the new HP layout a shot under the Adprogram for a month, it's now time to try out purely Google Adsense. Yes I know I love stats, but I really won't be able to see the improvements created by the layout unless I switch to purely Adsense.

Will I make more or less money? We'll I'm not really sure. I have a feeling that the Adprogram may be better for me, as my click values seem so low now. However, that could be different if I have the top ads clicked. I guess you'll just have to come back at the end of August to find out....

So this month has been a little strange for me. I began by changing to monetizing my hubs with only Google. I wanted to test the theory that "no-one clicks ads anymore". I found this to be wrong and in fact had lots of clicks while using the Adsense program. However, it would kinda make my HP Adprogram experiment defunct if I changed solely to Adsense. There were other reasons, which I promise I will write about when I have the time and the inclination to do so. Unfortunately, I really don't know when that will be.

I have learnt a lot on this HP journey, but lately I have felt as if I were going backwards rather than forwards. My traffic either falls or stays constant. The days of rapid growth seem to be behind me.

HP is constantly changing. If we look at all the changes that have occurred just from the beginning of the year, it's astounding. Questions and Answers were introduced so that hubbers could monetize this too. The site had a major layout change, which involved the movement of the direct Google ad to the bottom of the page. There was another Panda update and then Google brought out a new update called Penguin. Now we have this Idle hubs thing, which will now dictate if your hub is allowed to be read by Google to be indexed or not. A lot to take in.

On top of that, I am not alone in my traffic falling. The success stories on HP have been very open and many of them have lost 80% of their traffic and some are reporting they have lost 90% of their HubPages income!

I really don't want to spend time and energy trying to build an income only for it to disappear overnight. This is clearly something that happens at HubPages and there's little to nothing the writers on the site can do about it.

I simply do not have as much time as I used to have and there are other family health issues that I have to take care of.

This month I was on Google Adsense only for the first week. This helps explain why my HP Adprogram income is down from last month. However, traffic and CPM is also down from last month. If this continues then there will be little to no chance of me achieving 1 million views by the end of the year.

Figures that have been added to the table below DO NOT include Adsense traffic for the first week of August nor income made for that week.

Published three hubs this month and have noticed it's taking far longer to get hubs indexed since the introduction of the Idle Hubs thing.

One of the great things about HubPages before was that hubs were indexed really quickly and very well placed in the SERPs, if you knew what you were doing, which I did... However, now that appears to no longer be the case.

I didn't see the point in writing more hubs that were unlikely to get indexed in time or move up the rankings on Google fast enough to get the levels of traffic I would hope for.

Traffic continues to fall, although it is hard to compare to last month as I was on Adsense for a week.

Am really losing faith in HubPages and their changes or tactics.

1. Success stories have had their graphs removed, but the old text information has been left up. I feel this is misleading, to say the least, as the graphs showed that almost all of the success stories had lost 80% of their traffic and therefore the majority of their passive income. Click here to see the success stories and how the information is outdated. If you want to see the fall in traffic to the success stories subdomains (after HubPages removed the graphs) then please watch the video by Mark Knowles that shows the truth about what's happening on HubPages.
2. Idle Hub status - Really feel like this is yet another hurdle to jump through in order to get ranked. It's causing unnecessary delays in getting new hubs indexed. I have seen no benefit from the introduction of this in any shape or form. People who write seasonal hubs will probably be affected most.
3. My CPM has been all over the place this month. I really couldn't tell you why as you can see I only wrote three new hubs and they aren't responsible for the majority of my traffic.
4. The new Hubpages profile was rolled out sitewide. Again no choice in the matter and this means that referrals are likely to be lower as writers can no longer embed links, for new writers to join, on their profile page.

I am trying each month to keep motivated on this site, but seem to be losing the battle more and more each month. I wish I had better news...

I am beginning to wonder if it would be better to focus 100% on my own sites and just use HubPages as a backlinking or traffic generation tool. I really don't like the feeling of not being in control when it comes to my content on HubPages.

The Results of My Hubpages Experiment 2012 - October

Want to know exactly how many hubs you'd need to meet your Hubpage earning goals?

Wantt to know how many milliions of views or impressions you'd need to make $1000 from Hubpages?

A lot of new hubbers write to me asking these exact questions. Please read my hub called Hubpages Income - The Real Story to find out the answers to these pertinent questions.

Another month has passed and traffic and earnings continue to decline on HubPages. I find this strange, especially when you consider we are fast approaching christmas and advertisers are paying more. How do I know that? Well that's what generally happens each year and also the click values have increased on my own sites. CPM's continue to slide on Hubpages and I am down at least a dollar on my normal CPM rate.

I am at the point where I am making more money from my own sites than I am from HubPages, with a fraction of the views. With this in mind, I have sadly come to the conclusion that making my own sites is easier than writing for HubPages, with greater rewards. I used to think it was the other way around, but that is no longer the case.

1. Hubs are no longer ranking as well as they did at the beginning of the year and prior to that. This could be exasperated by the layout changes, but is definitely affected by the 24 hour pending status on all new hubs.

2. If you write a hub that's not evergreen and is only popular for a short period of time, it's highly likely to end up being de-indexed by HubPages. You'll no longer get those peaks of traffic you used to and were counting on.

3. There is very little control over your content at HubPages. This has slowly but surely been driving me crazy for the past 6 months. Hubs get flagged and the reasons are not explained properly, and sometimes they aren't explained at all. The reason differs from moderator to moderator.

4. When I build my own site I have complete control over the content and get 100% of the ad revenue. All I have to worry about is getting ranked on Google. There are no intermediaries making it impossible for me to jump the hurdles to even get to a decent ranking on Google.

5. I admit sites are not "Google proof". However, when a site gets hit by Google you won't be the only one affected. There will be millions of people discussing the issue and it's fairly easy to find out what you did wrong and fix it. When the same happens on HubPages, answers are extremely difficult to find and there is rarely an official answer from HubPages. It's a guessing game or a trial and error experiment.

6. YOU CAN'T RELY ON HUBPAGES INCOME!! - Please don't make the mistake of relying on your HubPages income. It can disappear on a dime as the success stories have explained. Their traffic has fallen in most cases by over 80% and have been heard to say they have lost over 90% of their income. They are not the only ones, as there are a lot of people hurting on HubPages.

From these 6 points you might be wondering what HubPages is good for? Well it's a great place to put one off articles that don't fit within the scope of any of your sites. It can be a good place to backlink to your sites (although I haven't really done this and they are very strict about it), it's a great way to experiment and learn how to write to get ranked on Google (although I can't say how effective this is going forward) and it's good to meet other like minded people who want to write or learn to make money online etc.

On this note, I am going to concentrate more on own sites and building them into authority sites to make real income. I have been dabbling in building sites and have learnt a lot over the past few months. I want a business where the effort I put in is rewarded appropriately and can be counted on in the future. Unfortunately, I feel this is no longer the case with HubPages.

You'll see in the table below that my traffic is down. However, my CPM has also taken a shark nosedive this month and is down by $1 per thousand impressions, compared to last month. Why? I have no clue.

Wrote 5 new hubs in November, but these won't really get any traffic until later in 2013.

Traffic continues to fall, but I am writing a lot less now on HubPages and have begun experimenting elsewhere.

I am now in the process of trying to set myself up for 2013 and to have a few baskets with income potential, rather than being at the mercy of one platform or site.

This is the last installment of my Hubpages Experiment 2012. I haven't written any hubs this month and have used this time as a sort of Hub holiday. This has given me some time to sit back and assess the year.

I thought I'd use this month as a way to summarize the complete year on Hubpages.

I made over $70 this month from the Adprogram. This means I have received the minimum payout for 11 out of 12 months. I didn't reach payout in January which is understandable since I was just starting out. However, I am pleased that I was able to make at least $50 every month from the first month onwards and even made over $200 a few times.

Of course, on top of that I did make some money from Google Adsense. This is no longer the case since the layout changes but that has to be taken into account too. It's hard to say an exact value as I live in the UK and my Adsense account is in UK pounds. I've made approximately £90.

I also made a few sales through Amazon. I made approximately $90 for the year. Not a lot, but more than I expected since I don't actually have any sales lenses. All of my lenses are informational lenses. Most people who read them are not looking to buy, but instead are looking for free information.

Add that to my total HP Adprogram earnings of approximately $1,400 and it's over $1,600. Is this a lot if money for over 90 hubs? How about for 750,000 views? And most of those hubs took hours and sometimes days to put together. I'll leave that up to you as the reader to decide.

However, I have heard most new hubbers struggle to make $1,000 dollars in their first year online. Hubpages is a great place to learn how to rank on Google, how to conduct keyword research successfully and have measurable results. It's great to meet other writers looking to have some supplemental income and has lots of learning resources.

Will I continue writing on HP? I have to say I really don't know. I am waiting to see how things develop here with both my existing articles and the actions taken by the site owners. But the biggest lesson learned from writing on Hubpages in 2012 would have to be "don't put all your eggs in one basket". I plan to diversify in 2013 and have already begun the process.

Would I have done anything differently if I were able to rewind the clock. Yes, I think I would have tested out more niches. I should have done some product review type lenses or focused on a few niches where people buy stuff.

Apart from that, there have been good times and times that weren't as good. However, I got through them. Learned the lessons, sometimes the hard way, and got on with it.

In life there are always going to be hurdles to overcome. If it was really that easy everyone would be doing it and everyone would be wealthy.

How Would I Achieve $1000 a Month from Hubpages?

Many people aspire to make $1000 a month from Hubpages and I am finally understanding how it can be achieved. I sat down and did some maths to calculate how to make $1000 in a month following my current strategy. Please bear with me while I do the maths calculations.

$3 per 1,000 views so 1,000/$3 = 333 views to make $1.

333 views x 1,000 = 330,000 monthly views required to make $1,000 a month on Hubpages but since only 60% of the impressions count as personal income 550,000 monthly views are actually required (330,000/0.6 = 555,000 views). This would mean an average of 18,330 daily views (555,000/30 = 18,333 daily views). This is based on the assumption that the CPM stays constant and that no revenue is earned through the Google Adsense, Amazon or the Ebay programs.

Is 18,300+ daily views achievable? I guess I'll have to continue on my journey and see how it goes. It really puts into perspective how far a new Hubber has to go and how little I have really achieved, thus far. However, a long journey is made up of lots of little steps.

If we make the assumption that each individual Hub can earn at least $1 a month, then 1,000 Hubs would be required to achieve the $1,000 a month Hub challenge.

I highly doubt that I will hit that target during this experiment, as I am aiming to only write 2 Hubs a week. Of course, if I am able to write more, I will do so but I can not guarantee that I will achieve that goal so have not taken that into consideration. Unless I am lucky and come across a niche that is highly lucrative and has decent traffic, but I will be realitic and say $1,000 a month is out of my range.

Here's a small table of how the impression requirements would change for differing CPM's.

I have seen a number of questions along these lines and hopefully this will make it clearer. This table should also help you visualize the importance of CPM when you are multiplying it by thousands of views.

If you want to know how many views you'd need daily on your own HP account, the easiest way is to figure out how many views or impressions you'd need to make $34 per day (with the HP Ad Program).

I am planning to update this Hub as I continue on my Hubpages voyage and report back on what is working, what has failed and my plans for moving forward.

Even if I fail to achieve my goals, at least now I have a plan to follow and a goal to achieve.

Along the way, I am sure I will continue to learn more and improve.

I am using this Hub as a type of Journal to record my HubPages experiment, experiences and things I have learnt on the long road that is Hubpages. Hopefully, it will become a point of reference for other Hubbers who are looking to grow and improve their experience on HubPages.

How to Continue My Hubpages Experiment?

I can see at some point in the future I may run out of ideas of what new things I could try or do to improve my Hub performance. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

If you have some constructive criticism please share your thoughts in the comments below. I hope once you read this Hub you can see I am aiming to learn as much as possible and put it into action. So if you see an obvious error, in what I have said or done or even my in my math skills, then please let me know and I will endeavour to correct my errors as I continue with my Hubpages 2012 experiment, to achieve more traffic and increase earnings.