When most people decide to write a Hub they don’t necessarily try to pick a title that will make readers yawn out of sheer and painful boredom.

But, one of our more outgoing Hubbers aptly named rockinjoe has decided to encourage this type of bored-inducing nonsense with his latest contest that he has cleverly called The Most Boring Hub In Hubpages History.

The rules were simple - Hubbers commented a boring Hub title in the comments and if they were boring enough then they might have the chance to be a finalist in the contest. Many were entered but only a few were selected as the most boring of them all. Joe and his awesome helper mistyhorizon2003 picked the most boring of them all and added them into a poll over here on rockinjoe’s website.

If you want to add your vote you have until January 9th to so. Personally, I think that MightyMom’s Hub title of ‘My Garden Hose Is Blue’ is pretty hard to beat. Makes me nearly fall asleep just thinking about it.

One of our more outspoken and sometimes entertainingly controversial Hubbers Hal Licino just published a Hub that I think is definitely worth reading called Writing Hubs With Legs. The Hub tells all about Hal’s experience with writing Hubs that have long term traffic(and earning) potential and what he thinks has made some of his Hubs last longer than others when it comes to attracting searc traffic.

Some of the main nuggets of HubPages awesomeness that I pulled from Hal’s Hub are:

• It’s important to write with respect and care for your potential readers. Don’t be scammy or have intentions to trick your audience.
• Writing what we here at HubPages call ‘Evergreen’ Hubs, or Hubs that are relevant for longer than a short period of time are more effective at generating long term traffic than more timely/news related Hubs. Some of Hal’s Hubs, such as How To Turn Off Vista’s Useless Junk And Speed Up Your PC, have seen consistent traffic for over two years now.
• Sometimes you get some surprises when you start writing about the things that you simply enjoy writing about. This has happened with Hal’s Hub that’s titled The Secret To Making The Best Braciole On Earth that’s all about an episode of Everyone Loves Raymond that Hal happened to think was hilarious. Every time that this particular episode runs on TV Hal always sees a major spike in traffic.If you take a look at the diagram to the right, that’s an actual screenshot of the traffic spikes that Hal’s Hub sees each time that the Everyone Loves Raymond episode reruns on TV. As you can see, it’s quickly building up some momentum and each time that the episode airs, it builds on the amount of overall traffic that it’s seeing on a day-to-day basis.

Thanks to Hal for sharing all of this insight and hopefully it helps all of you Hubbers out there better understand how to give your Hubs some serious legs in 2009 and beyond.

Yesterday I noticed a question that one of our Hubbers, SpotCoolStuff.com, posted over in the forums:

What’s your favorite hub that explains the HubPages concept to the uninitiated?

He was asking because he was putting together a blog post that included various ways that writers can make some money online and the places that they can find potential writing gigs. This morning I noticed that he finished up the post and had it up online for the world to see.

Here’s a quick look at some of what he wrote about HubPages:

HubPages is our favorite way for freelance blog writers to make money. Because you don’t have to apply to work there. You don’t have a boss and you can write about whatever you want. The way it works is: You sign up with HubPages and their partner affiliate programs. Then you write your posts (called “hubs”) and 60% of the sales and ad revenue they generate goes to you.

I want to shout-out a HUGE thanks to SpotCoolStuff for helping spread the word about what we’re doing here at HubPages. What an awesome blog post and a great way to let other potential writers know about all of the awesome stuff we’ve got going on. If anyone else ever sees a blog post that’s about HubPages let us know so that we can check it out. We can never read too many of these, that’s for sure.

Today I was surfing around HubPages and found a hilarious Hub that’s titled 10 Ways To Become Extremely Unpopular On Hubpages.com. One of our more outspoken and interesting Hubbers, rockinjoe, wrote this entertaining piece of HubPages mastery based upon his 2+ year experience that he’s had here.

I’ve got two years behind me as a writer/reader at Hubpages.com, so I believe that gives me sufficient credibility to write about this topic. Based on my tenure with Hubpages, I’ve taken note of various methods others use to piss off Hubbers and the community.

Definitely worth a read if you have a couple of minutes to burn.

Here on HubPages we always stress three major, yet simple guidelines that any writer should follow when publishing content here. These guidelines were put in place to ensure that all content is written to a certain standard and that it has a good chance of being successful. These 3 guidelines are as follows:

1. All Hubs must be written in English: Even though we have authors from all around the world, we require that all content published on HubPages is written in English.
2. No adult content allowed: There is absolutely no adult content allowed on HubPages. What exactly is adult content? Adult content is any type of content that would be considered pornography and is something that you wouldn’t feel comfortable looking at in front of your mother.
3. Original and informative content: We strongly encourage 100% completely original and very informative content. I always say that if you’re going to spend the time to do something you might as well do it right.

Of these 3 guidelines, 2 of them are much easier to control than the other. It’s easy to only allow English - that’s about as straight forward as it gets. It’s also fairly easy to keep out adult-related material (aka ‘porn’). But, the guideline that’s by far the hardest to control is ensuring that the content published on HubPages is not only created as 100% original content, but stays 100% original content.

You see, it’s one thing for someone to copy someone else’s writing out on the web and then post it on HubPages as their own - there are ways to detect and regulate this type of thing because the copied content is on our side and we’re able to do something about it (delete it, flag it, moderate it, etc.).

However, it’s a completely different and much more complicated situation when someone on another site copies and publishes some writing that was originally published on HubPages. In this case the HubPages author is most likely unaware that their content has been copied elsewhere and even if they are aware of the situation, many aren’t sure how to go about getting it taken down.

First of all I wanted to let everyone know that we’re always working on tools that will help with this process of locating any content that has been copied from your Hubs and we take these issues very seriously. It’s our goal to always empower every one of our authors with the right types of tools so that we can continue to provide the best possible writing experience on the web.

Second of all, this is a problem that many of our more experienced authors have dealt with before - authors such as the super-awesome Whitney05. Since Whitney has some really great insight on how to deal with copying issues, I asked her to write up a Hub about these types of situations. This Hub, called My Content was Copied: What Do I Do About Duplicate Content, is a great resource for any author who has found out that their content has been copied and may be wondering how to deal with it.

If you have any additional questions, feel free to leave Whitney a comment in that Hub or even send her a message through HubPages.

I was recently talking with former colleagues about HubPages and I was asked the usual questions. The first question is usually why should I write a hub as opposed to a blog.

I’ve already covered this question so I will focus on the other questions that I was asked:

How much money can you really make on HubPages?

Ultimately, that’s a tough question. It is much easier to talk about how the money gets calculated. At HubPages, authors get 60% of all AdSense revenues from their hubs as well as 60% of any the eBay, Amazon, or Kontera affiliate revenue. That’s all good and fine but how much money? It depends not only on traffic but also on the type of traffic. You need to attract traffic that matches the ads and promotions that you have on your hub.

How much money does our top hubber make?

You could focus on the hubbers that make the most money but that is misleading. You wouldn’t judge how much a typical book author makes by looking at J. K. Rowling’s salary. Of course, if you are writing your hub solely to make money, that is also not a good indicator of money potential since readers may not come back and Google search may penalize your hub page and you will be deeply buried in the Google search results.

Hubber revenue is private so I can’t state definitively the top revenue earner. I do know that one hub has often made over $100 in one day. This hub took about 30 minutes to write and it is over 2 years old. I’ve talked about it in a previous posting so go there if you want more details. Still, it is very misleading, in my opinion, to use this result as your yardstick.

OK, already, can’t you give me any dollar amount for an average hubber?

Well, assuming that you focus on providing valuable content to your reader, then here is the number that I’ve heard. If you do, say, 10 reasonable quality hubs each month for 10 months, then by month 11, you should be making roughly $50/month. Many authors make more than this and the web traffic is the limit for professional writers. Still, for the hard worker with average talent, $50/month should be achievable.

Here’s the reasoning behind this number. It takes time to build up web traffic. There’s a learning curve that happens as you become familiar with the hub tools available. And even following this, it takes time to build up your hubscore and attract web traffic. Keep in mind: hubs tend to be hit-or-miss. Your best hub may bring in more money than the other hubs combined but it is not always clear ahead of time which one of your hubs will be the most popular. That’s why you need to create 10 a month.

I’ve heard that hubs that are overly photo rich or have lots of videos do not do as well as hubs that are text rich. Additionally, it’s good to be active in hubpages. When you are first getting started, participate in the hub makeover forum. Get involved in the topic discussions and feel free to post requests and also to ask for help when it’s needed. Also, use tags. We have a tool to suggest tags if you have trouble coming up with terms.

Since it’s in HubPages’ interest to drive traffic to high quality hubs, we have a set of policies that are really designed to encourage best practices in hub creation. For example, while hubs can be used to promote web sites, we do not allow more than 2 links to any one external domain.

How long does it take to write a hub?

I’ve heard that it takes many people 20-30 minutes to write a hub of reasonably good quality on a topic that they are already familiar with: an evaluation of a movie, product, description of a hobby, or details on a good cause that you believe in, poetry, or anecdotes from your life. For me, it takes much longer than 30 minutes to write a hub, but I tend to write on ambitious topics like: How Long Did Ancient Civilizations Last? I’ve been most successful when I write about what I’m most interested in. I think that’s more important than writing to make money. By the way, the hub that I just listed above is my fastest growing hub in traffic. Who would have thought?

So, want to make some extra money. Feel free to take the HubPages challenge: write 10 hubs a month for 10 months and see if you are not making $50/month. Feel free to post your experience as a comment to this blog entry.

I was just reading about about the most popular searches of 2008 over on TechCrunch this morning, which was pretty interesting. I guess that Google publishes all of this search data every year under the name Zeitgeist, which after looking it up on Wikipedia I realized meant ‘the intellectual, cultural, ethical and political climate, ambiance and moral of an era’.

From a HubPages standpoint it’s always good to see what search terms are pulling in some heavy traffic - especially when it comes to what products are being searched for the most. Potentially this data could show some trends in areas where you might not have thought about writing about before and could help you get some of that golden Google traffic that we all love to see.

But, if nothing else it’s some really cool information to look at - definitely worth some of your time if you get a chance to check it out.

Sometimes when people hang around somewhere or like something for long enough they begin to claim themselves as someone who knew all about something before it was even cool to like it. You know, similar to your friends who claim to have known all about Coldplay before they hit the mainstream or that they watched Napoleon Dynamite way before it hit the all of the major movie theaters.

I’ll be the first to say that one of HubPages most seasoned veterans, jimmythejock, has never been one of these types of people, but with over 2 years and 687 Hubs under his belt he deserves the title of being called old school as much as anyone around this place. Well, after talking to Jimmy the other day I learned that out of all of the time that he has been on HubPages, this past month of November 2008 turned out to be his highest earning month by far. After I heard this I found myself getting curious on what was different about this past month than any other and decided to ask him some questions in the interview posted below so that I could try to figure it all out.

Hup: So Jimmy, I hear that you had a pretty good month on HubPages in November? So good, in fact, that it was your best month ever?

Jimmy: Hi Ryan, November was a great month for me in terms of visitors to my pages and of course that increase led to me making more money from my hubs than ever before, according to Google analytics my visitor count increased by almost 20%. In the month of October my hubs received 71,068 visits compared to 79,086 in November.

Hup: What do you contribute to this extra-spectacular month of earnings? Did you change anything up or focus on anything new?

Jimmy: For experimental purposes I have been trying different types of Hubs over the past few months to see if it makes a difference to how much money that you can earn from the site, along with the writing I have been focusing my attention on the advertising from Ebay and Amazon to make the ads suit the topics better than randomizing their ads.

I don’t really do any S.E.O on my hubs but I do link them on Digg.com and on a blog that I created just for that purpose.

Hup: So your Ebay and Amazon Revenue Capsules have given you quite a boost then, eh? Which Hubs in particular have been great as far as Ebay/Amazon sales go?

Jimmy: Ebay and Amazon have been very good to me but not only this month, over the past 3-4 months my earnings have increased at a steady rate, the secret seems to be to review a product that Ebay or Amazon has on sale and add relevant Ebay/Amazon ads in your Hubpages Capsules.

From 1 Sale on Ebay in November I earned a commission of $126.00 The sale came from a Review I published about Rolex Watches. The hub had only been published for 36 hours when the deal went through.

I did have a relatively poor month with Amazon in November but I received a lot of clicks on the ads, although in November I only earned $15.00 I made $22.00 from a single sale in October from this Hub.

My ads on Kontera average between $25-$30 every month and November was no different my sales from there were $26.00.

My ads on Google usually run between $120-$150 per month but in November I made an extra $30.00 and finished the month with $182.00 the clicks came from my new review hubs and as a special bonus I received one cent every time one of my three mini pc review hubs were visited.

For the first month in over 2 years writing on Hubpages my earnings total broke the £300.00 mark and it was such a good month that I made over $350.00.

Another added bonus is that because the UK Pound is at a low rate against the Dollar it means that I am earning about an extra 20-30 cents extra for every dollar I earn 3 months ago if I earned $100.00 I would get paid around £50.00, In November for every $100 I now get £67-£70 depending the rate on the day Google pay out.

Hup: What would you like to let the rest of HubPages know about your new success? Any tips, ideas or best practices to share with other Hubbers so that they can cash in on their Hubs, too? Don’t hold out on us, Jimmy!

Jimmy: There really is no secret that I know of and I am positive that some people on the site make a whole lot more money than I do, I am more of a hobby writer and any money that I earn from Hubpages is a bonus.

If you really want to make a lot of money on Hubpages though and you have some spare time on your hands it could easily be accomplished by marketing and publicizing your work, I write my articles link them on my blog and on dig and Hubpages seems to be loved by the search engines which takes care of half of the battle, I have seen hubs that I have published on the first page of Google search in around 20 minutes and I put this down to the reputation of the Hubpages site.

Product reviews seem the best way to make money from Amazon and Ebay, Especially if you handpick the ads yourself. Google and Kontera ads just seem to be clicked no matter the topic of your hub the more visitors to your pages the more people will click on your ads and the more money you earn.

Thanks for the interview, Jimmy and keep up the great Hubbing!

Even though it’s hard to believe, it seems that it is now officially December, which means that we are smack-dab in the middle of yet another crazy holiday season filled with sales, shopping, traveling and family get-togethers. It’s so easy to get so caught up in the holiday madness that sometimes you wish that it would just be over as quickly as it showed up. Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s no need to be such a Grinch and besides the fact that you get additional vacation time and a chance to hang with your family(could be good or bad), there are definite bright sides to this whole ‘holiday season’ thing.

You see, from a HubPages perspective, the over-hyped Christmas shopping season that kicks into gear this month means that people are looking for stuff to by and despite some slowdowns in online spending this year, more people than ever will be heading online to shop. Although yesterday(aka Cyber Monday) is supposedly the busiest online shopping day, the entire month of December leading up to Christmas creates a very opportunistic time for Hubbers to make some additional revenue.

Whether people are out searching for electronics, movies, books or beauty products they will be looking for places online where they can learn more about things and potentially buy things as they begin to mark people off of their Christmas shopping to-do lists. One of the best ways to capitalize on this product-buying trend is to create very informative and product specific Hubs that include Ebay and Amazon Revenue Capsules. These capsules enable those browsing your Hubs to not only learn about the products, but buy them directly from your Hub as well. This makes the purchasing process easier for the buyer and it helps you earn some additional cash in the process. You’ve helped them make an informed decision and because of that you get a piece of the pie if they follow through with a purchase on Amazon or Ebay. Sounds like a great HubPages holiday shopping situation for everyone involved, don’t you think?

If you haven’t registered as an Ebay or Amazon affiliate yet on HubPages, be sure to login and check out your My Affiliate Settings page for information how to sign up in a matter of minutes. Now, hurry up and get to Hubbing so that you can turn this year’s holiday season into a way to make yourself some extra Christmas spending cash.

Also, according to our reports, Ebay is currently trending towards generating over double the amount of revenue per click that Amazon is generating, so start plugging in those Ebay Capsules, Hubbers!

Light blue(left column) is Amazon’s revenue per click vs. the purple colored(right column)Ebay

Oh. My. Goodness. We did it. Thanks to all of you awesomely-super-fantastic-radical Hubbers out there who voted for us last week, HubPages have officially been chosen as a finalist in The 2008 Mashable Open Web Awards. But, just because we made it into the final round doesn’t mean that we can slack off now and let this award slip through our fingers - we need to get to voting again and this time we need to do it every day(that you can, of course).

Yeah, I know that voting every day could get pretty overwhelming, but I’ll try to remind you each day over in the Forums and I’ll be sure to mention it in the newsletter each week as well. This is a great opportunity for all of us Hubbers to show the rest of the web world just how awesome HubPages really is and I hope that you’re all up for the challenge!

All you need to do is add in your email below, click the Vote Now button and you’re good to go. Just remember that you can vote once every 24 hours, so be sure to remember to stop by this blog every day that you can until December 15th so that you can get your vote on. Me and the rest of the HubPages team appreciate all of your help with this and we’re super excited that we have the chance to win this award. Thanks SO much for your votes and for being part of the HubPages community.