When I started writing on Internet during the 2008 freelancing era. I was pretty much active on the Hubpages. I had a lot of failure on the interviews and the job side. And I wanted to vent out my frustration. So I became writer.
Image Credit: Hubpages
I decided to become writer so that I can pay some of the bills and maybe just maybe convince my parents that I am something. So I started writing there. I managed to hit like 50 USD or so a month there. And it was a golden period of the adsense.
I used to write in the topics of tech, crypto, programming and the code in general. I was kind of fresh out of the college at that time. And it was a journey when other people appreciated me. And turns out it was a good time I had at that time.
So how was the journey? And what was my experience so far? What were some of the things that I managed to learn along the way? I think it's something I need to get off my chest and also I can write it down as my experience so I can have go back into the time and run along the memory lane.
Dreams of Adsense
A lot of people established their business using the adsense monetization. Some people got rich. Some people become full time writers. Some people managed to pay their side hustles. And some people just went dreaming.
I was one of those dreamers who never really hate the 1000 USD. And I was dreaming and dreaming and I could not touch the amount I was expecting. And it turns out that dreams are good. But one has to take the actions. And that is one of the experience I have from my youth.
Greed of Monthly Payouts
Once you start writing and trying to monetize using the adsense. You would get addicted to the monthly payout. And that kind of bleeds the greed. You would expect each week and month would be same and you would depend on that income.
Because adsense is a random earner. You have to keep on writing and that is like a hamster wheel. You would not earn forever. And one move from the search engine and your income would go down over a period of time. And it just start going low eventually.
Change is Inevitable
You need to play fast and keep adding more traffic to the website. Same like youtube. Otherwise other people bigger than you would take over and they are going to be stealing your traffic. So some of the time it means you would eventually lose income and traffic.
I didnt made any big with adsense. I just managed to get by. And that was one of the lesson that I learned in this life. Internet income is not sustainable. You just make money one day at a time. And that is one thing most of the people learn if they don't succeed in writing.
- Make connections, they pay off when you want new opportunities.
- Make sure to not depend on adsense and find new earning options.
- Make sure to get traffic to your work.
- Google, amazon, facebook are not reliable income source, they are side source.
That's my learning.
I think that the nicest thing about HubPages is that you can earn money from your articles while you sleep. Other forms of making money on the Internet only rake in the dollars when you're awake and active at doing whatever they want you to do in exchange for monetary compensation.