I Survived the 30 Hubs in 30 Days Challenge

Well, I finally finished. Thirty hubs in thirty days! I decided to go for the challenge not entirely sure I'd be able to finish it. When I started, I'd been at hubpages a little over a month, and had a grand total of five articles published. With the completion of this hub, I'll be up to 35! Not bad for a newbie!

Besides increasing my sheer volume of hubs, I've learned a lot about hubbing, internet writing, adsense and amazon, as well as many other finer points along the way. Besides the satisfaction of finishing, my page views have quadrupled, up to about 200 a day, and I'm finally earning real dollars instead of pennies!

I would highly recommend at least trying out the 30 day challenge to new hubbers, or to any older hubbers who are looking for a way to boost their accounts.

The following is a list of ways that doing the challenge has helped me, my ratings, and my revenues:

1. Page Views Increase Exponentially - When I first started hubbing, I think I was getting somewhere around 25 hits a day. Once got into the challenge, somewhere into the second week, I actually started to notice that not only was I getting more total page views (that should be a given with more hubs) but the more hubs I had, the more page views each individual hub was getting on its own. With more hubs comes more ways to draw traffic. While not every visitor will stay within your site, a fair amount will come to check you out, then read another one of your hubs. Linking from one hub to another (but only if they relate) can be helpful too.
2. Adsense - In the beginning, I had a few cents to my name. Literally. But at the beginning of the third week, I suddenly jumped past the dollar mark! I know its peanuts for some, but considering that I tend to write on subjects like Beowulf, Doctor Faustus, and Exile Literature, I really wasn't expecting to make much money ever from my hubs. Earnings seem to be somewhat exponential as well, I'm fast approaching the ten dollar mark just for this week. Not complaining!
3. General Knowledge - In the process of trying to write a hub every single day, I've spent a lot of time just browsing the site and reading articles. I've learned a lot about adsense, amazon, creating titles, organizing hubs, and other good stuff. Because I was putting what I was learning into practice, it seemed to really stick. I'm far more knowledgeable about both hubpages as well as internet writing in general now.
4. Community - Spending so much time on hubpages made me realize what an amazing community exists here. I found myself reading forums, author bios, and plenty of hubs. There are some amazing writers here that I wasn't aware of before, and all around cool folks. Hubpages has become more than just a site that I write for, but a community that I belong to, which makes it all the more fun.
   
5. Ideas - I keep a small notebook with me at all times to jot down ideas for future articles, blogs, and hubs. Before I started the challenge, I usually had a list of about five things. Now, its going on over 50. The more I write, and read other people's writing, the more I'm inspired about topics I'd like to cover. Instead of "what should I write about today?" I now ask myself "what do I get to write about today?"
6. Speed and Quality of Writing - Though some topics do take longer, I can now dash out a hub pretty quickly. By the end of the month I was knocking out a few hubs a day, and I actually finished a few days early! I find revising and editing is a lot faster and easier now too.
   

It wasn't all smooth sailing. I did run into a few setbacks along the way. Initially, I'd get a few days behind for one reason or another, and find myself having to work double-time to catch up.

The hardest part for me came at the halfway point, around the 15th hub. I was behind a few days, and wasn't exactly sure how many I'd done. I felt like I'd been hubbing forever, and was sure I was getting near the end. Imagine my surprise when a quick count revealed I was only halfway through. I was sure I'd never make it, I couldn't imagine what I could bring myself to write next, and how I was going to continue to carve out the time every day for another two weeks.

At a few points, I really had to dig deep. It wasn't that I couldn't think of anything to write about, I had my notebook full of ideas, it was just that I was burned out and couldn't think of anything I wanted to write about. This was one of the reasons behind my Sexiest Women of Survivor hub, the one am least proud of, by far. Ironically, it is now my most popular hub by far. I should have known.

Once I got into the twenties however, the hubs seemed to fly out. Before I knew it I was at #25, then #30 with a quick all-night marathon of hubbing.

I'm way too hooked on hubpages to stop writing them, but I'll likely slow down to about one a week. I think I will take the same challenge into the other sites I write for, and see if I can't up my earnings there as well. But I think I'll wait until after the semester. Since hubpages doesn't exactly pay my bills, and I am also a grad student, writing a hub a day has effectively eaten up all my spare time this month. Not to mention I've had a lot of late nights. Really late, depending on how hard a hub was. Now that I'm done, I think there is a season of Survivor to catch up on...or maybe a nap!