Monthly Update - February 2011

During February, as per many recent months, I did little in the way of online work and building a residual income.  Furthermore, like many other people, I have been hit by the changes to the Google algorithm.  Whilst it only affected the very end of February, I have already noticed a 10%-20% fall in traffic to my Hubpages, which pretty much chimes with the Alexa chart for traffic to Hubpages.  I would expect that I will see a similar decrease in earnings and whilst this may seem like a high amount I have only dropped (in traffic at least) to where I was in the latter half of 2010, and considering I hadn't spent much time on hubs in the time between it wasn't too bad. 

Well now on to earnings:

Webanswers: £24.71 (30% decrease from January 2011)
Infobarrel: £1.28 (1729% increase)
She Told Me: £0.01 (97% decrease)
Xomba: £2.44 (1062% increase)
Hubpages: £75.44 (18% decrease)
Total: £103.88 (19% decrease)

As can be seen I had a decrease in earnings.  Initially this would seem like a bad result.  However, as I have already mentioned, I did little online work and so this is pretty much true residual income.  Furthermore, February has approximately 10% fewer days than January and so I would expect to see a corresponding drop in income.  Furthermore, there have been the Google algorithm changes which probably knocked a bit more off of my earnings. There are reason to be positive though.

Firstly, whilst Google traffic to Hubpages and Webanswers may have fallen particularly due to the changes outlined above, I have noticed massive increases in traffic to Hubpages at least from Bing.

Secondly, and possibly more considerable to my short term earnings is the fact that Hubpages have opened their own ad system.  At present there is a limit of 5 Google Adsense ads per page, but for some larger hubs there could easily be more adverts and so Hubpages will display adverts from other sources and will pay hubbers through PayPal for these adverts.  A number of hubbers carried out a trial and they saw an average increase in earnings of 60%.  It has recently been rolled out to a further 500, of which I was lucky enough to be one, and so I am hoping to see the benefits of this soon.  If I see a 60% uplift in earnings this will more than make up for the earnings lost from the Google changes (and more!).  I have signed up, but believe I am yet to have these adverts shown as my details haven't been process, but when they are you can see them on my hubs such as Great Dance Party Songs, Top 10 Most Expensive Cities in the World, Motorola Xoom Screen Protectors and How Do I Find my WEP key?.  Furthermore, I will provide an update on how I find the Hubpages ad program, either in the next update or if the news is considerable in it's own blog post before then.