My Plan to Meet HubPages Earnings Goals in 2012

It is great to have goals and share them at the beginning of the year, but if you don't have a plan for achieving them or some way to measure the progress, then it just becomes a waste of time to make resolutions and set goals.

My goal for HubPages earnings is pretty simple. I would like to make $20 per month in January with the Ad Program and increase that total by $5 per month throughout the entire year so that I am making $75 in the month of December 2012. That will be some serious growth and will require some effort on my part, but I do think it is possible.

In order to make these goals, I plan on focusing on one month at a time and doing what it takes to hit daily targets. For January, in order to make $20 during the month, I need to average 65 cents per day. Now that doesn't seem all that difficult. It helps that I managed to make $24.50 during December but some of those earnings were helped along by one major seasonal article that won't provide much traffic in February or the rest of the months.

So, I will have to rely on whatever traffic I am able to generate on a more consistent basis. One of the things that I have noticed, however, is that my traffic always seems to get a little bump every time that I publish a new Hub. It makes sense since I have 780 followers and some of them might be interested in what I have to write.

The same holds true for my personal blogs as well. Each time there is new content, there is a spike in traffic since regular readers will want to check out what is new and won't read anything again until new content is published. The background level of traffic is what arrives from search engines. Ideally, as articles get indexed, gather backlinks, and age, they will move up in search engine rankings gradually growing the level of baseline traffic over time. That is why the time component can be a major factor in the growth of a website. Of course, more regular readers will also appear over time as well.

So as long as I am making 65 cents per day or more during January, I can let my Hubs fend for themselves. The baseline level of traffic is enough to get the job done. But as soon as that average level falls, I need to hustle, publish more Hubs, drive more traffic and earn more to get back on track.

To me, this seems like a reasonable plan as I have noticed that over the past few weeks since 12/19/2011 my earnings have increased to over $1 per day which had only happened once during my entire time in the Ad Program. I have published 8 Hubs during that time, many of which got over 100 views which has been my typical level of baseline traffic. Simply improving that baseline should help to add to my Ad Program earnings.

For February in order to make $25 for the month, I will have to make just over 86 cents per day. Again, I have been achieving that level for the last week, but only with the added effort of additional Hubs. Obviously, I will have my work cut out for me, but I think it will be worth it in the end. I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up with close to 350 Hubs by the end of the year meaning that I would be publishing on average about 3 times per week. That is the type of schedule that I have been maintaining with my personal blog which has definitely helped with growth.

Ultimately, I will need to be making about $2.50 per day by the end of the year. It remains to be seen whether or not I can work my way up to that total but spending more time writing and publishing will definitely provide a good start.