One of the best ways of late to make online money is by posting content to so-called Web 2.0 properties. This involves places like Squidoo and Hubpages. For our purposes here I would like to focus exclusively on how to make money with Hubpages, because this is generally a much more lucrative (see: easy) way to earn revenue nowadays.

Hubpages is at the very least a great place for noob Internet marketers to start honing their chops and practicing the keyword targeting methods which they have picked up from reading blogs. Why is this? For one, it attracts a nice flow of traffic from Google, which is key to making a lower maintenance online income. Another reason Hubpages is such a good place to start making money is that you don’t have to do any of the setup or hosting yourself. That has all been automated and you will only deal with a nice and (pretty) easy to use “hub” interface. So, basically you’re combining an already pre-established good relationship with Google with a very user-friendly and quick way to publish online content.

Why is it so important what kind of love Hubpages gets from Google? Because the Big G is the deliverer of about 60% or more of all search engine traffic. It is highly important to rank well in their search engine results pages if anyone is ever going to possibly make it to your site and potentially click one of your Adsense ads or buy an Amazon or eBay product through you. Without that, you have lost a huge source of potential revenue.

Besides all of the above great points about the potential to make money with Hubpages, it has also proved to be a fertile ground within which to test keyword and marketing strategies. Maybe you are thinking about building a niche site but you’re not completely sure if the buying customers will really show up? Well, in this case you can throw up a hub in a half-hour’s time and check on it a week later to see if it has “caught” in the search engines. This will give you a much better idea of whether to go through with your bigger project or not. It could also serve to refine your strategy when you see the specific search terms with which people are finding your hub.

So that is basically why I believe that Hubpages should be a vital part of any not yet established Internet marketers repertoire of money-making, idea-testing tools. You may even start out just by using it lightly and then realize, “Hey, there is really something to this. I think I can leverage this thing to make $1,000 + a month pretty easy.”

“How can I make money with Google Adsense?”

This is one of the most asked questions on webmaster forums today. Well I am going to go over a few of the simple but extremely effective and proven ways you can earn with Google Adsense. How much you earn is totally up to you – put in enough effort and the rewards will present themselves, often in quite a short amount of time in comparison to other revenue methods.

Keep in mind however that just like any work, to make money with Adsense you need commitment and perseverance – there is no such thing as overnight millionaires! Now I have that out of the way, let’s talk about how you can earn money with Adsense.

Niche Sites

Niche, niche, niche. The word “niche” seems to be all the rage these days, everyone is talking about it. How can niche websites make you Adsense money?

Well targeting a niche market, rather than a broad category ensures your audience is targeted. Rather than trying to attract visitors who are simply into guitars, if you make a site about Fender Stratocaster guitars, you’re automatically targeting a niche market – those people who want information about Fender Stratocasters, not just people who want information about guitars. In turn, this means your Adsense ads will contain more targeted and on-topic options for your visitors to click, resulting in a higher CTR.

In my opinion, it is better to have 10 small websites targeting various facets of a broad topic, rather than one site which tries to be the “everything” of a topic.

Niche websites are extremely powerful when it comes to making money with Adsense, so start researching those niches!

Forums

Yes, you can make money from your forum. If you have an existing popular forum that you are not monetizing, now is the time to begin implementing Adsense into it. Most of your users may not even notice the ads – this is what the term “ad blindness” refers to. Forum users are notorious for not clicking ads, however with a bit of smart placement and rotation, your forum CTR can become exceptional.

While on a regular site it is suggested that blending ads is the key to high earnings, on a forum I strongly recommend doing the opposite – making your ads stand out with bright colors. You will be surprised that this tends to work quite well on forums where ad blindness can be rampant amongst regular users.

Another forum Adsense placement tip is to use specialized plugins to insert Adsense after a set number of posts – inserting after the last post on every page is a method I use and have found to be a good performer.

Blogs

Blogs are all the rage, and for good reason. Blogs are easy to update, and easy to start. Thankfully, they are also exceptionally easy to monetize with Adsense! Most blog software (WordPress, Blogger etc) provide plugins whereby you can simply click a button and have your Adsense code inserted in your posts.

Some of the best blog Adsense placement tips I have are:

Placing an ad unit after each post

Placing an ad unit half way through a long post (if your posts are 500+ words)

You also have the option of inserting Adsense into your blog template. Although this takes a little more customization in the beginning, once it is done, it’s done and there is no other fiddling on your part – the Adsense units will always show up where you have inserted them in the template.

There are many bloggers making four, five and six figure yearly incomes simply by using Adsense on their blogs – this can be you if you implement, test and track your Adsense blog performance.

Niche sites, forums and blogs are three of the most common, yet certainly not the only methods you can make money with Google Adsense.

If you are a beginner, I recommend starting with a simple blog on blogger.com – it is all hosted there for you, you simply make some interesting posts and insert your Adsense code. As your skills progress, developing niche websites and forums will only strengthen your web empire.