ATTENTION: This is currently being revised to better reflect the new year and new policies/etc.  I have crossed out what you should ignore for the time being.  This section of text will change when it’s complete.

A lot of people have been asking me lately how I make money writing online.  At first, I started writing an ebook that I was going to try to sell detailing exactly how I do it, but then I thought that would be selfish of me.  If I learned everything by doing research online for free, why should I charge someone for the same information? In the spirit of “paying it forward”, I would like to pay it forward to anyone who cares, so that they can make money online, too.  You won’t be competing with me, unless you pick the same niches that I do, and in that case, well, I’ll hunt you down and make you remove it.  For really real.

Make sure you follow this as closely as possible.  I don’t want you making a mistake and then asking me what you did wrong.  While I do like helping people, I don’t want emails every week of “GARRETT Y I NO MAKE MONEY?!?!?” To help against that, I’m setting this up in a very detailed and step-by-step format.  All of the links will be set up to open in a new window, so that when I say “sign up for these sites” you will be able to click the links and open them, and then sign up, and close the window and return to this guide.

Quick Disclaimer: You will not get rich, but you will make a few extra hundred dollars a month. Whether you need it to pay bills, or you just want some extra spending money, this will do it.  It will take a decent amount of work at the beginning, and you get out of it what you put into it, but it does pay off if you work hard. In most cases, it will continue to pay off even after you’ve stopped working on it (if your articles are in niches that will last). JulieBMack said it best: “Think of it like a rocket – 80% energy to get it going and 20% to sustain it.”  Also, I’m not responsible for anything you do or what results of it. Use any info here at your own risk.  I have to say that for legal reasons, there’s nothing here that can get you in trouble (unless you try to make a shortcut and break copyrights or something).

Step 1: Sign Up For Accounts

First think you’ll need to do is sign up for a bunch of accounts. I know, sounds annoying, and it is, but you only have to do it once, and it won’t take too long.  As I said above, all you need to do is click the link, sign up, close the window and come back here.

First: Google Adsense.  This is where most of your money will come from, probably.

Second: Amazon Associates. This is Amazon’s affiliate program. You may make some money off of this if you focus on this instead of Adsense.  I’ll explain later.

Third: HubPages.  This is the most important one of all, because this is where you’ll be doing the actual writing. Make sure you put your affiliate settings in (Amazon and adsense). PLEASE use this link so that I can track clicks and signups.

Fourth: SheToldMe. This works with Adsense to help you make more money with…well…Adsense. Make sure you put your adsense settings in.

Fifth: Xomba.  Also works with Adsense to help you make more money.  It’s just like SheToldMe.  I’ll explain more later. Make sure you put your adsense settings in.

Step 2: Submit RSS Feeds

First: Submit your RSS feed from Hubpages to each and every one of these.  It shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes, despite how long the list is. Your RSS feed will be: http://hubpages.com/author/USER+NAME/latest/?rss.  Where it says “USER+NAME” you need to put your username. If you have a space in your user name, you want to put a “+” sign there.  For example, my user name is “Garrett Mickley”, so in my RSS feed it says “Garrett+Mickley”.  Make sense? If you CTRL Click each of these it will open them up in new tabs/windows so you can easily access them without losing this page.

1. 2Rss
2. 5z5.com
3. 9rules.com
4. Allheadlinenews
5. Automotive-links
6. Blogdigger
7. Blo.gs
8. Chordata
9. Crayon
10. CDRinfo
11. Devasp
12. Educational-feeds
13. Feedagg
14. Feedage
15. Feedbase
16. Feed Burner
17. Feedboy
18. Feedcat
19. Rssfeeddirectory
20. Feedest
21. Feedfury
22. Feedgy
23. FeedListing
24. Feedmil
25. Feedmailer
26. Feedplex
27. Feedsee
28. Feed Submitter
29. Feeds4all
30. Feedzie
31. Finance-investing
32. Gabbr
33. Genwi
34. Goldenfeed
35. Icerocket
36. Itsmynews
37. Jordomedia
38. Keegy
39. Leighrss
40. Mediapost
41. Medical-feeds
42. Medworm
43. Metafeeder
44. Millionrss
45. Moneyhighstreet
46. MyMSN RSS Directory
47. News-feeds
48. Newsknowledge
49. Newsmaster
50. Newsmob
51. Newsnow
52. NGOID News Network
53. Oobdoo
54. Paiddirectory
55. Plazoo
56. Postami
57. Political-humor
58. Pressradar
59. Publisher.yahoo
60. Rapidfeeds
61. RDFTicker
62. ReadAblog
63. Redtram
64. Rss001
65. Rssbuffet
66. Rssfeeds
67. RSS Feeds Directory
68. Rsshugger
69. Rssmad
70. Rssmicro
71. Rssmountain
72. Rssmotron
73. Rssroot
74. Rss-spider
75. Rsstop10
76. Rubhub
77. Scribnia
78. Solarwarp
79. Swoogle
80. Syndic8
81. Technorati
82. Topix
83. Twingly
84. Urlfan
85. Wasalive
86. Weblogalot
87. Wingee
88. Yopod
89. YahooRss
90. Xmeta

I may add to this list over time so check beck.  More RSS feeds = better! You will not have to repeat this step.  This is a one time thing.  Once your RSS feed is submitted, you’re done with it.  It will automatically post out whenever you make a hub page.

Step 3: Keyword Research

Keyword research is super easy to explain.

First, go here (open in a new window or tab).

Once you’ve decided what you want to write about, you need to come here and put your main keyword in, so that you can find other keywords.  Your main keyword will be basically what you’re writing about.  So lets say you’re writing a review about your iPhone 4.  You want to type in “iphone 4 review”.  It looks like that search term gets 49,500 searches a month.  That means it’s something people are looking for.  It also means you have a lot of competition. But that’s not something to worry about. There are also other terms in here like “mp3 players comparisons” and “i touch price”, and other similar things. When you make your hub, you’ll want to make sure to write about as many of these suggested terms as possible, or at least mention them in a sentence somewhere.  If something doesn’t make sense to you, don’t put it in there.  Sometimes you’ll get strange things not really related to what you submitted, just ignore them and stick with the search terms you recognize. You’ll also want to put these in your keywords/tags section, which you can see when you first make the hub, and later on the right side bar of the hub page.

That’s about it for keyword research.  There’s tons of more in-depth things you can do.  Browse around hubpages’ forums to see what other users are doing for their keyword research.  You can learn a lot from the successful hubbers who post on the forums.

Step 4: Write

This doesn’t need much explanation.  Write at least 500 words.  A lot of people suggest that the longer the hub is, the better it is and the more money you will make.  I’ve seen some really successful hubs with 2000+ words, but I don’t write hubs that long.  I shoot for 500 word minimum, though.  When you write the hub, make sure to use the keywords I talked about above.  Also make sure you insert an amazon module and use it to display relative items.  If someone buys one, you make money off of it.  That’s why I had you sign up for Amazon.  Adsense money will come from ad clicks in your hub.  Look around at other hubbers to see how they organize their hubs.  That will give you a good idea of how to set things up to best benefit your intentions.  I also want to note that poetry and fiction usually do not rake in the dough on hubpages.  However, if that’s what you want to write, I say go for it.

Step 5: Backlinks

This is the last step. Remember SheToldMe and Xomba?  Well, you need to write a short article, one for each, describing the hub you just wrote.  You will need to repeat this for every hub you write.  It’s really easy.  Just write one little article, and then rewrite it in different words. Then, post it out to these two places. Think of it like an outline of the hub you just posted, but do NOT make it an outline format.  Use complete sentences and make it look like a natural article (as it is, and should be, a natural article). Your RSS feed is automatically building up links from all those submission directories.  You’ll also want to make sure to post links on your Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. When you post to Twitter, make sure to use the hashtag #hubpages so you can get picked up by other Hubbers. It’s also helpful to post multiple hubs on one topic and have them linking to each other, but a very specific way.  Never have a hub linking to a hub that links back at the first hub.  There should be no “Hub1<->Hub2″ linking (called reciprocal links).  Should be “Hub1->Hub2-Hub3->Hub1″ or something similar.  You can have one hub pointing to two other hubs, or two hubs pointing to one specific hub, or however you want to organize as long as they’re not pointing back at each other reciprocal-like. Another great resource is SocialMarker.com which will ask you for some info, and then quickly help you submit to tons of social bookmarking websites. You can also build backlinks on forums or Tumblr, or other blog services like LiveJournal.

That’s it!  Repeat steps 3-5.  Build up lots of hubs. Build them pointing to each other.  Build (hubpages) and they (traffic) will come!