Does article writing work?

Article writing has got very popular recently, but does it still work?

Here's some research based on some of my own articles. I've got data stretching back to 2003, so let's have a look and see if article writing for marketing and money making purposes is worthwhile...

Many people think I’m wasting my time writing articles. Maybe people will think you’re crazy to waste your time writing for HubPages. Are they right?

The problem is that HubPages has only been around since 2006. That’s not a lot of time to gauge success. However, I am fortunate enough to have signed up for AdSense in 2003. I have a lot more data to play with!

Here’s an interesting chart below. This chart is derived from my AdSense data for some of my brettb.com articles in a particular IT-related topic. I started writing them in 2004. I wrote a few more articles in 2005 and 2007. I now have 25 articles on the topic.

The bar chart shows the number of daily page views. Look how the number of page views has soared! I thought I was doing well getting 200 visits a day by early 2005. But by the middle of 2007 I was getting 600 views a day!

So if we're after visitors, then article marketing is clearly a winner!

One interesting observation is that as I added more pages in 2005 and 2007, the number of views spiked, then they actually decreased! This is quite common and I believe it is related to referrals from Google’s search results. Google loves fresh content, and will boost the search rankings of updated content. This effect fades over time. However, high quality content stands the test of time. The pages getting links from other sites also helps. Naturally it’s also better to write about a topic that will still be popular after many years (an evergreen topic).

The take home message from this chart is that your Hub visits (and hence your earnings from those Hubs) should gradually increase over time.

By the way, I've never really been into back linking. I hardly ever link my articles from sites other than my existing network of websites.

The other thing to notice in this chart is the red earnings line. This shows how much these articles have earnt in total through AdSense. The total to January 2010 is £160 from 25 web pages. Each web page has therefore earnt me £6.40. That’s not a bad amount considering each one took just 30 minutes to write. They have actually been a lot more successful when you realise that:

• The articles are in a technology niche with very poor click through rates. Some of my other pages have click through rates that are much, much higher.
• It wasn’t until February 2010 that I realised that by putting my AdSense blocks in better places I could get 5x as much AdSense income from my website! Yikes, instead of earning £160 I could have earned £800!
• I put YieldBuild on my site, which further boosted AdSense revenue.
• These articles are still generating AdSense income! Sadly I can't update the chart as my AdSense data is now appearing as YieldBuild data rather than the specific AdSense Channel I set up in 2003.

I only wrote these articles in order to market my own software products. Each page has sold at least one $49.95 product per year.

So let’s redo the math! If I had been better at AdSense placement way back in 2004, and assuming each article sold one $49.95 product a year, then by my rough calculations each page has earned me £152 up to January 2010. How many other ways could you earn £304 per hour? For reference, the 2010 UK minimum wage is £5.93 per hour.

So to summarise, my chart proves that writing articles is lucrative. You can do reasonably well from AdSense alone. But if your articles are in the sorts of topics where you can promote related eBooks, software or other affiliate links to goods and services then article writing is potentially as profitable as working on Wall Street! The great thing is that you don’t even need to sell that many eBooks or other products from each page in order to get a huge return on the time you spent writing that page in the first place.

This article was taken from my HubPages Success guide. In this guide you'll find many more hints and tips for improving your income from online article writing.