Earn Money from Home: Legitimate Extra Income

There are so many scams out there and it’s nearly impossible to know when something you read is a scam or not, especially when you are trying to figure out if there’s something you can do online, from home to make extra money.  I am a stay at home mom and that’s exactly what I was searching for – a way to make money online to help my family get our debt paid off a little bit faster without having to go back to working outside the home.

To be honest, I didn’t really remember how it all started, but the other day while cleaning up my email folders, I was reminded of how I “stumbled” across HubPages.  Believe it or not, I found HubPages through a link in a spam email.  That email contained a solicitation to buy an ebook or something like that and it said something like “Learn how I created an extra source of income last month and earned an extra $586.67 using a free website…” 

I normally don’t even bother to read junk mail like that, but I though what could it hurt – I’ll just check it out. After several clicks I landed here at HubPages and I didn’t leave for several hours. I read and I read, I searched for reviews to check the legitimacy and ultimately signed up. I went through the steps to sign up for the Google AdSense and Amazon affiliate programs and I started writing.

I have never been a “writer” nor did I have any knowledge of affiliate marketing or how to go about it. What I found out was that all that I needed to know I could find through hubs written by other great hubbers, the official HubPages TOS (Terms of Service) and help section, and by asking questions in the forums. Soooo...I started off just writing about some of my own experiences. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2008 and completed my treatment about a year later, right about the same time I signed up here, so naturally I wrote several hubs about my cancer treatment and experiences.

Then I discovered the joy of writing product hubs. I think my first product hub was on hair removers – epilators to be exact – which is something I knew about because I had recently done a lot of research and bought one for myself and loved it. After that I branched out and wrote some recipe hubs and many, many hubs on toys and gift ideas for kids and more. I enjoyed writing hubs so much that I found that everywhere I went I thought “Oooo, I can write a hub about that!” – and I often did. I love home décor and home decorating and have written many hubs related to those topics as well.

The money came slowly, but it came.  The threshold to get paid from Google AdSense is $100, but if you don’t make it to $100 you don’t lose it – it carries over to next month and it’s cumulative.  I made my first payout after three months.  I made payout every other month after that until one year here and since then I have been making at least $100 every month from Google AdSense.  I’ll touch on my Amazon income in a minute. 

Now $100 a month may not seem like much to you, especially when putting in so much time to create hubs, but the thing is – yes, I put in A LOT of time in the beginning, but after a while it’s all residual.  Like any business an entrepreneur would start, it takes a lot of work especially in the beginning.  That’s the beauty of Hubs - they create residual income.  What that means is that once you create a hub, it’s like a mini web site in and of itself and it will forever be on the World Wide Web, available for anyone to stumble across and perhaps click on an ad or an Amazon link and make you money.  I could stop hubbing right now and continue to make money every month, but there’s no guarantee how much of course.  Quality and quantity is key.  The more hubs I’ve published, the more traffic I’ve gotten and the more money I’ve made. 

If you’re lucky (or you do the proper keyword research and nail it), you just might end up with a hub that is on the first page of Google when someone searches for your keyword(s); I haven’t taken the time to check most of my hubs, but I can tell you that I do have one particular hub that ranks number one on page one for a few keywords and phrases, and that’s out of 71,900,000 results – how cool is that!  I also have a blog on a similar topic that can be found on that same page 1 of Google, but a little farther down the page. 

Product hubs take slightly more work – not necessarily in the creation of the hub but in the maintenance.  Sometimes products are out of stock, stop being carried or simply get have their URL address change, so you have to maintain them periodically, but it’s not too hard to do a few a day or even a few a month.  The beauty of being an Amazon affiliate is that if someone clicks a link on one of your hubs and is taken to Amazon, they don’t even have to buy that specific product for you to get commission from the sale – you get credit for ANYTHING they buy within a 24 hour window!  It took a few months to make my first Amazon sale, but I’ve been making sales every month so far and it’s only gotten better and better. 

There are certain times of the year when you simply expect to have more traffic and hopefully more sales than normal – big holidays, of course.  As of around September, my average total income has been around $300 a month and I have been very happy with that, especially since my goal when I first started was to make $200 a month to help with our budget.  Of course once I got to that point I wanted more and there’s no end in sight.  The difference now is that I spend only a few hours a week doing this – some weeks more, some less.  When I get inspired to write about something, I write.  I get inspiration from many things – TV, magazines, stores, my kids, other moms, friends, my house…..inspiration is everywhere!

Right now is the best time of the year for all affiliate marketers just like it is for retailers.  Today is November 29^th and as of right now I have made $233 from Google AdSense and $544 from Amazon and that’s from 281 items being shipped out of 334 items ordered so far this month (you get credit only after the item ships.)  That’s $777!!  I am overjoyed with that total and it is absolute proof that HubPages is a great place to be if you want to make extra money from home! 

I’m not good at writing about all the technicalities, but I can point you in the right direction with a few good links from some great hubbers (see column to the right). Feel free to share this hub with anyone who you think might have interest and if you have any questions, leave me a comment below – I check my comments all the time and I will respond timely.

If you’re ready to get started, join HubPages here – yes, I get credit for people who sign up under my link but it doesn’t take anything out of your pocket, it actually gives me a portion of HubPages’s cut – and the same goes for you if you get people who want to sign up under you.

My motivation for writing this hub was to hopefully inspire some other stay-at-home-moms that I know and don’t know to give HubPages a try if you’re looking for a way to make extra money online. Of course, anyone can do this, not just stay-at-home-moms, I just happen to be a SAHM, so that’s where my point of view comes from.

I hope you've found this hub to be helpful in some way. Feel free to share your thoughts below!