Building a network of hubs

Sorry guys I took such a long hiatus in between posting my hubs. I think it has been something like 6 weeks now! Not cool!

But you will be pleased to hear I am kicking off again finally. In fact I have already got a few of my hubs written and ready to go.

So to refresh your memories, the Hubpages experiment will be going as follows:

• Objective is to start making a few hundred $/month through Hubpages.
• This is through a mixture of writing hubs and inter-linking them to create an amazing hub network while providing awesome content at the same time.
• A few backlinks to each hub, in addition to a few links between hubs. I haven’t quite worked out the logistics but between blog comments, forum postings and direct linking I intend to create a pretty amazing network of hubs.

So that is a recap of what will be happening.

What has happened since I last wrote anything on there?

Well I made $0.01 of adsense revenue from the 3 hubs I had written at the start of April. I intend to create over 100 hubs in total, so I expect that to rise. I am focussing on 3-4 niches so we will see how it goes.

That is 100 top quality hubs in 3-4 niches. Everything is going to have the precision of a sniper rifle.

So….let’s do this! Are you in?

I took a bit of time to get myself settled down, get things into order and come up with a system.

Until these last couple of weeks I was juggling bits of too many things and getting none of it done. It was like being an elephant balancing on a beach ball (Hence the picture!)

But this last week I did almost nothing. I didn’t take much action, but I got a ton of things PLANNED out.

So I feel like I have got a new direction now. And here is it all summed.

1. P90X /Insanity hybrid. Have finally got myself into a groove exercise-wise, and am kind of getting into it. Next is to absolutely nail the nutrition.
2. Business – my main business has been undergoing a drawn out and excessively long restructuring process. We have now however FINALLY reached the end of that. So I can get started kicking that up a few notches and really providing the best service in online marketing in my area!
3. Lifestyle – was completely taken over by the lack of structure. Time to get back to it though.
4. HubPages experiment – has been on hold. I’ll be resuming in the next few days. I think I have the firm basis I need now to get it done, so we will see how it goes. I THINK I’ve come up with a killer strategy, keeping it under wraps for now. It’ll be up for you to read soon.

So that is where things are at in my life. Stay tuned for some exciting developments coming up!

I had this really bad cold for like 10 days now. And it is only just showing signs of leaving me FINALLY. I was functioning fine really (no such thing as man flu in my book) and the only trouble I was having was with getting my workouts and exercise done.

I couldn’t breathe really so it didn’t make sense to try to force it.

That was one sticking point. I am on the way past my illness now though and got back into working out today.

However I didn’t on any one single day last week follow my nutrition cleanly or properly. I ate a lot of poor quality things and I am sure if I bothered to measure myself today like I should have done instead of chickening out, it would have showed.

So yes, I skipped out on measuring my results. Because I was a wuss. I will be back on track with nutrition as of today though so will start measuring again from next week.

Other one was in business and across the board. I got nothing done on any of my business side of things. And this one I dont have an excuse for. I just didn’t do it, I just didn’t take any action towards forwarding myself in business.

It was stupid, idiotic and I regret it.

So how do you overcome your sticking points? I am still struggling with mine, but I think I’m near a breakthrough and these are the steps I followed:

1. Ask yourself WHY. Why are you doing he things you’re doing. You need some motivation, which usually comes from WHY you’re doing something. I reminded myself of some short term goals, which i am aiming for. And the monetary requirements for them are pretty huge. So I need to get things rolling!
2. Set GOALS. I have set some very clear and specific monetary and qualitative goals based on the time I have free, and bearing in mind the things which are in my control. Small everyday goals which piece together your bigger goals.
3. Public accountability. It can often help to publicly declare what you’re doing. The internet lets you do that. So write up your goals, put them on your Facebook profile, tweet it, email your friends and family and write a blog post. The more, the better.
4. Fire first, aim later. If you wait for things to be perfect, you’ll never get anywhere in any time. You have to take action, and then tweak as you go along. It’s kind of like “Ready, Fire, Aim” instead of “Ready, Aim, Fire!”
5. Take small steps everyday. I can’t for the life of me remember who it was, but someone told me that if you change yourself 1% everyday for a year, you won’t have changed yourself 365%, you’ll have changed yourself more like 365,000%! Those small steps will all add up. So small, consistent action everyday is what you really need.

So THAT, in a nutshell is how you overcome sticking points and aim for your goals!

Last week I wasn’t happy with my P90X results so I decided to make a few changes. And commit to a few things – nutrition, changing workouts slightly,more hydration and more general activity level.

This week I was a bit more active. This week I was drinking a little bit more – not enough, but a bit more at least. My nutrition was better but a bit inconsistent still. I was good most days but was still prone to a few slip ups. Nothing catastrophic, but I did let temptation get to me a bit too much for my liking.

Nutritionally, I was getting in lots of green vegetables, fish oil, BCAA and varied protein sources. A few times I did slip up and end up having things I didn’t want like beans, bread, wheat, etc. I have nothing against them, but they don’t help my fat loss goals.

Anyway, what were my results?

1lb down and a drop in all my measurements surely suggests a good week right? I think so! Check out the table…

Date	2 April 2012	16 April 2012	23 April 2012
Weight (lb)	178	177.6	176.4
Right Bicep (cm)	31.9	33.0	31.2
Left Bicep (cm)	31.7	32.6	31.2
Upper Chest (cm)	95.3	95.8	94.6
Lower Chest (cm)	91.6	91.3	91.2
Belly Button (cm)	86.4	90.0	88.9
Hips (cm)	95.3	94.9	94.7
Glutes (cm)	96.4	98.4	97.8
Right Thigh (cm)	60.3	59.6	59.3
Left Thigh (cm)	60.1	59.6	59.4
Right Calf (cm)	39.9	39.8	39.6
Left Calf (cm)	39.6	39.6	38.9

I have got my niches chosen. They are pretty random actually from a whole array of things.

Now basically it is a case of slamming out a ton of original, quality content over the next few weeks. I was originally going to go for 5 separate topics but I have decided to go with quality over quantity.

4 top quality topics, with top notch hubs will do me a lot more good than trying to spread myself too thing.

So I have picked my niches, and started my keyword research in each of them. I’ve started getting my article topics lined up too. There is a ton of admin to do at the outset but when you’ve done it, it is a really simple case of following a system step by step.

1. Do your keyword research
2. Write your hub
3. Link to other hubs
4. Build a few backlinks
5. Wait and watch

That is pretty much it.

I wrote 1 completely random hub to just set up my account and all that stuff. And that, with minimal traffic has already started to make a tiny trickle of income. How cool is that?

I am looking forward to seeing how a greater volume of fully optimised kick-@ss hubs perform for me.

Remember again, this is a ZERO investment experiment. I can’t use any tools or anything which don’t have a free service available.

So over the next few days I start building up my hubs on a daily, consistent basis and we’ll see what happens. I’m getting excited about this.

I lost about 1lb. Measurements pretty much stayed the same. The ONLY thing which changed substantially is my belly button measurement which I had increasing around 4cm. Yes that is A LOT for a week.

The thing is that I realised that in the last couple of weeks when I have been taking my measurements, I have been holding my gut in which obviously screws up my results. So although it looks like I put on a lot around my waist it is really just a corrective measure to make sure I am measuring accurately.

For all I know it might have gone down, it’s just I don’t have a real like-for-like comparison to be able to tell.

I do feel like I worked quite hard over the last few days, but made a LOT of mistakes as well. To summarise them, here’s a nice little list:

• My weights are a limiting factor. I use kettlebells so my weights available are 4kg, 8kg, 12kg and 16kg. Which means that weights are often too heavy or too light meaning that with each exercise or workout I do, there is a lack of consistency towards any one goal. Solution: I’ve got access to a private gym, so will start using that more for my resistance workouts.
• Not pushing enough in my cardio workouts. I tried to keep pace with Tony and his crew for the cardio workouts for the first couple of weeks, but I genuinely feel like I am a bit more advanced than that. I tried one Insanity workout (Plyo cardio) instead of Kenpo X and it KILLED me in just the warm up. Solution: Follow a P90X/Insanity/strength training hybrid.
• Poor nutrition. Between catching up with a good friend from out of town, another friend’s birthday, a food exhibition on Saturday and a wedding taking up all of my Sunday, I would say my nutrition was only 50% on point over the whole week. So even losing just 1lb this week is something to be happy about. Solution: Clean up nutrition
• Lack of hydration. I just don’t drink enough water, and your body does need that to function properly, efficiently and therefore to help lose weight. Solution: Drink more water.

Date	2 April 2012	9 April 2012	16 April 2012	23 April 2012
Weight (lb)	178	178.4	177.6	176.4
Right Bicep (cm)	31.9	32.2	33.0	31.2
Left Bicep (cm)	31.7	32.2	32.6	31.2
Upper Chest (cm)	95.3	94.4	95.8	94.6
Lower Chest (cm)	91.6	91.4	91.3	91.2
Belly Button (cm)	86.4	86.1	90.0	88.9
Hips (cm)	95.3	96.0	94.9	94.7
Glutes (cm)	96.4	96.2	98.4	97.8
Right Thigh (cm)	60.3	59.7	59.6	59.3
Left Thigh (cm)	60.1	59.5	59.6	59.4
Right Calf (cm)	39.9	39.7	39.8	39.6
Left Calf (cm)	39.6	39.7	39.6	38.9

I couldn’t finish it, I couldn’t get my pacing or tempo right, I was getting the moves wrong, I couldn’t clear my head and I couldn’t relax.

So all in all, it had been an unmitigated disaster up to now.

And yesterday morning, I got up and cringed at the idea of having to go through that horrid yoga workout again.

So I kept putting it off, finding reasons to put it off and so it eventually got to 10PM.

And this is where having a support group or someone to call on to hold you accountable makes a huge difference.

I am in a couple of P90X groups on Facebook and the positive energy in those groups does rub off on you. 10PM is usually when I am ready to wind down for the day. But something was different.

I felt like I HAD to do this stupid yoga workout even though I was dreading it. So what happened?

Well when you make a public declaration along those lines in an arena in which you can be held accountable and followed up on, you can usually find that extra spark to help you through your obstacles.

And that is EXACTLY what happened.

I followed the motto….”Do your best, forget the rest!”

I cleared my head successfully, switched off my phone and my laptop, pressed play and just got on with it. I took it at my own pace and although the first 45 minutes were slow (the whole workout is 92 minutes!), the second half I was much better at.

I could do most of the moves only to a very very basic level, but I felt absolutely awesome afterwards.

And it was actually one of the best nights sleep I have had in a while. How cool is that?

I guess with a bit of commitment and a bit of dedication, you can really surprise yourself. Success is just the other side of your comfort zone.

Well as you know, since I started I have talked a lot about what I am doing on a day to day basis but have not yet mentioned….WHY!

I haven’t said anything about what I want to achieve, why I want to do this and how quickly I want to achieve it.

I kind of just started because it was in line with the general idea of what I wanted to do with my health and fitness – lose weight and all that stuff.

Well it is a fact that a general goal like that is just as good as no goal so I wanted to take a couple of minutes to set some real, actual targets for myself.

So what are my goals?

Well I decided I want to be really specific with my P90X ones. I want to lose a total of 25lb of fat and gain 10lb of muscle. Unfortunately I have no accurate way available to me right now of measuring body fat percentage so there will be a lot of guesswork involved in the overall calculations, but I think you can tell from sight how much fat one is losing.

So my starting weight was 178lb. Easter screwed me over in the first week and after week 1 my weight was 178.4lb! So 0.4lb up, with an overall 15.4lb to lose. Of course because of the fat loss and muscle gain I want, I should look like I’ve lost more than that, all things being well!

That is a specific goal I have set within a defined timeframe and I will be able to measure it for the most part. And that is what all goals should be….SMART!

If your goals aren’t SMART, then they’re not really goals at all. And if you don’t have goals in the first place then how on earth are you ever going to know where you’re heading, and whether you’re on course to get there?

So What Do I Want You To Do?

Simply stop. Whatever it is you’re doing, stop, freeze, pause it right now. RIGHT NOW!

Yeah um basically stop. take stock of what you’re doing. Are you on a fitness journey? Are you running or growing a business? Writing a book?

Whatever it is you are doing, take stock. Why are you doing it? What do you want to achieve by the end? What point in time is “the end”? How are you tracking your progress?

Write it all down. What you want to achieve, in how long, how you’ll track it and why you’re doing it.

When its all written down and you are confident with it. Start again. Start running, start sprinting, bust through every hurdle, obstacle or obstruction that gets in your way. Don’t stop, show unflinching commitment.

And get there.

Not exactly due to time constraints, but due to not getting enough time to access my normal workout space for my plyo workout, but still wanting to stay on course with the program, I decided to get a bit creative  and mix up my plyometric stuff with some TRX training and kettlebells, suitable for a combined space.

Here we go….

TRX P90X Kettlebell Workout

I warmed up for 5 minutes in the standard P90X way and then got busy, going 3 rounds of the following circuit.

• 20 2-legged TRX jump squats
• 25 standard push ups
• 30 alternating handed kettlebell swings (so 15 on each hand, alternating after each rep)
• 20 TRX inverted rows
• 20 1-legged jump squats on each leg (40 in total)
• 25 TRX I-raises
• 15 burpees
• 90 seconds rest
• Repeat

That 3 times over, with only the rest at the end of each whole circuit was PAINFUL to the point of near sickness.

I then topped it off with a very simple ab workout for about 10 minutes.

I was working in confined space so I did have to pause a few times (just the odd couple of seconds here and there) to make space. But holy crap that workout was KICK ASS!

Felt really good and properly pumped afterwards.

You should try it – whether you’re doing P90X or not, I think you might enjoy this one

Anyway I now have more solid ideas of how I am going to this experiment. First of all, YES it has been done before by other people, but I haven’t tried it myself.

So How Is This Experiment Going To Go?

Well here are the rules, principles or whatever you want to call it that I will be following to make sure I keep this experiment consistent and accurate and see if Hubpages is a great tool for making money online.

1. I will be aiming to complete 90 hubs (or articles) in 30 days, so 3 a day average. Not a strict 3 everyday.
2. I will be covering 4 different niches/topics, linking relevant hubs with each other
3. Income will be from Google Adsense PPC, eBay PPC and Amazon associates – all of the default ones which Hubpages offers via its account settings
4. I will be using Google Analytics to track traffic.
5. I will be building 2-3 separate back links to each hub to give it a bit of extra juice.
6. I will NOT be spending a single penny on anything. This is a complete ZERO investment income model.

So What Do You Need To Do To Get Started And Ready To Make Money From This?

There are a few steps you need to take to get you all set up to do this challenge, and this will cost you NOTHING!

So what do you need to do?

1. Set up your Hubpages account. I’m not going to go through this in detail because it will take me off on a long tangent. Just set up your basic account and don’t configure anything else just yet!
2. Write your first hub. You heard me, write one ORIGINAL article, 400 words or more with 2-3 pictures, on anything you want. Just make sure it is original, of passable quality and you’ll be set.
3. Apply for a Google Adsense account. This can take a while to get approved but apply for an account and set it up. IMPORTANT: If at any stage you have been banned or suspended from Google Adsense before, stop now. It is next to impossible to get your Adsense account back, and you will hit a brick wall.
4. Your hub will be published, so in your Hubpages account settings, configure your profile picture, description and set up all your advertising methods, via the earnings tab.

Wait, watch your Hubpages author score drop a bit, your hub score drop a bit. Give it a couple of days and both will start to pick up again soon if you have written an original article of good quality. The quality of hub is VERY important.

And that’s it. You are now set up.

Next I’m going to cover deciding a topic, writing hubs, and start seeing results. I’ll throw in a bit about keywords and a bit on SEO but I don’t want to reveal too much about what I’m doing to keep my results clean so I need to brainstorm how I do that a little bit.

Are you trying this challenge? Comment below and let me know you’re on board. And make sure you share it out with your friends – we can make a HUGE team out of this!