Marie McKeown Interviews Dolores Monet
An eloquent Hubber discusses the Panda update, HubPages fiction and nonfiction, and the elements of a great Hub
1. First tell us a bit about yourself ....
What to say about myself? I am a family oriented person with a scatter-shot approach
to life; energetic yet lazy; intelligent yet stupid about so much; a happy soul suffused
with anger; cheerful with a shot of depression. I find the world both horrifying and
wonderful, both ugly and beautiful.
2. How did you first come to Hubpages?
A friend suggested that I could earn a bit of money from writing online. Surfing
the net for options, I liked HubPages’ layout and found it easy to use with a helpful
community of really nice people.
3. You seem to have a great variety of life experiences. How does this
influence your hub-writing?
Another friend once said that I can’ t seem to stick to things; that I dive into new
hobbies, skills, and interests than soon as I really accomplish anything, then drop it
like a hot potato and move on to the next thing. This seems to work well for writing
online content.
4. You have been on Hubpages for two years. What differences do you notice
between how you wrote when you first started out on Hubpages and how you
write now?
When I first joined HP, I jumped from topic to topic and never really delved deeply
into any one thing. Now, I spend a lot more time on research and have attempted to
create several niches. I have even deleted some of my earlier work. It stunk. I know
that we are not encouraged to do this but they were getting zero traffic so they were
not any help to HP, just taking up space.
5. You have written a lot of really interesting Hubs, about gardening, fashion,
angels and much more besides. What do you think makes a great Hub?
A great Hub provides the information that readers seek. So many times, I’ve looked
for info online and found short articles with very little information. When I was
trying to learn how to make soap, it took forever to find what I was looking for. Once
I became skilled at soap making, I decided to present the topic with clear, step-by-
step instructions and included lots of helpful pictures. It’ s become one of my more
successful Hubs.
6. You mention on your profile that you have also written some creative nonfiction Hubs. Can you tell us more about that - what inspired these pieces? And how
would you explain the relationship between 'creative' and 'nonfiction' - can those
two words go together?
I have written short fiction for several small, literary publications. Fiction is really
my first love. But real life is so full of wonderful stories. Creative nonfiction is
actually more like an essay with a personal and literary twist. Mine is more of the
memoir with real people tweaked, the setting slightly altered, or the plot exaggerated.
My creative nonfiction pieces are all actually pretty much true with very little
changed. I just thought they were good stories.
7. You are obviously an experienced Hubber with lots of great
hubs and lots of followers. What advice would you give to
new hubbers? Without giving too much away, what would
you say are the secrets of your success?!
Thank you so much! My advice to new Hubbers is this – read the advice of people
who know what they are talking about, who understand how to succeed in the world
of online writing. Offer readers the sort of information that you would want if you
were attempting to learn something. Get your facts straight. Do not depend on one
source – I’ve read some articles online that were on the first page on Google but were
dead wrong. Books help. They have been fact checked. Find yourself a niche and
establish yourself as a knowledgeable source on a broad topic, then create Hubs on
subtopics.
8. Finally, what do you make of the recent changes to Google’s search
algorithm?
Oh, the Panda update! It’ s hard to say this early in the game and I am certainly no
authority on that. I liked what Google said they were going to do – weed out the
rubbish, the spam, and the copied material.
But, shortly after the update, I was looking for information for a project and found
that everything that came up was commercial. It was like all the articles were selling
shoes.
Google claimed that page rank and credibility would be given to authoritative sites.
Hmm.
Way back in my early days at HP, I wrote a sort of self-help article. Low and
behold, it was copied verbatim by some professional person who was supposed to be
a bona fide psychologist. So, here was this supposed authority plagiarizing little old
me, a person who depicts herself in my profile picture shoveling chicken poop and
claiming that is what I do best. All which makes me wonder about giving credence to
real authorities.
I do not appreciate the fact that commercial interests and corporate sites will be
deemed as authoritative. They are just trying to sell you a product! It’ s like the
Industrial Revolution when the factories came in and ruined cottage industry.
I don’ t know enough about the whole system to understand what these changes will
eventually mean for Hubbers. All we can do is read up on the subject, create original
content, and hope for the best.
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