Hubbing--A Review After Two Months

The cliché that is consistently coming to my mind as I walk thru the day anticipating this article is “Time flies when you are having fun”. To personalize that with my Hub Page experience I would say, “Time flies when you are writing a hub”.

The fervor and the heat is still there once I begin a hub, especially one like this where there is no research involved and I am truly writing what I know. I would have to say that there are experiences and capsules of time where the fervor and heat turns into sweat on the brow. That sometimes occurs when I am doing some research and the reading of print becomes tedious, or the remembering or rechecking of facts gets almost tiresome.

The sweat on the brow from extended research does have its payoff. I have increased my knowledge stock about something I am already familiar with. Depth of information or specific facts have replaced comparative shallowness. I find that needing to do the research is an incentive to learn and keep my aging brain active.

My profile is showing that I’ve been a hubber for 8 weeks now and I have written 12 hubs, 5 of them this last month. I can account for the drop in hub writing to spending some of my hub time signing up for and digesting some of Google Analytics and having become an Amazon affiliate.

It has been neat to use Google Analytics and see how many countries are represented in my reading audience. I would attribute most of that to fellow hubbers reading my pages and a gut feeling that there are hubbers world wide. I am also able to determine by looking at the map, which city and region is “reading me“. New visitors, pages visited, average number of pages visited and average time spent on the page and so much more . I can tell how many visitors come from linking my hub to face book or giving a URL for one of my hubs to an email contact.

After writing 10 hubs as had been suggested somewhere in my reading I became an Amazon affiliate. In trying to learn how to use the program to display my hubs I read a number of hubs that didn’t help and finally one that did. That hub was, How to Add Amazon Affiliate Links by Jackson Riddle. For some reason I was missing a key idea when reading from the learning center or else the other hubs had older outdated information. For me, the missing link was that I needed to select “Text Only” and then copy and paste the information between the two quotation marks into the Amazon capsule.

I have had a learning experience that has to do with Amazon and may help other hubbers. I hadn’t given up on the idea that I could add an Amazon widget to a hub (which I now know cannot be done). As I was experimenting with copying and pasting various parts of the URL I discovered the the words “No Amazon Products Found” at the top of my page. When I tried to delete the Amazon capsule, something happened and my edit page went totally blank, with entire hub gone and only two capsules at the top, one Amazon and one photo capsule. I can click edit or delete all I want and nothing happens and at the bottom it says “Error on page”. I was relieved to go to that hub out of edit mode and see that it was still published. I copied and pasted it to my file as the “final draft” for that hub.

I gave up and forgot about the problem until the recent posting of new rules and specifically not adding a link at the top of a hub.

I hunted and hunted for a way to contact Hub Page Team and could only find that I could ask the question on the Need Help? Ask Here Forum page and I did so. I have just discovered during this writing that two people answered my question. I did not realize I would get that communication by clicking the notation in my Hubtivity at bottom of my profile page. I shall try the suggestions. Not knowing some fellow hubbers gave me an answer I finally went to the email from Hub Team welcoming me to HubPages. At the bottom after Hub Team signature and where there is opportunity to unsubscribe by clicking there is the Hub Page address in California and an “email us” which I clicked on. The heading was Have an unanswered question? and then the suggestion, “Due to the high volume of emails we receive, we kindly ask that you consult our help resources before emailing us your question.” There is a list of resources again to check before emailing the question. I didn’t find the answer so I checked the appropriate box that described my type of problem and was taken to the page where I was able to write and describe. I have received an email from The Hub Team telling me that the “bug” has been referred to the technicians and some follow-up questions may need to be asked.

Now for a quick run down of my hub writing. I received my first Accolade for publishing 10 hubs. I wrote and published Hubbing--A Review of My First Month and have been surprised at the number of page views and interest it held. I then published Oreo Cookies: Happy Birthday after getting up in the middle of the night to devour some of those delicious cookies. It has one of the lower scores along with the two from my first month, Kindle 3G Is It Hot? and Here Comes the Verizon iPhone 4.

I am currently writing a hub on a beach that is as much of a favorite of mine and I have only visited it once. I see I am dragging on enthusiasm for that hub. After reading about the new contest So You Think You Can Write Online I abandoned this hub to begin pounding out an original for that contest. I only wish had known before--I might gave saved some of my “good ones” for that. But as it is, I think it will be refreshing to write from what I know.

After writing Erawan Waterfalls in Kanchanaburi Province Thailand--Travel Thailand Series I decided one of my “niches” will definitely be Thailand and so I re-edited previous Hub titles and began my Travel Thailand Series. Then came Bridge Over the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi Province Thailand-- Travel Thailand Series and Cha Am in Petchaburi Province Thailand--Travel Thailand Series. I have visited all three of these places numerous times during the last ten years.

I hope this review will encourage someone new to become a writer on Hub Pages as well as being of interest to some of my newer fellow hubbers. I am a “newbie” and even that label gives me a sense of belonging. It is still one of the best decisions I have ever made.

If you enjoy writing or would like to start writing and publishing I suggest you click on the link beside this and get started with HubPages. The process is simple if you go step by step.