What's your opinion on starting a "series" of hubs?

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   DamirZposted 8 years ago

   I've joined HubPages to practice my writing and decided to try and involve more people to start reading books. That gave me an idea, start a series of reviews called "Book in a Sitting", where I'll review a short book that everyone should like.
   
   Here's a link to my first review: http://damirz.hubpages.com/hub/Book-in- … -Andy-Weir
   
   So I've been wondering is this good approach to what I'm trying to accomplish? Making a series like this? Will it draw people to my hub and make them explore all the books that they can read really fast? Am I doing this right? What can I do better to make people read more and to lure them in to a wonderful world of books?
   
   Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

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2. 94

   FatFreddysCatposted 8 years ago

   Firstly: Welcome to HubPages. Best o'luck with your series of reviews. Since you asked for feedback on your "series" idea, let me tell you how that approach has worked out for me 'round here:
   
   I've tried to go the "series" route several times in my four years as a Hubber... reviewing CDs under the banner "Forgotten Hard Rock Albums," using the name "Great Bad Movies" to review... well, great bad movies, obviously, and "It Came From the Bargain Bin," in which I reviewed DVDs that I found super cheap in my travels. Like you, I hoped that a reader might arrive to check out one of my Hubs and be so entranced by my literary genius that they would stay awhile and read through the rest of the entries in the collection.
   
   I can't speak for anyone else but I've found that it rarely works out that way.
   
   I eventually dropped the "Bargain Bin" series name altogether  - first because the subject matter tended to overlap with my "Great Bad Movies" entries and secondly because the name wasn't quite as original as I thought it was. Eventually I changed the titles on all of them to simply "(Name of Movie) Review" and they actually seemed to get better traffic that way.
   
   I still make additions to my "Forgotten Hard Rock Albums" series, but over time I've found that some of those entries do way better than others in terms of traffic - some have more than a thousand views while others have only a few hundred, or even less than a hundred. Since I promote all of my stuff equally, I can only guess that readers find those Hubs while Google searching for a particular band name or album title, and once they're done reading my Hub about it, they go off and find something else to do and don't bother digging any further. I guess some of the bands I've written about are less "Forgotten" -- and therefore get more Google searches -- than others.
   
   I'm not trying to dissuade you from trying to go the "series" route with your hubs, just advising that your mileage from one Hub to the next may vary.

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      DamirZposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the feedback, I'll try and experiment with the name change. I've already decided to include name of the book and the author in the article with the series name. I'll try to adjust it a bit more to increase the traffic. I'm really not good with SEO and google fu, I just love to write about the stuff I love and try to include other people in it.

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3. 94

   FatFreddysCatposted 8 years ago

   Me neither. In fact, it makes my brain hurt so I worry about it as little as possible.
   
   
   
   
   Same here. I'm just a middle aged movie 'n' music nerd sharing goofy stuff with the world.

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4. 84

   Marisa Wrightposted 8 years ago

   If you are going to write a series, for goodness sake don't give them all the same title with Part 1, Part 2 after it - even if you add a subtitle, it's Google suicide, so you won't get search engine traffic.   Instead, each Hub in the series needs its own unique title, which tells Google what aspect of the topic the Hub is about.
   
   The other thing you need to do is write a Capstone Hub to draw all your Hubs together.  It acts as the introduction to your series, and as an index to the Hubs as you write them.   You need a few paragraphs introducing your topic, then a link to each Hub with a short description of what it's about (which needs to be original, not a cut-and-paste from the Hub). 
   
   Having said that, don't expect a host of readers to follow your series.  If you network here a lot, you may get Hubbers following it, but it's unlikely you will get external readers - because there's no way they can subscribe to be notified when you add a new Hub to the series, unlike a blog.  Also,HubPages' navigation encourages readers to browse around the site rather than stay on your own Hubs - so many readers  may not even notice there are other Hubs in the series.

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   1. 60

      DamirZposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      That's really different approach to the problem I didn't even know I have. I really must give more thought to my little side project. Thank you for different and unique perspective!

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