I developed this Hub for Newbies and built two Hubs using some of the pointers offered here around the end of August 06 (when I was a newbie myself). See GlobalTrade in the drop down box as Working Example 1.

GlobalTrade Hub was completed in approx 30 mins so you can build a Hubpage from a standing start in under and hour (provided you have your affiliate codes in place).

I was a Newbie last week of Aug 06, I guess I'm not a Newbie anymore :-) ..it looked tough to begin with but then the technology is so user friendly (thanks lads) I quickly found myself rising in the rankings.

• It's fun
• it's addictive in a nice way
• it's a challenge
• it's competitive
• the people are friendly & helpful

..somebody said, only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet..

Like the name says 'Hubpages', this is a Hub, I visualise it as a tree with the homepage as the trunk and then users hubpages as the branches. If you look at the FAQ you will see that to become an 'Expert' you must have an average score of 75-100 and 20 or more Hubs.

You can maximize your traffic and revenue with a little planning.

• decide what your primary & secondary subject areas are going to be
• keep an eye on external news for opportunities
• select the hub level you are seeking to attain
• sketch out your hubs on paper & how they interact
• create a primary hub with links back - branch and branches
• go & 'RTFM' (click Help @ top of page)

It does not cost anything to sign up as an affiliate with Google, eBay or Amazon for the Hubpages revenue sharing program.

Assuming you would like to generate some revenue from your publishing it is critical that you create accounts with Google adsense, Amazon and eBay. you will not receive the revenue if you do not have your Hubpages account linked so best create these accounts first if you do not already have them.

Adsense can be a challenge, you must supply them with an EIN or SSN for tax purposes and if you select electronic transfer it is difficult to match the user names for a test transfer. (Still working on that myself since they say 3/4 days for the test transfer to show up.)

Essential tool - a hardback password book or index cards since this is only the beginning and computers are vindictive.

When you create your hubs you will see Author Centre in the top left hand corner, click on Manage my hubs, you will see a number of tabs, click My Affiliate Settings, there is help and external links here all relating to current revenue generators.

Again when you create your hubs you will see Author Centre in the top left hand corner, click on Manage my hubs, you will see a number of tabs, click My Referral Tracker, there is help and external links here all relating to current revenue generators.

Hubpages say;-

..."Through our generous revenue sharing policy, you'll get paid each time someone signs up from one of your links, and you'll get a percentage of all the money their Hubs ever generate. The default tracker is all you need, but you can create up to twenty independent trackers with unique names and descriptions, to help you keep tabs on which linking strategies work best for you."

This tracker is not simply your hub address, if you create a custom tracker it looks something like this;-

When you register your hub pick your name carefully, it does not want to be marys_long_story_from_last_weekend better to be bloodymarys and then let the title reflect the content.

• cook it too long and it ends up 18
• cook it right and it's 90 out of the box
• you've got your tracker code, right ?
• you're signed up as an affiliate for eBay, Amazon, Google
• you've created Digg, Reddit & Del_icio_us accounts
• you will comment on external blogs, news sites, where relevant
• you will comment on Hubs that you visit, where relevant
• you've added your hubtracker url to your email sig

When I say cook I mean you create the Hub, then you create some content, you add your revenue capsules, you add links, photos.. in between all this you scan your email you read stories closely related to your Hub content. Your hub is gestating as you do this.

Note: this might not help your rating at all... this is all new Newbies.. :-)

Assuming you have txt files ready with more hub publications ready to go and you plan to release them in two's and three's. When you create your second hub go to Edit this Hub, you will see Groups, you can create groups and add Hubs to them, this generates a drop down box at the top of each hub and the previous and next links at the bottom. I never noticed this or knew how to work it until Robin pointed it out, Thanks Robin :-)

user derived content is king, provided you remembered to tell anyone.

Who Else Am I going to Tell

You will see on the right hand nav bar Promote your hub. Register for Digg, Reddit and Del_icio_us when you click on link to this page you can select the tracker codes you've set up.

picture poor hubpages authors slaving over a hot keyboard all day at work and coming home to find no comments... comments are a two or maybe three way street;-

• intra hub comments - it's nice to know if people like something
• its' probably good to know if they don't although traffic will tell you this
• intelligent comments to news items and discussions that are close to your hubpages content will bring you traffic. Often you can leave your hubpage url behind and your email.

How do you find out about this news, well one way for the lazy is google alerts, Sign up for alerts on a specific subject and Google delivers it right to your mailbox ..

I have created a hub called First Steps for Newbies in answer to Docs questions above...

Hubpages Help says;-

"..Tags are keywords and phrases used to describe your Hub. If this help page were a Hub, the tags might include Help, FAQ, HubPages, and Answers. Tags should range from broad to exact and should describe the content of the Hub..."

Pay attention to Tags

When you're considering your hub look at the Tag list on the Home page and then click More Tags, this will take you to the Tag Cloud. I presume (read guess) that big is better in that more traffic or queries or searches about a Tag = bigger visual representation, Ok so Technology won't grow to cover the whole page but you get the idea.

The BIG tags right now (Aug 30th) are;- Business, Technology, Entertainment so think of your Hub from a vertical and horizontal position, try to make sense of your tags or more accurately make your tags sensible and edit them if your Hubpage does not appear on or around your subject area.

You must tell prospective visitors what you've got.

The key element for this is the summary. I'm in a hurry and I want the key information fast or I'll move on to another hub. When you're creating your Hub place a txt capsule at the top and write a few sentences describing the Hub, then this automatically becomes the summary.

Hubpages say;-

"..The summary will be shown on listings and search results pages only..."

Where is summary ?

when you're in edit mode you will Summary is one of the Tabs.

There is a balance between offering a nicely rounded 'article' and overload, Hubs are not Blogs, they are 'Blarticles' - this Hub is almost too long. The more complete your hub the more utility is has for visitors and two tools for that are News feed and RSS feed.

RSS & News Set in a Hubpages Context

RSS stands for a few things but in a hub context it's Really Simple Syndication. as an example on my Print on Demand hub I just added a feed from the Writer's Resource Centre listing opportunities for writers. That's it - pretty simple, they are publishing articles I think might be of interest to writers reading up on POD.

How to bring in RSS Feed

When you visit sites with feed you may see a link 'RSS or Feed', when you click on this it takes you to the raw xml page, you can copy this url and paste it into the Rss capsule feed url box and test it to make sure it works... some do some don't - there's a lot of newbies out there <grin>

Obviously if you had your Blog and used something like http://www.feedburner.com/ you could Feed yourself.!

News Feed

News Feed is very straightforward, like eBay or Amazon, you simply add your keywords, preview the news and if like the content hit save and you're done. There is a News Setting tab that is not yet operable so it will pay to read up further on Feeds.

I registered a Working Example called Globaltrade and another called Trade to use as an example, I built them up over an hour and made comments as I went along.

Globaltrade launched at 56 @ 9.40 EST

Trade scored at 51 @ 9.40 EST and launched around midnight.

Globaltrade was first and I 'Grilled' the other one to try to obtain a better score but that didn't work !!

There are a number of Must or Should Do's to make publishing your Hub painless

• to generate any real revenue you must generate thousands of hits
• to generate serious traffic you must become a Hubpages missionary

• always include your Tracker code in your Url for longer term revenue
• participate and offer your expertise or tips if possible
• monitor tags and modify yours in tandem with the evolving Cloud
• become an "Expert" on your chosen topic in the Hub environment
• be nice, be polite

  Remember...

..it's never too late to become what you might have been..

Drax