First off, let me be one of many to welcome you to Hubpages.  Hubpages is a community, an article resource, a place to learn and share with friends and colleagues.  Whatever the reason is for your recent arrival to the site, I'm sure you have wonderful things to share with the community at large.

There are a couple of things I would like to address to you, however.  After writing on Hubpages and interacting here for over 18 months, I have learned quite a lot, have developed my own way of looking at the site, and have shared things I enjoy or know about with the world.  You will too, but there's a focus to be made - all good things take TIME.

So, when you post your first hub, no matter what the topic, know that it takes TIME to get traffic (aka users visiting your pages.)  It takes TIME to make money, it takes TIME to see your Hubscore rise, it takes TIME to reap the rewards of your labor.  It also takes TIME to learn just the right combination of capsules, how they should be organized, and how they fit best together.

Patience is a virtue, yes, but it is also a requirement to succeed here on Hubpages.  You have to be patient, let TIME do it's work, tweak and edit, improve your content, write more, participate more, and when you've promoted your Hubs, proofread and revised them to take any errors out, formatted them in a way that is pleasing to the eye and captures the attention of your readers, then you will begin to see results.

"But I posted this Hubpage a week ago, and it hasn't made any money!"

That's perfectly OK! That hub may make you a lot of money down the road, depending on traffic, the quality of the article, ad placement (which is assisted by good capsule placement) and sheer dumb luck.  Then again, it may never make you any money, but the practice, the lessons you will learn from perfecting that Hub will carry on into your next one, which could be your moneymaker!

"I read that some people on this site make thousands of dollars a month.  Why am I only making enough to buy a soda?"

Choice of topics, writing style, use of capsules, overall buzz and hype, masterful promotion and traffic all are learned skills.  If you've never written an article on Hubpages and made full use of the tools in front of you, then you won't know your own potential.  Keep in mind, also, that a lot of the Hubbers who make money hand over fist are one of a few things:

• Excellent writers
• Brilliant marketers
• or BOTH!
  

My prospective new friend, the biggest thing I want you to know is that while you CAN make money on Hubpages sharing your unique content with the world, it's not a piggy bank. It's not a way to be able to quit your job by calling in rich, or a place to store all your keyword stuffed spun PLR articles. It is a community of people pouring their brains, hearts and sometimes tears into sharing everything they can with the world, with you and with me. You will find articles about all kinds of topics, from super serious political analysis to cheeky plays on words.

Hubpages grows every day because of new Hubbers like you. Will you grow with us?

Love,

Gamergirl