I really wanted to call this HubPages for Dummies, but I was afraid I'd offend some. So I stuck with a boring search friendly title. :)

First, let me start off by saying I am in no way professing to be a HubPages expert. As of writing this hub, I have been with HubPages for 16 months, but only published about 55 Hubs. However, as with everything I do, I've indulged myself in HubPages and tried to learn as much as I can about how HubPages work and how to create hubs; all the info that I can manage to cram into my brain without information overload.

I will continue to update this hub as I learn new tricks, tips or techniques (you may want to bookmark this page). I will do my best to make this as much of a very informative information packed hub as I can - and therefore will be linking to a lot of resources that will, hopefully, help curb your learning process. There is some great information in the FAQ's section and the forum - however, there are always some underlying tricks that are "unspoken of" that I will try to help you out with.

There are many good hubs out there that relate to many of the topics I will be discussing. I will be providing links to a lot of them. You can also research them on your own by using the search option on hubpages. While I love and appreciate comments, please, if you would like to have a link back to your hub (or someone else's that you think is relevant), just contact me with your hub address (please, don't put it in the comments section), and I will take a look at it and add it to the relevant links capsule. That way I can keep everything in an organized fashion.

OK, I'm done boring you with that, but I have one last thing to say before I delve into revealing my information. :)

I am primarily a haptic learner (learn from a hands-on approach) and so is about 37% of the population. Yet, I am also largely a visual learner (29% of the population) - so reading things and hearing them only stick with me for but so long, if it even sticks at all.

That being said, I will do my best to appeal to all of the "learning senses." For those of you that are also auditory learners (34%), I am going to do my best to appeal to you as well with some Google or YouTube videos.

But since a large majority of us are haptic learners, my best advice to you is get over your fears and just do it. You will learn along the way and can always go back and edit your beginner hubs later.

Now, on with the show!

I am going to assume that everyone doing this is completely "computer illerterate," if I may. In no way is any of this meant to offend you. But I figured it would be better to appeal and explain to a market that knows nothing. The first step to getting started with HubPages is to sign-up, of course.

As you can tell, from taking a look at some of my screen shots, my pictures were taken a long time ago. The HubPages layout has changed quite a bit since I've taken these pics, but for now I am leaving them as is - I will update them shortly.

Once you've set up your account, you will first be re-directed to a page that asks you to see if any of your friends are on HubPages (based on your email address book - works with Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Gmail Only). Then you will be asked if you have a Google AdSense account or if you would like to set one up. Both are optional and you can skip them if you'd like and go back to them later - for the purposes of simply staying on topic, I am not going to go into any of that in detail in this hub.

You will know your account is completely setup when you see a message saying "Welcome-you're our newest Author!" It will then provide you with a few options and ask you which option you would like to do next to get started - and since we are talking about creating HubPages, we are going to click on the "Create a Hub" link.

For all you visual and auditory learners, watch the following video for a step by step guide on how to set up a new HubPages Account and set up your profile. They lady who created this video is promoting a website and/or product - so if you aren't interested in that or how to set up your profile the same way, you may want to skip this video.

The video doesn't really have anything to do with setting up a hub page, so in an effort not to get off topic, I'm on to the next step...

If you already have an account set up with HubPages and want to create a new Hub, after you've logged into your account, click on the "My Account" tab at the top. You will then see a Red Arrow that says "Start a New Hub." Click on that arrow.

Once that's done, you will be taken to a page asking you to choose the title of your hub and some tags. Both of these are very important, if not the most important part of creating a new hub. You want to make sure that you use your keywords in your hub title as well as use them as a tag. Make sure the tags and title are relevant to your content. For example - my article content would not be relevant to my title if I wrote an article on how to get traffic to my hub page.

Once you've decided on your title and a few tags, you are now in the main "new hub" page that you will spend countless hours in! I usually like to write my content ahead of time so that when I create a new hub, I can lay it out and then just copy and paste the information where I want it. When I am finished, I then preview the page, and if I don't like the layout, I continue editing it.

Remember, you are here to provide quality content. As a general rule of thumb you will want to create hubs with a minimum of 300 words, but usually hubs with a minimum of 500-600 words do much better. As far as I know, the sky is the limit to how many words you can have - the more the better (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). And of course, you want all of your content to be 100% original. Do not copy and paste content from another website, article site, blog, or any other form of online platform. If you do, it will hurt your overall hub score and most likely won't rank well with Google.