Why I joined HubPages and what have I learned is often a question I ask myself. You see I like to make sure I am learning from the experiences that I choose in my life. So, to answer the first part of the question, I joined HubPages because I was looking at several different sites to write on back in June of this last year. I took off and started writing only to discover that writing online and making money is a lot harder than it looked. Oh yeah, I thought hey I wrote a novel so this should be a piece of cake. Hmmm...piece of cake, well no, but I did learn a few tricks at these other sites. Unfortunately, it really wasn't my thing. What do I mean by it wasn't my thing?

Honestly, writing to topics such as "How to wrap your hair" and "How to wash the dog" just were not fulfilling enough for me. I wanted more meat and substance. I thought I had found it at another site and continued to post there only to have my work declared unfit. I had another blog site under another name and well I shared some of those and yeah you can guess what happened. So, I pulled all those articles and started rethinking my strategy and looking at the other sites I had joined. I also got rid of the other blog site after I took down all my articles there so that my articles would not be considered unfit to publish under my name.

It was a hard lesson learned, but all in all, it was a valuable one and I landed here at HubPages three months after I initially signed up. I could kick myself at the wasted time and loss of income, but in the end again this taught me a valuable lesson.

As to the second part of my question, what have I learned while being at HubPages, it is quite simply, a huge amount. Has it benefited me in the end? Yes, it has. Let's take a look at what HubPages can teach you if you are quite the novice: 

The first thing I did was to have a decent look around the HubPages site. I didn't just want to jump in and start writing a hub. Well, I did, but figured I needed to learn the in and out of the set up here before moving into publishing.

Reading through the TOS and Help pages was an eyeopening experience. It made it clear that this isn't like all those other How-to sites or even write to our topic sites. Here you can put up your original quality content without worrying about little things like do I have enough words, too many words, or is the content right for the topic. Words are important and the proper length to get your message across is needed and I'll discuss that in a bit, but quality is the key.

After reading over the TOS, I started reading a few hubs of Hubbers that I had found in the forums. I could see by what they were posting this was the place I had been looking for all along. Yes, there are those that only post pictures, but overall the site has a lot of quality content on it that makes it easy to overlook those few hubs.

Let's review:

Step one: Sign up

Step two: Read the TOS and Help pages (you can get to those by clicking the links above)

Step three: Review other Hubbers hubs to understand what good quality hubs are

Step four: Write a hub (check out the next section on how to do this)

Before you begin writing your first hub at HubPages, you should read the article I have included here to the right. It gives you a huge amount of information on who you should read and why. You really need to start thinking in terms of SEO (search engine optimization) and keywords if you want to make any money off your hubs. Once you have read it come back here, I'll be waiting for you.

Ok, so you read the article and you have signed up for your affiliate links, now what? Decide what your first hub will be about and write it up. No, don't do it in the capsules on the site because you might inadvertently lose all your hard work. Write it up either longhand or in a Word Program. I personally like to write longhand first and then transfer to the computer because I can edit and revise as I go. Now that you have the article all written up, transfer it to Word-Pad. It makes it easier to copy and paste the paragraphs to the capsules.

What are these capsules I keep mentioning? They are the text, photo, feed boxes you will use to create your article.

Go ahead now and open up and start your article by clicking on the Start a New Hub button on the top of your page. What you will see in front of you is the page to create your title and url. You will be given a place to make a choice of which topic to post your article and a couple of spaces to start adding keyword tags (we will discuss these a little later).

The next step is to continue to the next page where you make sure your content doesn't abuse any of the guidelines. If you are sure about your content, you can continue to the article writing page.

On this page, you will find a box at the top where you can include a unique summary of your article which is very important because if you don't, the first lines of your first paragraph will be what is included there and may not contain the keywords that will make your article easily found. You can also add your article to groups that you set up on your page (again, this will be discussed later).

Now, you need to know a few things about setting up your article for maximum ad placement since that is how you will be making your money off these articles.

Here is where you get what I have learned during my first few months writing on HubPages.

1. Pick a title that has keywords from your article in it.
2. Do not place a picture right next to your opening paragraph.
3. Include pictures that pertain to your article and give credit where credit is due.
4. Do not write overly long capsules, include too many links to the same outside source, or forget to include keywords.
5. Do your homework on your keywords and SEO before you write the article.
6. Play with the layout. Have fun and get creative.
7. Include other Hubbers articles if possible by linking to them as I have done here.
8. Include appropriate video, but make the capsules work together and flow.
9. Write, read and learn.
10. Once you get comfortable with all of the above, your traffic will start flowing in and you will start seeing some money dropping into your AdSense account. Don't obsess about this. It takes time to build up a good portfolio of articles before the money starts rolling in.

In order to learn about keywords, SEO, using photos, etc, I have included some of the best hubs to the right. These Hubbers explain it in a way that is much easier to understand than I ever could. They have multiple links you can go to for more information in them as well.

As to adding groups to your page, when you go to your stats page there will be a button to click on and it will take you to groups. As you accumulate more articles, you will want to start separating these out into groups so that your fans and readers can search your page easily for the topics that interest them. It is quite easy to set up the groups but if you have any questions be sure to ask.

I joined HubPages six months ago, but in the last two months I have learned an extrordinary amount of information to make my hubs better and to better me as a writer.

I will leave you will a few other tips: get to know your other Hubbers by reading, rating and commenting on their work. Participate in the forums. Ask questions if you get stumped because even if it has been asked before sometimes in the pages and pages of forum posts it can be a little hard to find and who knows you might just help another new Hubber out. Investigate what is behind all the buttons you can click on HubPages because there is a wealth of knowledge to be found.

I can truly say I have found a writing home here at HubPages that I hope will continue for a long time. It is my sincere hope that this hub helped you out in some way to make a decision to join HubPages or if you are just new and unsure, that it helped to clarify a few things for you.

Happy Hubbing!