waynet, From Hull City United Kingdom, 1090 Fans, 546 Hubs, Joined 3 years ago
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Get to know Waynet
Wayne Tully, artist and Hubber, reflects on 3 years at HubPages
1. A relative "veteran," you've been on HubPages for 3 years now. What brought you to HubPages, and what keeps you a welcome fixture of the community?
Cheers now, I originally found HubPages, through an online friend who referred me here as another earning opportunity, although that's what it started out as in the beginning. because when I first started here I did not read the sites policies that well and did a few copy-and-paste Hubs and promoted a few affiliate products in a hasty way that came across as a spammer. This just didn't do anything for me, so I used HubPages as a training ground for my writing, but also to show my art, although it took well over a year before I did a HubPages drawing tutorial. And so, mainly it was the first HubPages Challenge which motivated me to write more regular here and the forum is a laugh sometimes.
2. What are your favorite topics to Hub on, and have they changed over the years?
When I first started out, I hubbed on the general make money online stuff, which again didn't get any traffic, because I didn't really research about keywords or anything back then, I just assumed that traffic came to you magically when you created web pages, Since then I enjoy writing about how to draw fantasy stuff, still affiliate marketing and online business promotional stuff, because I've had experience in this area and now earn a part time income from my many blogs and HubPages makes a tiny portion of that, but the motivating factor about writing here now, is not so much to make money, but create a network of traffic pages that filter to all my other sites. I suppose my topics have changed over the years, because now, I'll consider writing about anything that I do, I'll be taking the kids to school and suddenly, I'll think of an idea for a new hubpage, then I'll rush home and get on with it. I recently did a Hub about cooking rice, it was a simple hub, but it reflected what I had done on the same night cooking some rice. I see some of my Hubs as stuff I can add to more when I have the time, with new photos and paragraphs etc.
3. What motivated you to join the HubChallenge and HubGreeters teams?
I thought I could help where I could and provide a little experience in what I've done since joining HubPages along time ago (seems longer than 3 years!!), but also I thought I could use the HubChallenge to challenge and motivate myself and now with the HubGreeters I thought I could target new comers that are relevant to my topic areas and start to network, although I do need to pick up some regular HubGreeting.
4. Tell us about your art. You're a very talented artist, and I know you've tried to help people attain the sorts of skills you have with drawing .
Thanks, other people have said, you should be making a full time income with your art, one day I will. My art is very important to me, because I draw every day and if I don't, I get a little cranky, the same with writing, I go through over 20 sketch books a week. It's a comic book style of art that I adopted from reading too many comics as a kid and I can't seem to shake this art style. I do have a few graphic novels in the pipeline, one that fell by the wayside this year, but I've re-scheduled it for a later date. I like to do drawing tutorials, but I also look at my art as inspiration to others, the creative process of thinking up imaginative stuff off the top of your head is one of the best skills any artist can have.
I draw fantasy stuff, like dragons and monsters mainly, but I'm always learning myself to draw new things and once I have, it will become a new hubpage.
5. Tell us about your other online activities (blogging, affiliate marketing, blog coaching, etc.).
Blogging and promotion is something I've stepped up lately this year and the trick with that is to blog regular and promote to a planned schedule, just like it's a proper business and affiliate marketing is always going to be a good business model to use in the online world. If there are social networking sites then I'm a member of them, because experimenting with building up networks is fun for them days when you feel unmotivated and playing some of the free games can be addictive, but also because many websites are becoming more connected with sharing links, I can do something on HubPages and share it with other networks like Facebook and Twitter, although my networks aren't that targeted, because I have real life friends on them networks, but also I can use my YouTube drawing videos and embed them anywhere and so creating drawing videos is another online activity that I do a lot of. Blogging and writing is my primary interest and creating some information products to sell too.
6. What do you like to do for fun when you're away from your computer? What could we see you doing on a Saturday afternoon, for instance?
I watch a lot of movies on the weekends, mainly horror films, but I watch anything, the latest blockbuster and even the kids DVDs (I can watch Alvin and The Chipmunks and love it everytime!!) and quite often I write reviews on the films I've just watched, also I like to visit my local pub to sink a couple of pints of fine fizzy lager and shoot some pool, other offline fun stuff, includes photography, creating crazy YouTube Videos that never get uploaded and entertaining my two kids, who think I'm mad anyway. Saturday afternoons are often spent in the pub.
7. You have over 1,000 followers on HubPages. Tell us about the personal relationships you've made here.
I'd hazard a guess that half of my followers probably followed me after reading one of my Hubs and the other half probably from reading my short posts in the forum and there'll be some small percentage that followed because I followed them or follow with the intention of me following them, but all in all there are some great Hubbers out there that leave some nice comments on my Hubs. There are some funny characters in the forums and for me that's where I find people to follow or they might find me, the social aspects of the forum filter to out to the wider HubPages community.
8. If you were to give advice to a new Hubber, what would that be?
My advice would be to write what you know about and build up a few HubPages series on your topic, you could write 20 Hubs in your series and link them together, this is something that I've been doing for awhile and it helps with traffic it seems, of course first you have to do some good keyword research in your topic area, but generally speaking you could refine this later on and optimize your Hubs once you have done all the writing, so long as you have an idea of what main keyword phrase people are searching for. However, I would recommend the Hubs that other hubbers have written on the subject of SEO, in particular Peter Hoggan who has written a crash course in the form of a HubPages Search Engine Optimisation series, which I found insightful and highly useful and includes some elements of keyword research. Just keep writing what you know and you just might get noticed by anyone.
9. A silly question: if you were to be reincarnated as an animal, what would you want to be, and why?
I'd like to come back as a bird, to fly would be great. I once had a dream as a child that I always remember, that I opened my window and just started to float off, almost like there was no gravity, it was a vivid dream that I was flying silently above the clouds... To be a bird flying well above the busy world with a birds eye view of the world, would be nice, although it would be just my luck to get caught in an aeroplane engine.
10. Finally: tell us something about yourself that we'd never guess!
I'm a secret karaoke pop star, although I'm under no illusions, my singing voice is bad, so therefore, you won't see me on any singing shows like pop idol, unless I just wanted to get on TV and do one of the classically bad and funny singing auditions, which I would do for a laugh.
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