Tips for Newbies to Get Featured

I’m not sure if I’m just lucky or not. I’m just here for a month or so, with ten Hubs published and still more to come. I do an article a week, usually in weekends because this is the time when I’m still coming up with titles for my Flash Fictions. I never really paid much attention to my Hubs the same way as to my fictions as creative writings are more complex. When doing fiction writings, I rewrite them thrice and does some editing before I consider them fit for submission. In the case of my Hubs, I type them on the spot and do editing before pasting them. My Flashes have a more stringent quality control than my Hubs.

Yet as if some Higher Power is lending a hand, I managed to get those first ten Hubs featured.

Is it because of talents, writing experiences or luck? I’m not sure but I could share my writing habits to my fellow newbies. Hopefully this might help them get featured themselves.

Hence I dedicate this hub to every new Hubbers out there.

See that part there. As you work on your Hub, this neat little tab will give you several hints on how to improve your work. It will suggest several approaches, like increasing the word count, pasting pictures and so on and so forth. Now Hubpages is basically giving out instructions on how to be featured, and you don’t need decoding skills to relate those hints. They are no puzzle or riddles. Just do what it tells you and it will help you polish your Hubs. Yet in most cases it will be up to the writer how he will polish his draft.

What’s the point of getting featured if your article won’t gain interest? Whether you are aiming for an evergreen article, or simply a daily slice of life, the topic you choose matters. Write tips, improvements or ideas. You may dedicate a Hub for hobbies, collecting, outdoors, anything that pleases you and your readers. But to be featured, you may not stick to articles and blogs. That’s right, even fictions could be featured. In fact among my ten Hubs, two of them are actually short fictions. It’s all about interest, and if your fiction is compelling enough, it might get featured in Hubpages as well.

Much of your readers here are Westerners, and even if you are aiming for different audiences you must adhere to writing etiquette at all times. Yup, no controversial topic please, and good luck if no one reported you for posting offensive materials. This is Hubpages, not the Deep Web or any extremist site, and the last thing you want is to spread hate. Hence if you are writing about how Atheist lack morals, Religious people are delusional, Homophobia, Islamophobia, white supremacy, racism, recruitment for a new rebel group, pornography and things that will bring further decline to our society, then I suggest you take a hike and bring your hate elsewhere.

There is a good reason why I only do Hubs during weekends. The silent weekend nights are ideal for producing articles with an excess of 1000 words. Now if you observe the Help Tab we mentioned a while ago, it will suggest that you up the word count. And guess what, word counts will matter if you want your Hub to be featured. The ideal word count is 700 words or more. And looking back at my experience as a fiction writer, having a large word count has its purpose. It makes your article more detailed. Those extra words could add extra information about your topic, something that a small article can’t accomplish. This is especially true if your style is doing Listicles or How To topics

Nevertheless what’s the use of having a long article if you keep veering off from the topic? It is true that word count matter, but if much of the statements can’t even support the topic then it is a waste of space. When we say a Hub is detailed, we mean that the content is concise and faithful to the topic. You might add some filler words, but make sure it won’t cloud and distract the reader from your topic.

This problem is what hounded me as a fiction writer. I always tell people that as an Asian, learning English is no joke for me. Now Hubs don’t demand that heavy and idiomatic English we use in fiction. In fact Basic English is all we need, the type of English we use when talking to others. At the same time do observe the proper uses of words, tenses, punctuation and anything that relate to grammars. As a hint don’t overdo the passive words as it weakens a statement. Everything must be straight to the point. And to further improve your writing skills, try doing practices like:

1. Try writing stories and poems to broaden your word skills.
2. Join an online paid forum and try to communicate in English.

I’m yet to try putting videos in my Hubs, but photos will be helpful indeed. All of my blogs have at least one to three photos, to serve as a visual aid and to help the readers understand what's my point. Now when posting photos, take note of the following:

1. Use high definition photos. As a grainy photo will make your Hub sloppy.
2. If your images came from the net, post only royalty free stock photos to avoid copyright infringement.
3. And if you are using photos from the net, try acknowledging the source like the URL or the website name.

Finally here’s something to remember. Don’t add too many links in your hubs and a couple per article should be enough. The same can be said when advertising products (two amazon modules per hub). And lastly don’t give up if your work is not featured. Just enjoy your stay in Hubpages.

Now guys hopefully this will help, happy writing!