Hey Hubbers! Are you undervaluing the commercial potential of your Hubs? You probably are!

I’ve been on Hub Pages for a couple of years now, and I’ve had the chance to have a look around. I’m a professional commercial writer, and what I see is that a lot of Hubs are excellent but apparently commercially underrated as portfolio materials for their writers. Writing really is “a portfolio profession”. You’re as good as your materials, as far as anyone hiring you knows.

I thought an article on this subject would be of use to new Hubbers in particular, but I must say that a lot of experienced Hubbers are obviously sitting on high value skills, too. I’m quite sure they could make a good income out of writing in their chosen fields, which was another incentive to write this Hub.

Hubs and the world of commercial writing

There are quite a few Hubbers who are obviously experts on their chosen subjects, and they write fluently and effectively in their fields. What they don’t seem to have quite realized is that there’s a huge (literally gigantic) market out there for these materials, in practically every area. I’ve seen Hubs which are easily better than their commercial competition and expert level writing in fields that are screaming for new inputs.

The strange thing is that people usually write to their strengths. They know their subjects, they know what they’re talking about and they have something to say. They also therefore don’t see anything unusual or different about what they write. What seems like a perfectly natural article for them is in fact gold to others, particularly online publishers, blogs and commercial agencies.

The demand for new materials is bigger than ever. That situation has created a rather difficult set of problems for the people who buy these materials. There are a lot of people out there who churn out what is basically substandard, very iffy quality stuff. So the buyers, understandably, are getting very fussy. They want to see portfolios, they want to see published work, and they particularly want to see quality. That’s where Hub Pages comes in to the picture.

The value of your Hubs

This article isn’t actually intended to be a commercial for Hub Pages, but this section is definitely going to look like one.

Your Hubs are perfect portfolio materials for very good reasons:

Quality controls

· Hub Pages doesn’t want previously published or duplicated work, as Hubbers know. Those requirements, by default, are criteria for verifying your writing skills. It’s “Copyscape by other means”, if you like, but it’s also proof positive of your abilities.

· Hub Pages ratings are good yardstick measures, and most importantly just about everyone who publishes anything online or in print knows what they mean. If your Hub Pages profile rating is in the 80s or 90s, it says your work is rated pretty well in an environment where you can be up-voted or down-voted by the entire world.

· Hub Pages own built in quality controls and flags for materials needing amendment or revision are self-explanatory. They’re also strong positive qualifiers for your portfolio. Your published Hubs have passed these fundamental requirements which are so important to publishers of commercial materials.

Reputation

· Hub Pages is a very reputable, well known site. That’s critically important when writing commercially. Where you write is often as important as what you write.

· That reputation, as a matter of fact, is another very high value of Hub Pages apparently going begging in some cases. If you can write well on any subject, what could possibly be more useful than a high profile, high quality site as a “work reference” to your writing?

Hubs as portfolio materials

You can create a good healthy writing portfolio on Hub Pages, just doing your normal writing. The gigantic advantage is that you can also write without the constraints of being told what to write or how to write it. You can really showcase your writing skills and knowledge. You can develop ideas and literally design your portfolio as you wish.

Why is this so important? Because commercial writing is highly competitive. You’re potentially competing with every other writer in your field. For every writing gig, expect at least a few hundred applicants. Most professional writers have portfolios which are a mishmash of anything and everything, and “haven’t got the right stuff for this gig” problems when asked for writing samples.

Hubs allow you to literally tailor-make your portfolio. Better still, your work is properly presented, unlike some of those “quaint” blogs and hideous sites where the typos and hieroglyphs in the WordPress headings are the main eye catchers and adorable ads for dubious things are also distractions. (Who or what writes software that can’t read standard characters, anyway?)

(Important- Given a choice, use your Hubs rather than anything that looks even slightly like these things. The poorly presented writing samples usually won’t even be looked at. They’re effectively instant disqualifications for the good publishers and agencies.)

So in this very much portfolio-oriented profession, Hubs are gold in the hand. It really bothers me that so many Hubbers are apparently unaware of the very high commercial value their Hubs can provide.

Think about this, because you really can create a career out of a good portfolio, and this is the place to do it. I hope this is of some use to the new Hubbers as basic orientation, but you experienced guys, particularly the experts in various fields- Please take note of the points about Hubs and portfolio materials quality! You could literally be missing out on a lot of money and personal achievements by undervaluing your Hubs.