How do Hubbers Decide What to Read and When to Comment

This Hub began as my response to a comment Sueswan made about one of my other Hubs, “Navigating….” It quickly got out of hand (length-wise) and morphed into another Hub. So here goes:

Thanks for your encouraging comments about the Hub “Navigating….” That Hub began with a question a brand new Hubber asked me; I responded to her at length, probably overkill, and suddenly I could see my lengthy answer becoming a Hub in its own right.

As you correctly pointed out in your comment to that Hub, it simply isn't possible to comment on every Hub posted - it quickly gets overwhelming and becomes a chore rather than a pleasure.

I imagine every Hubber develops their own guidelines, a system or method for responding to posted Hubs (or maybe not). :)

Pretty early on I realized the constant announcements of new Hubs, which HubPages ever so efficiently provides) were filling up my mailbox, producing both frustration and irritation on my part (dear reader, please understand that I am speaking/writing based on my own personality and feelings, not attempting to generalize about you ). I now delete them as soon as they appear; I can read and comment when I look at the day's summary email.

When I peruse the HubPage daily compilations I try to read a few Hubs from each day’s summary, so that within a week I have commented on at least one Hub for most of the individuals I am following. There are some exceptions, of course.

If I just have no sympathy for, or interest in, the topic, it may be longer before I read one of that individual’s Hubs. If the topic resonates with me, I might read their Hubs much more frequently.

Also, if someone is a long time Hubber with hundreds of followers who leave lots of comments I may read, but not leave a comment, conversely, if a Hubber is new or struggling to build a following, I may comment more often to encourage them and to help build traffic for their work.

And then there are a few Hubbers who leave such detailed, helpful, and encouraging comments that I try very hard to reciprocate on a regular basis.

Fortunately, (because it reduces stress on my life) I am not anticipating earning any serious money with my Hubs, so I write what I want and don't invest any time trying to make them conform to Google's or Amazon's search parameters.

I certainly understand, and even admire. those Hubbers who can generate a revenue stream, but it is not for me.

I am also connected enough to reality to know, and not be surprised or disappointed, that most of what I write is of little interest to the majority of Hubbers, and I don't really care to participate in the Forum's or Question/Answer areas.

They are fine of course, but I have been there and done that at length, about twenty-five years ago, when all we had were BBS's.

For very young Hubbers, who might be confused by this acronym, BBS stands for Bulletin Board Service. They were usually local, for the most part had crummy platforms, came with no pre-designed templates, no pictures of any kind, and we used dial-up!! What can I say, it was when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

Not quite sure how and why I wandered so far afield from my original points... Oh well, it happens. I think I was trying to say that I expect my followers will be few in number, which is both understandable and fine....and I kind of have a mental system for responding to older Hubbers and encouraging new ones, which is where this Hub began.

I am sure we are all different and may have different ways of handling the reading/commenting overload. I would be interested in hearing about how you manage the dilemma of too many Hubs and not enough time in your experience on HubPages (if you are so inclined, please make a brilliant, charming, erudite, ironic, scintillating comment at this juncture).

Note: Unlike in my previous Hub "Navigating..." these are not entirely random photographs. Well to be honest, they started out pretty random. I just really, really like bridges and I decided that a series of interesting bridge pictures would accompany this Hub.

About 10 minutes later I came to the cerebral conclusion that my subconscious was working overtime on my (and your) behalf.

Bridges connect communities of people: HubPages is a community of writers who establish connections with each other. Connections are made and community established through Comments. Not so random a collection, also known as a compilation, of pictures after all. :)