Tips for New Hubbers on HubPages

HubPages is one of the best online freelance sites for writers, for both beginners and veterans. The format, the easy-to-use tools, and the community make for a very pleasant experience for any writer. Plus, the chance to make a bit of money online doing what you love can be very appealing. However, the new hubber might be a little confused, discouraged, and wide-eyed when first stepping out into the online world. But with a little help, some good advice, and practical tips, your entry to HubPages as a new hubber will be a little bit easier and a lot more fun.

First off, I just want to say that reaching success writing online takes time, lots and lots of time. And hard work. Success as a writer online is not going to come easily. You have to earn your way. Everyone starts off with low scores. In fact, some of my first hubs still have low scores, and one of these days I'm going to go back and fix them up (I probably should just delete them, but I love them so much!).

Something that might be confusing for new hubbers is the difference between hubber score and hub score. Hubber Score is the number in the lower right-hand corner of your profile picture. If you are a good writer of quality hubs and an active member of the HubPages community, your hubber score should be in the 90s. Of course, it will take a while and a lot of hard work to get your score this high. Patience, grasshopper!

HubScore is the number attached to each of your hubs; you can see it at the end of your title. This score is based on writing quality, original content, reader ratings, and popularity. Your hub scores do affect your hubber score. Your hub usually starts off with a score of about 50, and only time will bring it up.

Hubpages is a great community, and there are so many great writers who are friendly and supporting. Start off by choosing an avatar (profile picture) and writing yourself a bio on your profile page. This will let readers get to know you a little bit, and hopefully get them interested in hearing what you have to say. Write a little about your background, your interests, etc... let your personality come out. Add links to other websites you might have, like your Twitter page or blog.

Read a lot of other hubs. As much as you can. This will get you familiar with the variety on HubPages, and teach you about what flies. Whenever you can, leave friendly sincere comments on other hubbers’ hubs. Make friends, follow people whose writing interests you, post fan mail. Get your name around! Hubpages is very much a community, and if you don’t socialize with other people, no one will want to socialize with you.

There's some discussion on HubPages as to whether community involvement is really that important. Some hubbers tend to write with commercial profit uppermost in their minds, not taking time to interact with their fellow hubbers, and that is perfectly fine. I prefer to be more involved with my readers, responding to their comments and visiting their own hubs. So it's up to you how you want to be involved with the HubPages community.

The internet is a tricky thing, and if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that writing online is different than writing on a piece of paper. If you want to be picked up by search engines and get good adsense ads, you need to do what’s called SEO (search engine optimization). But first, before you actually write a hub, do your keyword research. Use the Google Adwords keyword tool. This tool will help you find keywords that are popular, that have moderate advertiser competition, and that generate valuable ads (ads that cost more per click).

Keywords are very important. Find words that will be searched for. Put them in your title, the text (especially the first capsule), and in your tags. Online readers pretty much just scan words; their attention span doesn’t allow them to read a full page of text. So get them interested. Break up the text into lots of capsules with short paragraphs. Keep the page appealing by adding pictures now and again. Keep your readers longer by adding applicable videos. Make your page interactive by adding polls. Keep your page “updated” by adding a news capsule (I hide mine below the comment capsule – sneaky trick, but I think it works). Add links to your other hubs. Releveant Amazon.com capsules can also be good to add. Experiment with different layouts until you find one that you like. You don’t have to imitate others, just be yourself. You may want to post backlinks to your hubs on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon.

Don’t forget to write what you know, write it well, and have fun with it. Patience is a virtue, and so is hard work. I hope your experience with HubPages will be as wonderful as mine has been!

There are many hubbers that I could recommend to you for your reading pleasure, and here are only a few that have helped and blessed me:

Rebecca E. is a great hubber. She writes a lot about writing for hubpages, and I think she’s really helpful. She has lots of hubs about making money, fixing hubs, traffic, and more.

Dohn121 is one of the friendliest, most helpful hubbers out there. But more than that, he is one of the best modern-day writers I have ever read. Dohn has taught me a lot about hub layout and the importance of having a relationship with readers.

Jane Grey is a great friend of mine. She is also a good writer. You’ll find that Jane is a sincere hubber who writes from the heart. She and I have lots of common interests and we have had a lot of fun experimenting to try to make better hubs.