What to do BEFORE you write your first hub.

How an author organizes their notes and begins to write is as different as what they write and their style of writing. Paper & pencil or laptop? Do you start right off in HubPages or do you jot your ideas on scrap paper or in a Word document? Do you create an outline of your hub first or do you just start typing and then organize it at the end?

There is no right way or wrong way to write your hub. Personally, I use Note Pad. It wasn't really a conscious decision. It was more out of habit from building websites and using HTML. Use whatever method allows you to organize your information so you can write more efficiently.

Below are a few tips to help organize your hub writing.

1.) Create a folder on your desktop named "HubPages". This is where you will save all of your research, writing and pictures associated with your hubs. You don't want to waste time searching for your work and corresponding photos in various places.

2.) Create a new document called "Hub Ideas" and save it in your HubPages Folder. Use it as a place to note new topic ideas that pop in your head. Always have it open while you are working on your computer. You never know where inspiration will come from so when an idea pops into your head type out the topic or potential Hub Title in the file. Doing this will allow you to remain focused on your current task while knowing you have a reminder for another time.

3.) Create a new document called "Hub Links" and save it to your HubPages Folder. Every time you publish a hub copy the long & short URL and paste them in the document. This will allow you to have all the URL's for the hubs you've published in one place. That way when you are writing a new hub you can easily look at what topics you've already published and try to incorporate a reference or link* to a previous hub in your current hub.

See how I incorporate links to "Woolly Aphids" and the keyword phrase "Fluffy White Stuff on Trees" into the next section of this hub.

That's right. Everything you learn about is Hubable. If you don't know what something is and you have to "research" it, chances are many others don't know what it is either and would benefit from you doing all the "research" for them.

I was out walking my dog on a trail behind our house. (We trained him to do his business in the woods instead of all over our lawn.) As we were walking I saw some black sooty stuff covering some leaves on the ground. It looked like someone had poured something on the ground and it was now growing mold. Stopping to investigate, I kicked a few leaves then picked up a stick and poked around at it. Then I looked up and saw white, fluffy stuff on the tree branch directly above the mold spot, and my head.

My first thought was "What the $@&! is that?" My second thought was "Take pictures, when you find out it will make a good Hub." So I whipped out my Blackberry and took some pictures and video. When I got back inside I Googled "white, fluffy growth on tree branch" to find out what it was, if it was going to spread, if it was dangerous and what I needed to do about it.

I opened a Notepad file, typed out each of the questions above and saved it as "Fluffy Stuff on Tree" then went about finding the answers. As I searched the web and learned the answers to the questions, I made notes in the file.

I also copied the URL of each website I visited and pasted it in the Notepad file so that if I needed to refer back to them or quote something from a specific site I had the information saved right in the document.

I then emailed myself the pictures I had taken of the Woolly Aphids and Black Sooty Mold and saved them to my computer HubPages Folder with descriptive titles that index better in search engines. I didn't save them as Pic1, Pic 2 and Pic 3. At the bottom of my "Fluffy White Stuff on Tree" file I typed the file name of each picture for the article so that I could refer back to it when I actually created my hub. This also helps down the road when you start linking hubs and can utilize pictures on different hubs.

Once I had all my questions answered, and all my research and pictures saved I logged onto HubPages and created the hub "Woolly Aphids: What's that Fluffy, White Stuff on my Tree?"

The more organized your research is the more efficiently you will be able to create an informative hub. The more informative your hubs the more views and followers you will get which will lead to more money in your pocket.