Suggestion re reader ability to find author profile page

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   TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years ago

   A reader contacted me today to request a link to my profile page because she was unable to find it and wanted to read more of my articles.  When I took a look at one of my articles, I saw that my pen name was shown along with the word "more".  When you click "more", it shows some hub titles and a very small red oval with the word "profile" written on it, which when clicked, takes people to my profile page.  Would it not be better to make it easy for readers to find an author's work, rather than making them jump through hoops they may not be able to find in order to do so?  Why not have large, readable directions that point readers towards author profile pages.  Doing this would definitely increase views and be more user friendly to readers.  How about it team?

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   1. 94

      eugbugposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I agree about jumping through hoops. Maybe the way it should work is that when the cursor hovers over the profile image, "view profile" appears as text. Clicking the image then brings the reader directly to the profile page. "Contact author" could also be buried further down the menu structure so that readers are more likely to add questions as a comment. Also the text "more" could be replaced by "more articles" or "more by this author".

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      1. 77

         TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

         +1   Recently I've been getting a fair amount of direct emails from people rather than comments and feel this is not good because those comments "up" our rankings and this discourages them.  Also, not being able to access the profiles keeps readers away from reading more articles.  This should be a relatively easy fix that would help both readers and authors.

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         1. 85

            Venkatachari Mposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            +1 and true. When somebody clicks on author name or more, they should be able to view the full profile of the author rather than looking at links to three more articles. It may not encourage the reader or serve the purpose of the reader if he has to click so many times to reach to the profile of the author.

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         2. 76

            lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Many of the people sending you emails would have never left comments. Because if you leave a comment on most sites you need to personally return to see if the author has replied. And to be frank, most people don't just do this or want to do this.
            
            When you get emails you're in fact getting more data which you could implement in your hub to make it even better. What about a FAQ section at the end of the hub in question. Google would love that and so would your readers.

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            1. 77

               TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

               I have never found that to be true.  It is only since HP started the "contact the author" that I've been getting emails.  Prior to that, people who needed info or wanted to add something would leave comments.

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2. 85

   Marisa Wrightposted 7 years ago

   I feel that HubPages is a bit schizophrenic when it comes to our author profiles.   
   
   Once upon a time a long, long time ago, every author used to have a BIG photo in the top right hand corner with a link to your profile AND a link to sign up for your RSS feed (which meant that the reader would be notified every time you published a new article).   
   
   At some point, HubPages took the decision that it didn't want readers hooking up to a single author.  The RSS feeds were removed and the big author photo and link became tiny.  There was an outcry and it was made slightly bigger, but the RSS feed was never reinstated.
   
   Clearly, they still don't want readers to get attached to a single author, because the navigation is still set up to encourage readers to browse from article to article, never to profiles. It would be nice to know what the reasoning is.

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   1. 88

      Jean Bakulaposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Most of my newer readers find me in my comments section. I liked it better when they wrote on the specific hub.

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