There are hundreds of thousands of hubbers out there. Each one has his own agenda. I guess that mostly self promotion is a major concern for many. However, I've noticed that many do it in surrogate ways like inviting someone to be friends etc. Should one be modest about promoting one's good work ? When MNCs go about spending billions of dollars on copy writing/content writing their goods for advertising ,I guess a good hubber can always present his work well without spending a dime to draw dedicated readers easily.
I welcome your reactions.
The best way to make friends is to find the threads, such as Lets Be Friends, and The Hub Tribe Is Forming. These are places to meet and greet other hubbers.
Self-promotion is setting up a thread that has a portion of or a link to your hub.
There are forums where you can post hub links. The best way to gain fans is to read their hubs and comment on the content, or interact in forums.
A way to gain more fans is to tweet, facebook, myspace, etc. and let all of your current contacts know what you are doing, While that is promotional, it is not considered self-promotion, but marketing.
Well what you think or maybe what I think is good work is two different things. Self recommendation really does not work on the internet.
I think the best thing to do is to be a quiet achiever. Do your stuff, believe in what you do and see if you can succeed from there. If not you need to change the model of how you do things.
I am too tired to argue, I was trying to help as that is what I thought you were asking for.
Tried and true methods that earn a particular hubber $1000 to $2000 per month (after one year of working at it), versus wait until someone finds you.
I read other hubs to learn what they are doing, plain and simple. If I like what I read I comment. If I see a question I answer it. If you do not like my answer that is up to you.
This is a social community site. I am inept at marketing, and others here have been so kind as to market some of my hubs for me, if they held merit, because I admit I need help.
If you are an island, that's just fine. I am not an island. It is a big world out there, and I am still new.
I have to agree with your original premise: That you have to "blow your horn" to an extent to be heard. That's not to say be obnoxious. But let people know what you're doing. I've tried it both ways. I've tried being quiet and letting my work speak for itself. But, in America at least, that just doesn't work. Our society is too competitive -- and to a large degree very cutthroat -- to sit back and let things work on their own. I've found that an adrenaline push in additional marketing accomplishes the same task twice as fast. The quality of writing must still be excellent, and the content must hit the hot buttons. But if there's no marketing you'll be left in the dust.
No it isn't, Faybe. It's a site where you write articles which earn money by attracting readers via search engines. The social aspect of the site - where you meet and mix with fellow writers - is a nice bonus, because writing online can be a solitary business. But socialising with your fellow writers won't earn you a red cent.
Other Hubbers don't click on ads. The people who click on ads and buy eBay and Amazon products are readers who find your Hub via search engines. You won't attract them by inviting people to be friends or followers. If someone has been feeding you the idea that followers equals money, they don't know what they're talking about, and I doubt very much they're earning $1,000 a month.
Not having a go at you, just wanting to correct any misleading information you may have been given. You do have to do some marketing, but not within HubPages. You need to find external avenues to self-promote.
Marissa, not that my "approval" is needed on your comment here; but I like how well it sums things up.
I very much treat my Hub-writing and other activities on here as completely separate things (right or wrong). "Hubtivity" is described as "bringing something to the site", but if I read, comment, or do something in the forum here it's because I'm taking a break from writing (or some other work unrelated to HubPages). For me, answering questions may be a matter of trying to help someone or skimming for ideas for Hubs or else just killing time. If I come to the forums I may be looking for discussion, laughs, or (again) killing time or taking a break. Sometimes I'll "accidentally" end up getting an idea for a Hub on the forums. Granted, those are all essentially selfish motives, but none of them have anything to do with self-promoting or even trying to call attention to myself or my Hubs.
With the exception of obnoxiously having a Facebook page and Twitter account pretty much for the purpose of just listing a lot of my online, "extra", writing; I don't do any promotion/marketing of the kind of writing I do on HubPages at all. (I don't even pretend they're for anything else, so I'm not misleading people by "pretending" to be friends on Facebook.) A lot of my online writing is an "extracurricular activity" for me, and I'm here for the writing (and occasional "relating"). If I'd do a little off-site promoting and pay more attention to writing the "right kind" of Hub and title I could be earning a lot more than I do; but even without doing any promoting, my Hubs that are the "right kind" do pretty well on their own. The ones that are not don't.
I'm pretty much one of those people who "just sits" and waits for traffic to come to me, but the search engines do that if the Hub and title are something that attracts them and that readers find helpful or useful once they run into it. It may not be the wisest thing in the world, money-wise, but I want/need my "hobby writing" to stay "for me", and my "relating" to keep being a genuine, social, interaction - without ulterior, financial/traffic motives.
My point is, though, that if you write the "right kind" of Hub it will do the work for you, and it doesn't take a lot of promoting to earn quite well on here. With "just enjoying myself" on HubPages, I have my good-earners, my no-earners, and my low-but-consistent-earners. Of the last kind of Hubs, the person who writes 300 or 500 or 1000 of those dollar-or-a-two-a-month Hubs is going to have a good part-time income - no promotions needed, no business-approach needed. The difference between my no-earners (or almost-no-earners) and fifty-cent-a-month or dollar-a-month earners is that a lot of stuff I wrote without regard for title, demand, or keywords.
For now, whatever I do on HubPages is for my own entertainment - whether that's writing or taking a break and "hanging out doing nothing". Sometimes in discussions of earning and promoting and other business-related approaches people on here don't seem to realize that earning doesn't have to be all that difficult and that the advice given somewhere (at least at one time) on HubPages to "have fun" is actually sound advice (as long as Hubbers don't completely disregard the other advice to write good titles and write about stuff people search for, and assuming "fun" is writing).
There is more than one way to earn money/traffic on here, and even outside promoting/marketing aren't always all that necessary. It seems to me too much emphasis is often put on promoting, as if there's no way to earn without putting a lot of effort into it. There is. The reason I'm not earning over a thousand dollars a month on here isn't that I don't promote. It's that I don't pay attention to keywords (not even now) and have only recently abandoned the practice of trying to come up with "clever" titles and started writing more search-engine-aimed titles.
Lisa, you and I have very similar approaches to HubPages. I also don't promote my Hubs - if I'm going to do any self-promotion, it's for my websites. However, that's because some time ago I switched from trying to make a living online, to treating it as a hobby - so I don't bother with the boring bits any longer!
Self promotion within HP is something to be done tastefully. At the end of the day tho HP traffic does not easily or often convert into clicks or sales of items so going beyond good taste in your self promotion is pointless. A better way to self promote is to make friends here and participate, have fun and focus on the type of self promotion that draws in outside traffic, in a word backlinks. Ask someone like Nelle, she has other accounts that don't make friends here and are just for niches she has found to be good for her, those accounts seem to make her some decent $$$ and those profiles don't get promoted here in the forums etc.
I like having friends here, its good for my self esteem but as far as making sales goes I want search engine traffic, preferably with a credit card in hand!
Kirstenblog, I'd say self promotion within HP isn't something to be done at all. Networking is something worth doing within HP - that's a different kettle of fish. As you rightly say, traffic from within HP is a drop in the bucket compared to your eventual search engine traffic, and it doesn't convert either.
I think we have slightly different ideas of self promotion. I have a very wide idea of self promotion and include just about anything that gets attention and builds some sort of reputation for yourself. If you take a narrower idea on what self promotion is and limit it to asking for readers and followers and back links then the only exception to the don't do it rule would be in the makeover area as its a legitimate area to ask people to read and get a back link. Self promotion is fine and dandy when done in a legitimate way
Make a reputation as a spammer and thats not the kind of self promotion you want
Kirsten, I wasn't saying there was anything wrong with self promotion per se, just that doing it within HubPages (followers, forum posts) is not an efficient use of time, because 90% of your traffic and 99.9% of your income will come from search engines. So if you're going to put any energy into self-promoting, it's obvious where that energy should be directed.
Thank you all for sharing your insights. It was great to read your reactions. Looking forward to more interactions.
by Susannah Birch 14 years ago
I know there is a rule about "self promotion in the forums."I just want to clarify what it means. Does it mean there is a blanket ban on all links in our own posts that link to any hub we've written or site or article we own?ORAre we allowed to post our own hub links if relevant to the...
by Mary Hyatt 12 years ago
What is your opinion of all the Hubs that are written as tributes to other Hubbers?I see a lot of Hubs written thanking followers and just tributes in general to them. I think that is a wonderful idea, but just wonder how they show up in Google search engines.
by LovelyThoughts 14 years ago
Seriously I know it for a fact. Been participating, and I am not even begging to have friends here. Just noticed I am not loved. Oh well, I will just keep posting to amuse myself. All those who complain about not having enough fans, well I can beat you because I have nada.
by Sally Gulbrandsen 7 years ago
Have you noticed that the high earners on HubPages appear to follow very few writers themselves?Could it be said then, that it is more important to have a following than it is to follow back other writers and Are we spending too much time commenting at the cost of writing new content?
by Mark Klosterman 11 years ago
GreetingsI'm brand new to HubPages, and I want to make sure I don't violate any rules. I'm about to start a hub on government grant scams, and I'm wondering if it's okay to promote my e-book by inserting a link to my Amazon store page in case readers want to buy it. Please advise.The Quantum Leap
by Violet's View 16 years ago
When I joined here a couple weeks ago I thought I could write hubs that others may benefit from and I in turn could read others interesting hubs. I guess I was naive as it seems no one will read my hubs unless I spend a lot of time promoting them, which requires first learning how to...
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |