How short is too short...

1. 54

   kmackey32posted 14 years ago

   Whats the average word count on your hubs?

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      wildernessposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      It varies from about 500 to around 2600, but most are in the 1000-1500 word range.

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         kmackey32posted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Damn thats long... lol

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      britneydavidsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      My hubs are from 500 to 800 words

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         netlexisposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Ditto. When I aim for 500 words, I write 800. When I aim for 800, I go past 1,000.

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   3. 69

      warchild75posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      About 600-800 is my average,i have written a couple of hubs that are 1500 but that is not the norm for me!

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2. 79

   Uninvited Writerposted 14 years ago

   My average is around 600. Many others write much longer ones. I would say that too short in terms of getting flagged would be under 200.

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3. 54

   kmackey32posted 14 years ago

   Just wondered cuz my last one was 460, ima make it longer but going to leave it for now...

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4. 92

   habeeposted 14 years ago

   My longest hub is around 6,500 words.

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      wildernessposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      No, no habee - that's not a hub, it's a book!  It'd take me a month to write something like that - I'd never make it.  Heck, the research alone would take me 6 months and my feeble brain could never hold it all at once anyway.

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         habeeposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         LOL! I sometimes have diarrhea of the keyboard - gross but appropriate analogy!

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            wildernessposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Now THAT'S a mental picture I just didn't need tonight. 

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               How to - Answersposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               I have trouble keeping thje word count down.  But when I start to edit it I can see that a lot of the words were unneccessary so that is good. 
               
               My average is around 700 but can be 1,500 to to 2, 000.

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   2. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      That seems a waste, Habee. 
      
      If you could find a way to split that up into four or five Hubs, you'd get four or five times the advertising potential AND four or five times the exposure for your subject in search engines.  Plus it would be easier for readers, because each section would be faster to load and less to scroll down.
      
      Even though it's all on one topic, it's a rare topic you can write 6,500 words on without being able to split it into logical sections.  You'd want to interlink them all, of course.

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         habeeposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Nope, Marisa - it wasn't a waste! I won $1,000 for it!

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            Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            ..and congratulations on the win, but I wasn't thinking about that.  That's in the past.
            
            I'm thinking about future earnings - and I'm pretty sure you could enhance those by splitting it up into interlinked Hubs.

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   3. 84

      rebekahELLEposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      that was your hub voted Best Hub by the judges, right? 
      perhaps why you won the grand prize, I'm sure. 
      
      that hub is amazing! I enjoyed reading it.

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         habeeposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         That's the one! Thanks a bunch, Rebekah!

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            Research Analystposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Congrats to you habee, I like your hubs they are so well written and informative.

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5. 61

   Jane@CMposted 14 years ago

   I average around 500.  I use MSWord so I know my word count.
   
   I know several people here that tell me they do very well in terms of making money & their hubs are very short, I would guess right at the 200 mark.  They generally are recipe writers and do one recipe per hub.

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   1. 84

      rebekahELLEposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I haven't checked out too many recipe hubs, but don't the recipes have to be original content? or do they come from other sources? if so, do they credit the source? just wondering. I've thought of posting some, but I would probably add some content or history.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I'm surprised a 200 word Hub doesn't get flagged as sub-standard.

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         Freya Cesareposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Poetry and recipe rarely more than 200 words. I guess it is not words that counts to be able to passed the sub-standart. Picture and video will be included too. Maybe different topic will have different standart?

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            Freya Cesareposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            I mean it is not only words that count..... Typo! Hhhh... sorry.

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6. 59

   JMPruittposted 14 years ago

   i find longer hubs suite me better. However, I don't do it all at once. I usually have 2-3 text fields per hub, linking to my blog, and other content I have around the web. I have some that are over 4000 words long.

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7. 65

   Mutiny92posted 14 years ago

   I had to read the hub based on the title...I wasn't sure what "too short" was referring to!  ;-)
   
   Most of my hubs are between 400-700 words, but my amazon ones are a bit shorter...I figure I want people to buy, not read.

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   1. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Mutiny, you might be interested to know that our Amazon guru, Nelle Hoxie, has experimented with Hub length on her sales Hubs.  She now writes Hubs of around 1,500 words - and last I heard, she was making around $2K per month.

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         WryLiltposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         $2 a month? That's all? I thought she was earning a lot... I'm hoping that's a typo!

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            Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Oops yes, there was a K missing there!

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            relacheposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            If you re-read the quote, you'll see that $2K is an abbreviation for $2,000.

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               waynetposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               

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               rmcrayneposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               If you read the whole thread, you'll see Marissa initially typed $2, then went back and edited to $2K.

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      Mutiny92posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      tx Marisa.  I did not know that.

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8. 57

   darksideposted 14 years ago

   700 is a good number to aim for. 300 at a minimum. Though I do have a lot that are around 1000+ words.

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9. 71

   Cagsilposted 14 years ago

   If it makes a difference, I've noticed that anything that is not in the poem/poetry category is held to a higher standard.
   
   You can write 100 or 200 word hubs, but they will need to be poems or poetry of some sort and in that category.
   
   Otherwise, I have had hubs tagged as substandard, with less than 400 words. If that helps.

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10. 77

    kirstenblogposted 14 years ago

    I shoot for a minimum of 500 words, anything below that and these days I sit on it until I can whack out a few more paragraphs. The hub I am working on now tho is already over 1000 and its maybe a third done (or less). I am thinking of re-writing it to make it an over view and then past the work I have already done into one hub and then do possibly 2 more hubs for all that info I have not managed to get to yet. All this and its just a beginners style tutorial. I did not imagine it would get this big this fast
    
    I do hope that making it a series and grouping them all together will work well and be beneficial for getting more traffic across all of them

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11. 71

    waynetposted 14 years ago

    400-600 somewhere in between that amount of words, although sometimes when I write I just can't stop and have a few rare hubs with over 1400 words!

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12. 84

    Polly Cposted 14 years ago

    Most of my hubs are around 1500 - 2000 words, a few are a less and one is around 3000. Though it wasn't really intentional - I often find it easier to write a lot. I also think that it depends on what you are writing about, and how many words are needed to cover all the info, because things that are panned out for the sake of it can get boring.

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       Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       ...I haven't read your Hubs, Polly (will rectify that in a minute), but do beware.  When people say "I find it easier to write a lot", it's usually because they're inclined to ramble!

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13. 68

    Tusitala Tomposted 14 years ago

    When I wrote my first few Hubs I patiently uploaded each box and typed away.  This became a rather long and laborious job.  But over past few months I've been preparing them first as a Word Doc.   You simply save the master doc. copy it to a blank page and then cut and paste, putting in each paragraph - and sometimes a number of paragraphs if they're short, into each box.  It's much quicker that way.   
    
        As for length?  Well, quite a variety. Most run from around 500 to 1500 words.  Some quite a bit longer.  As a previous Hubber said, it depends when you reach the end of what you want to say on that particular topic.
    
        If you do have a 'book' then put it in in serial form, numbering each part.

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14. 96

    rmcrayneposted 14 years ago

    Most of my hubs are 1000 to 1200 words.

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15. 0

    Hovalisposted 14 years ago

    My longest hub is around 3350 words which I think is too long, but generally I hit between the 800-1200 word mark. I seem to hit around 1000 words as a comfortable number more often than not.
    
    I would think if you are trying to make money for your hubs that under 350 words won't give enough fodder for adsense to crawl and target their ads effectively. I always thought that was why article publishing sites such as Ezine Articles had word limits.

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16. 54

    kmackey32posted 14 years ago

    Well mine are always over 400 words..

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17. 71

    waynetposted 14 years ago

    An Ewok is just too short...aim for Chewbacca size and all is good!

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18. 61

    CrashDummyManposted 14 years ago

    I average around 500-600.  Maybe a few under that but if you're trying for search engine rankings I think anything under 400 is going to be too short.

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19. 74

    Kangaroo_Jaseposted 14 years ago

    400-1500 words, dependent on the niche for that particular hub.
    
    I am working on a hub, that was growing and growing and growing was getting up to 18,000+ words, plus videos, hub links , external links, music, etc. All written offline, not on the Hub system yet.....
    
    But then looking at how it was growing (once I reached the 5,000 word mark), decided the best thing to do was split it into 10 separate hubs.

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20. 84

    rebekahELLEposted 14 years ago

    my shortest is a product hub at 586.
    
    my longest is a Fathers Day hub at 2273 (I think it counts the lyrics to a song I included after a video)
    
    mine average out between 1000-1200.

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    thisisoliposted 14 years ago

    My longest hub is around 8000 words, but that was more of a personal project than money making extravaganza.
    
    Most of my hubs which earn big bucks are around 1500.
    
    400 + should still get traffic though!

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22. 87

    Lily Roseposted 14 years ago

    I always shoot for around 500-800 words for my hubs, although I have several that are much longer as well.  Sometimes it depends on what kind of hub it is.  For product hubs, I often try and put myself in the reader's - or shopper's - place and that affects the length of my hub.  For certain types of hubs, you can only keep a reader engaged for so long, so it makes sense to make some shorter than others...just don't treat a hub as a blog post because that's not what it is.

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23. 56

    J@psposted 14 years ago

    Most are: 1,000+
    
    Shortest 500+
    Longest 1,500+
    
    I am guessing, anything shorter that 500 is too short.

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24. 92

    habeeposted 14 years ago

    Thanks, Research!
    
    Marisa, I know what you meant, but it would be difficult to break that particular hub up.

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25. 0

    Nelle Hoxieposted 14 years ago

    IF you can get a 200-word sales hub or adsense hub to rank well in the search engines, it will convert like crazy because usually it's tightly focused and the products and adsense ads are all clustered together. BUT that requirs a lot of off-site SEO know-how and a sustained effort.
    
    A longer hub of 1,500 words is a lot easier to get a first-place in google. But you have to know how to construct the hub to effectively monetize it - so your shopper stays focused.
    
    Basically it's a trade-off. BTW I love Habee's 6,500 word hub and I would leave it as one hub. Not everything needs to follow a formula. I believe in diversity in EVERYTHING. We should all learn how to work with all lengths of writing, because we never know when the search engines will decide that they favor a different length.
    
    On my own websites I have a lot of very short pages, that do very well for me. (Marissa the 2K is out-of-date )

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26. 0

    sord87posted 14 years ago

    a hub about 1500 is just enough to appear in google 1st page but the best to write is around 1000-1200 words.Make sure to stress on a keyword that will definitely boost your ranking in google page.Comments is the powerful factor to make it stay in google 1st 0r 2nd page!However to get commented is for sure to put your comment on others page first.As long as you make a stressful of any word it will be counted in Google Search Engine.

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