Do you spend much time re-editing your published hubs? I wonder if my perfection

1. 73

   Laura in Denverposted 14 years ago

   Do you spend much time re-editing your published hubs? I wonder if my perfectionism is a waste.

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2. 0

   daytripeerposted 14 years ago

   Other than a small mistake that I try never to overlook, I don't spend a great deal of time re-editing my hubs after they are published. I try very hard to re-edit till I am blue in the face, before I ever publish one. Naturally I look for mistakes, however, I am much more concerned with how I said something. Sometimes I will take entire lines out, and, sometimes delete certain words that really were not needed. There is always a better way of saying something too. Perfectionism is never a waste. I can never attain perfection but it is not from a lack of effort, but rather, a lack of ability. :-)

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3. 68

   lmmartinposted 14 years ago

   Yes, Laura, I do. It is a matter of pride that any work I do, paid or not, be the best I can do, so I seem to re-edit every time I visit one of my articles.

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   THFplumbersposted 14 years ago

   It depends on what the purpose of the Hub is.  If you're just trying for AdSense bucks, then you may as well focus on quantity, as opposed to quality. 
   
   But if you're trying to promote your business, or be genuinely informative, then it does pay to give each article an extra once over.

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   Springboardposted 14 years ago

   I certainly don't think editing hurts. Besides, I'm a firm believer that if you are writing well, and well-thought out pieces, any money or traffic that generates money will come as a natural part of that process. If we just spit out a bunch of garbage, we may still get some folks in, but the work will be a lot more.
   
   An analogy from a factory workers perspective; I can perform my job well by honing my skills on the job, and by setting up my machine properly. I can have a full and extensive knowledge of my machine, keep a watchful eye, and perhaps even avoid some potentially bad situations. I will not have to work hard, and therefore the value of every dollar I earn will be greater.
   
   Or I could just show up to work and run my tail off because product doesn't want to go in the right places, I'd rather chit-chat then watch...
   
   I'll walk out of the plant sweaty and though the money may be the same, I'll have worked a lot harder for it.
   
   Write it and they will come. Write it well and they'll come back. The value of each new reader you reach has greater value.
   
   Long and short; I'd rather work for 1 new reader to come back 10 times than work for 10 readers to come in only once.

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   J Burgraffposted 14 years ago

   If I find a flagrant error with syntax or punctuation, I will edit.  If I reread my hub and a sentence sounds wrong, I will edit.  I'd like to think my hub was well written before I ever published it and it sounds like, with your perfectionism, that's probably the case.  What I do know is that I read a ton of hubs that look as if they were never edited in the first place.  I don't return to that hubber because I think they are essentially lazy and just trying to churn hubs.  If you care about writing, it's natural to be a bit picky about what you put out there for the public to read.  It's a matter of pride.

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   relacheposted 14 years ago

   I don't think I spend a lot of time re-editing a Hub, but in the three years I've been making Hubs, I know that each one probably been edited at least once.  Some of the content capsules that exist now weren't even here at the start.  A few have been edited more than that.  When I learn something that will really improve the function or performance of my Hubs, I definitely go back and do some retouching.  If some new news or info surfaces that is relevant to keeping the content the most useful to the reader, I'll edit for that.

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   weblogposted 14 years ago

   I think Relache answered it the best. Sometimes making changes to titles (keywords) can do little help in traffic too.

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   avangendposted 14 years ago

   I definitely am a perfectionist when it comes to writing, but usually I do my editing before I publish something online. I will often save it, leave to do something else for awhile, and then come back with fresh eyes and scan for errors - poor sentence structure, tenses, spelling, etc. Your brain overlooks errors, even some that are blatantly obvious, because it knows what was meant to be conveyed through the writing. This makes it easy to skim over things too quickly.
   So yes. I probably re-edit everything I write at least once. I went through and edited this post, in fact. From one semi-OCD writer to another, I hope this is consolatory.

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    aidenofthetowerposted 14 years ago

    I do spend some times re-editing and updating my hubs. If I am re-reading it I will also fix errors that I see. However, I don't spend a lot of time doing that because I am here to make money. While quality is important, it isn't the most important thing. If your information is good then you are well on your way to a good or even great hub, even if there is an error or two.
    
    However, your goals and the reason that you are writing here will determine whether or not your "perfectionism" is a waste. If you are writing purely for the joy of writing and you like it to be perfect that that is wonderful! If you are writing for money and feel you are spending too much time editing then that is also wonderful, but your "perfectionism" is going to slow you up.
    
    Unfortunately, to make a lot of money writing online you need to have a lot of content...

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    Pcunixposted 13 years ago

    Ayup.
    
    Back at my own site, I sometimes find stuff in posts that are many years old.
    
    The only thing I do not do is rewrite history.  If I made a factual mistake or my opinion turned out to be wrong, I don't "fix" it.  I may add a note explaining the error, but I won't remove it.
    
    Typos, bad spelling, awkward phrasing, poorly explained things, and newly found information: definitely and constantly.

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    Wayne Tildenposted 13 years ago

    I do try to make sure that spelling, word usage, grammar, etc. are correct. I reread a Comment that I had made recently - on an Editing site - that was so poorly written I couldn't believe that I had written it - and it was too late to edit it. So I guess my answer is yes, but only enough to make it readable.

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