Some Thoughts on My HubPages Two-Year Anniversary

© Copyright 2011 Patrice Walker All rights reserved

Congratulations Are In Order, I’m Told

I received an email notification the other day from HubPages, informing me that I have been a member for two years. The notification also informed me that on two-year anniversaries, one typically receives a gift of cotton and suggested I treat myself to some Egyptian cotton sheets. I suppose these finely woven, high-thread-count sheets would make a nice gift to myself, but if I were to buy myself something it would be some nice cotton yarn for crocheting or knitting.

In any event, the announcement started me thinking about what I’ve accomplished, if anything, after being on HubPages for two whole years. Have I learned anything of value about being a writer or about life in general? After a few moments of contemplation, I decided that, yes, I have learned a thing or two, which prompted me to jot them down and present them for your consideration.

1) While I have a lot to say, I am not a prolific writer.

And by prolific, I mean the number of hubs I’ve written as opposed to how long they are (more on that later). I’m amazed at writers who are able to produce so many hubs in what I consider to be a short period of time. Hubber Jaredbangerter comes immediately to mind. In the five, short weeks he’s been a hubber, he’s racked up over 70 well-written and interesting hubs. It’s taken me two years to write 40 (I unpublished two of them and republished them at Seekyt.com (more on that later).

At first, I felt “wrong” somehow for not writing as much as others here do. I even gave myself the goal of publishing 40 hubs before my two-year anniversary, but I didn’t make it (only because of those unpublished hubs). After months of useless self-bashing for my seemingly low productivity, I decided to stop. Why? Because I’ve come to realize that a writer’s publication pace is unique; some writers produce a lot of work in a short period of time; others take longer, for many valid reasons, to write and publish their articles. One isn’t better than another; they’re just different. And my low hub count certainly hasn’t hurt my profile score (more on that later).

Perhaps I’ll pick up my publishing pace at some future point; perhaps I won’t. It all depends on what’s going on in my life and how I’m feeling.

2) I tend to be rather long-winded.

My hubs average around 800 words (I’m estimating here), but I’ve written longer ones. The one on how to create crochet patterns exceeds 2,400 words. I could probably publish it as a Kindle eBook. And if I split these approximately 800-word hubs in half and published them as 400-word hubs, I’d have double the number of hubs, so I guess I’m not a slouch after all.

I’ve come to realize that the more passionate I am about a subject, the more I have to say about it. I don’t TRY to write long hubs; it just happens. Nevertheless, my intent when I begin writing is to say what I have to say and not stop until I’m satisfied that I’ve covered the topic thoroughly.

Also, I spent about eight years doing at least three leaves (a leaf is the front and back of one page) of stream-of-consciousness writing EVERY DAY, following the “morning pages” technique presented in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. This, more than anything I’ve ever done in my pursuit to sharpen my writing skills, has made writing effortless, and as a result, I rarely have writer’s block now. On the contrary, I can’t seem to shut up.

I am also "deeply in love" with HubPages capsule format which enables all hubbers to write interesting, multi-media hubs that I think readers enjoy more than reading straight text. It was the main reason I decided to write here.

At a minimum, I use at least three capsules in all of my hubs – a text, photo, and an Amazon capsule. If I can find a good video that complements the subject, I’ll add one. And if I can phrase a multiple-answer question that relates to the topic, I’ll insert a poll. I used the table capsule for the first in the hub I wrote about making telephone calls to the Philippines from Hawaii.

Finally, my background in technical writing taught me that using a lot of white space, bulleted and numbered lists, and sub-headings makes text a lot easier to scan and read, so I’ve made sure that I’ve included these elements in all of my hubs.

3) I’ve only recently started using SEO strategies ...

… and, believe me, it hasn’t been much. This is probably because I typically write when an idea pops into my head instead of searching for high-paying keywords and then developing hubs around them. To me, this kind of writing is excrutiatingly (apparently that’s not a word according to MS Word … oh well, I’m using it anyway) boring. I enjoy writing about topics that I’m interested in and/or passionate about because they literally write themselves.

More often than not, I’ll do keyword research AFTER I’ve written the hub to see if I can come up with some that will, if not make me a bit of change, at least lead readers to them. I certainly didn’t do any keyword research before beginning this hub. The idea for it came when I received the two-year anniversary email, and I just ran with it.

As you are probably aware, backlinking is supposed to be crucial to increasing traffic to your articles, and I’ve done a little bit of that. I keep promising myself that I’m going to do more because it would be nice to make more than 10 cents a day from my hubs.

• There’s a site called Social Monkee (sorry, HubPages won't let me link to this site) that makes backlinking fairly easy; and it’s free to join (and only costs a small, one-time fee to upgrade), but I’ve only used it a couple of times, although I did see an increase in traffic to the hubs that I backlinked there.
• I also have a crochet blog (currently a work-in-progress) where I list all of my crochet-related hubs and articles. That’s gotten me some traffic, as well.
• In addition, I tweet my hubs, which also lands them on Facebook. I haven't started posting them on Google+ yet, but I want to start doing that.
• I also politely ask my readers to share my hubs on their networks if they like what they read.
• Finally, I include links to other hubs (as I've done like crazy in this one) that relate to the topic I'm writing about.

Hmm ... maybe I've done more backlinking that I've given myself credit for now that I've listed the things I do, but I definitely intend to devote more time to it, and it’s a project that I’ve put near the top of my to-do list.

4) My profile score is fairly high, despite my low productivity.

It has even hit 100 a couple of times, but it went back down when I recently unpublished a hub. I’m baffled by how high it is (although not complaining) in part because how HubPages computes the profile score is about as mysterious as the factors that go into creating Google’s search algorithms. But I have noticed a couple of factors that I think contribute to it (not necessarily in order of importance):

• Traffic. When the traffic to my hubs goes up (look for the little red triangle next to your hubs in the account section), my profile score rises and vice versa.
• Original content. That includes word count (exceeding at least 600 words), judicious use of capsules, decent organization, and all of those technical writing factors I mentioned under #2. I also think hubs I’ve written about publishing on HubPages (no, I wasn’t brown-nosing, really!) has helped my profile score.
• Comments. I like to read what other hubbers write, and of course, I have to put my two cents worth in, so I’ve done a lot of commenting on other hubs. I’ve also received some good feedback from people who have read my hubs.
• Followers. I’m not 100% sure, but I think the number of followers you have (mine topped 200 a few days ago) plays into your profile score. I also think following other hubbers is important, too, but I’m not talking about indiscriminately following people. At a minimum, I have to be interested in what the hubber is writing about, and if that person is a good writer, then it’s a sure bet that I’ll follow him or her.
• Questions and Answers. Here’s one area that I haven’t done much with – that is – asking and answering questions, but I think it’s another factor that HubPages considers when computing your profile score.

Let me conclude by saying that while your profile score gives you an idea of how well you’re doing with respect to these factors, don’t become a slave to it (easy for me to say, huh!). When mine starts to drop, I use it as a prod to publish, which is a benevolent way to use it.

See what I mean? I can’t shut up. And while I could make a few more points, it’s time to bring this hub to a close.

Like most writing sites, HubPages isn’t perfect. The recent brouhaha that erupted over the changes in content guidelines as a result of the infamous Google Panda Slap is a case in point. I had to unpublish a hub and put it on another site, simply for writing about a subject that HubPages now considers taboo, namely network marketing, which is a good reason to have more than one site where you can publish your articles.

But given these flaws, I’ll continue to write at HubPages. My confidence as a writer has skyrocketed over the past two years, and as I said earlier, those capsules make writing here a sheer pleasure.

Final word count: 1,711 (Hope I didn’t bore you.)

UPDATE: 3-13-12: I had to remove a couple of links in this hub (i.e., link to Social Monkee and a link to a free ebook about backlinking) because they are apparently in violation of the HubPages TOS. So if you want more information on these sites, please feel free to message me. Interestingly enough, my profile score plummeted from 99 to 92 in the span of one day. I wonder if it will go back up just as quickly now that the violations have been removed. Wishful thinking on my part?