Getting the Hang of HubPages

Alright, this one goes out to my ex-Squids and new Hubbers.  First, the differences from Squidoo to HubPages.  Let's start with the good; I like that there is a key on HubPages that shows you all of the notices for the articles (hubs).  They are good and bad notices, but even when they are negative notices that means you can fix them.  There seems to be more opportunities for earnings, as there are several programs.  I also like how easy it is to follow fellow Hubbers and there is an even a tab to keep track of articles and comments you are following.  If you decide to delete an article you have 24hrs to undelete it.  Now for the bad, or at least inconvenient; I liked the earnings charts that Squidoo had which itemized which article was earning and how much a lot better than the earnings reports they have on HubPages.  It was nice to be able to use that as a guide to which articles are better for earnings.  I have yet to find out exactly when Hubs start to earn based on their tier system.  I preferred the liberty to change the design and look of the Squidoo lenses that I wrote and I feel like all the ones on HubPages pretty much look the same.  HubPages also doesn't seems to have a lot of avenues to share your writing, such as the internet Magazines Squidoo had put together.  Now, it did take me a while to figure things out with Squidoo, so maybe I just need to do a little more digging to figure out some new things.

Here is the good stuff; tips on what to do when you have switched from Squidoo to Hubpages.  It helps to search other articles and follow other Hubbers, so you can learn what a good article looks like using the new format as well as getting your name out for people to check out your writing.  If I learned anything starting out on Squidoo it was that networking is key if you want to make money writing online.  Also it is good to start going through your articles to edit, correct, update, etc.  I unpublished all my articles that contained "violations" and am going through one by one correcting them.  I also am fixing any broken links or deleting them all together.  After I started this process I reapplied for the Google AdSense program and was accepted!  I am making money again!

Here are the articles that I have edited and updated, if you are seasoned Hubber please let me know if you have any ideas as to how I can improve my writing: Calming Products for Babies, Top Toddler Toys for Playrooms, Betty Crocker Holiday Cookie Mix.

Just to be clear, in case you are just getting started on this journey, writing online does not usually make you a ton of money.  Those that have made a good amount of money from it treat it like a full time job, network like crazy, and usually write on multiple sites.

The way to push yourself to success though is to focus on why you write, not on the money, and to make goals.  My goals are to have all of my current articles updated by the new year and to write and publish 10 articles within the next 6 months, bringing my total count up to 40.  Wish me luck and good luck to all my fellow writers!

Edit and Revise

Well, the last couple days I have just been editing and revising my lenses, which I'm sure I will periodically do throughout the future, as I learn new things. The main thing I've been working on is making sure that all my lenses have right around 20-30 tags. A tag is a word that people use to find your lens. It seems my ranking has gotten better since I've done this, but I have read on some lenses not to have more than that general number of tags. I've also been changing some of the words, as they were not quite as good as others I could have chosen. I also received a message from another lensmaster saying they could not read the fantasy font I had on my Dragons More Reality Than Myth lens.  I really appreciated the heads up on that!  I was worried that not everyone could see that font on their computer depending on the type of computer or web browser they are using.  Thus, I changed it to Times New roman, hoping that will correct the problem.  That is one change I would like to see happen on Squidoo; more ability to format the page and font.  Right now you can't change the font at all except using HTML and there are different themes for your page, but that is about it when it comes for format changes.  I wonder why it is so limited in that aspect?  I also spruced up the Save Big On Large Appliances At Sears page that I created for the upcoming 4th of July sales event that Sears has.  I finally added up all the purchases we made at Sears and found out we actually saved more than I thought, which was great to add to my lens!  I also have added a prediction module and will give credit on the lens to those who get the prediction correct.  I will be updating that at every major sales event that I mention in the article.  I found out about this module from the RocketSquids page and am very glad that I decided to join so far!  If you see anything that needs to be changed on any of my lenses it would be great if you could send me a message letting me know, as I probably don't catch everything.  It is still early, but happy upcoming Independence Day to you all and if you are shopping I hope you find some amazing deals!

PS:  Updated, edited, and reformatted my blog today, what do you think?