Everything I know about HubPages, I learned from HubPages

Hi, I'm Tia! I started at HubPages right before Halloween of 2010 so I've now been on HubPages for a year! If you are just getting started with HubPages, there's one thing you absolutely don't want to miss: HubPages has a whole Learning Center! (You can find the link down at the bottom of every page on the site) It's a guide to how all the different bits of a hub work, and tips and advice on how to build content, deal with search engines, sign up for the affiliate programs (that's how you earn money) and lots more!

I'm glad I found that part early on. I'm still reading through it (boy, there's a lot to read) but it explains a lot of stuff that people are talking about in the forums that I don't quite understand yet. And I'm the sort of person who doesn't mind taking some time to read the instructions. It worked for figuring out my new toaster oven so I don't see why that idea won't work here too. This hub is a window into what it's been like writing on HubPages for me, and talks about how long it took to reach some of the various achievements and milestones that newbie's want to get to.

On November 12, 2010, I got email saying that my very first Hub (the one about building your own cob bread oven) had been picked as a "HubNugget." It sounded cool, but I didn't know what that meant. So I went and looked it up, or at least I tried to. The FAQ doesn't have a question that mentions HubNuggets.

Next I tried the Learning Center. Bingo! They have an article that tells all about it. In short, a HubNugget is "...written by new Hubbers, selected Elite Hubbers, and elected by the HubPages community." I guess that's a fancy way of saying someone out there in HubLand thinks it's a good Hub. The definition of a "new" Hubber is someone who has been a member of the site for less than 60 days and who has gotten their score to be over 75.

If there's one thing that new Hub writers do that can hurt them, it's not start writing right away. I've read a lot of newish people say how they joined the site and then didn't start making hubs for weeks to months later. The HubNugget program gives a big boost to newbies, but to be eligible, you have to make Hubs during your first two months on the site!

In the end, I had four of my first Hubs nominated during my first two months on the site, and getting that little bit of extra traffic from inside the community seemed to really help. Plus it got me some followers and good advice.

When you first start out at HubPages, your Author Score is pretty low. But slowly as you make Hubs and interact with the site, that score will rise. I found posts in the forums where people were wondering what you had to do to make this happen.  The goal is to have your Author Score be 75 or higher. This makes any links you have on your Hubs that point to someplace else on the web turn into "do-follow" links instead of "no-follow." That little change tells the search engines that they can follow through to wherever you are pointing.

I had published three Hubs and been on HubPages for eight days when my score climbed up to 75. I didn't do anything special, it just got there on it's own.

The Lesson:  Be patient.  If you are building good Hubs, it will happen pretty quickly.  If it's not happening, you are making poor Hubs or doing something wrong.

For my first week at HubPages, I mostly just read info on the site and built four Hubs. I noticed in my stats I only had traffic from within the HubPages site. And I hadn't gotten any followers yet.

When I looked at my Hub stats on the morning of my 10th day, there was traffic from Google! So again, the most important thing to remember is to just be a little patient. It really took no time at all for Google to find my Hubs. I kept an eye on my traffic sources and by the time I'd been on HubPages for a month, Google had become my #1 traffic source.

And how long does it take to start earning with Google?

When I checked my AdSense stats on the morning of my 21st day with HubPages, I had earned a nickel! Okay, so it's not a lot, and it was from accumulated ad impressions but just three days later (day 24), I got my first ad clicks and I earned $8 from a single Hub! That's still not that much but from everything I've read, it takes time for Hubs to reach their full potential and get really good traffic. At the end of January 2010 I read a post from a woman in the forums who says she's only earned $4 over the last four months, and she's been on the site for nine months and has over 100 Hubs! I don't quite feel like I know what I'm doing, but it's clear I'm doing something right, or she's really doing something wrong.

I got my very first HubPages payout in November of 2011, meaning I finally reached $50 total sometime in October, almost exactly a year after I started. My second payout came in January 2012, so I made my second $50 sometime in December, only two months after achieving my first payout.

I saw some really sketchy posts about "follow me, I'll follow you" when I first visited the HubPages forums. That didn't seem right. I decided I would follow a few people to see what it is like and how I liked it, and that I would just wait and see if and when I got my own followers.

If you are following someone, you get notices about any new Hubs they write, and you have options in the Hubtivity to see what they are saying in the forums or what question they ask or answer. So it seems the idea is to follow people who you really like what they have to say.

I got my very first follower on my eleventh day! Thanks, Georgina_writes! After two weeks, the number of followers had grown to four. It seems to me that getting followers just takes care of itself.

How do you know who to follow? That's sort of a tough question. I'm trying to read different people's Hubs and see what they have to say. Some are funny, some are helpful and boy, there sure seem to be a lot of good recipes to be found if you have the time to browse the cooking section. I've picked a few people to follow who've written something I like and I'm going to see how it goes from there.