I was poking around a few of our Hubber’s blogs/websites that are decorated with our super-sweet HubPages widget and it got me wondering about how I would even go about grabbing my own widget and why I would want to show it somehere else other than HubPages. After thinking through this and figuring it all out for myself, I thought that I would share some of my personal thoughts on the somewhat unknown, yet really cool thing otherwise known as the HubPages widget.

Why Use The HubPages Widget?
The widget that we have created for all of you Hubbers to use all over the web is designed with one main focus thing in mind — helping Hubbers share their content with their friends, family and other social connections all across the web. Our hope is that this will help build up your audience of readers as well as your fans and we also figure that if someone is a friend of a great Hubber, then they could potentially be interested in becoming a really great Hubber, too.

How Many Hubbers Are Currently Using The HubPages Widget?
For me, it was pretty hard to even find where I could grab the code for my own HubPages widget, which made me curious to find out exactly how many Hubbers have found theirs and are currently using it on thier blog or website. Well, according to our reports there are currently almost 1200 Hubbers whose widgets are getting viewed nearly 500,000 times each week, which actually kind of surprised me (in a good way). I guess that some of the other Hubbers out there are just a lot smarter than I am?

How Do We Find Our Own HubPages Widget Code?
- To find your own widget code, you first need to go to your HubPages profile page (which you can get to by clicking the ‘My Profile’ link once you’re logged in), so mine would be found at this URL: http://hubpages.com/profile/Ryan+Hupfer.

- After you get to you your main profile page, then click on the ‘Add USERNAME’s widget to your website’ link, as shown below.

- On this screen you will be able to customize your widget so that it looks the way that you like and so that it fits nicely on your website or blog. The widget customization page is shown below.

- Once you’re happy with the way that your widget looks, copy the HTML code in the text box that’s beneath where it says ‘Paste the HTML below into your website or blog:‘ and then paste it anywhere on your blog or website where widgets are allowed.

I hope that this blog post helps all of you see why the HubPages widget is something that you should all think about adding to your other websites, blogs, etc. and if you do choose to add it, I also hope that this will help you figure out how to actually add it. Any questions, please let me know in the comments and I’ll be happy to help you out!

Here at the HubPages HQ we’ve been getting pretty excited about the fact that we’re getting really close to breaking through the Quantcast Top 100 US websites (we’re listed at #105 as I write this). So excited, in fact, that we’re doing an office contest to see who can come closest to guessing the exact say that Quantcast will display HubPages in a position of #100 or less on their website. The photo below is a list of the guesses that we all have been adding to the whiteboard and just like the Price Is Right, whoever guesses the closest without going over is the big winner of $100 in cold, hard cash.

Me personally, I guessed that we would be listed as a top 100 US website on November 5th, which isn’t too far away. So, what day do you think we’ll make it into the top 100? Unfortunately we can’t give you $100, but if you think you have a good guess we’d love to hear it!

I was reading this post over on Mashable.com about how Volkswagen has created a couple of major viral video hits that have already received tons of views from people catching the buzz about the new Fun Theory idea and website that they’ve put together. The videos basically show how various behaviors and habits can be changed if a little bit when fun is injected into the various situations.

Although I feel like no real behaviors or habits have been changed with these experiments (I would think that the results are only temporary in most cases), it did get me to thinking about how adding our own types of fun could potentially make some of the things that we while we’re on HubPages just a little more exciting. Of course, there have already been a few examples of these fun-generating things already being added to HubPages, things such as the HubMob, the 30 Day HubChallenge and voting on the weekly serving of HubNuggets. But, I still think that there can be even better ways for us to increase the amount of fun that we have here on HubPages, I’m just not really sure what those ways are yet. Maybe you can help me out by leaving some ideas for boosting up the fun a bit around here in the comments? I’ll give you a couple of my wacky (yet fun) ideas under the videos below:

How we could increase the fun on HubPages:

1. Make the writing process more social somehow and allow others to see not just what you’ve published, but what you’re actually working on at the moment in real-time
2. Allow for Hub-collaboration, meaning that one Hubber could write half of a Hub and another Hubber couls write the other half with them both sharing the earnings generated
3. The ability to share and collaborate from the capsule level
4. Much, more more Larry (which we added into our category tool a few months back)

Those are a few of the ideas that I can come up with off the top of my head, but as I come up with more ways to make HubPages more fun I’ll be sure to let you know all about them. Also, any ideas that you have to increase the fun, be sure to post them in the comments below!

The fact that I have been here over a year now kind of amazes me every time that I think about it. Although a year doesn’t really sound like that long of a time to be somewhere, for me it’s sometimes hard to remember that I used to work somewhere other than HubPages. I guess that’s a good sign of how much I love it here and how much fun we have keeping up with all of you Hubbers.

Once I remembered that I had been here for over a year now, it made me start to think about some of the more HubPages-releated things that must now have been going on for over a year, too. For instance, the HubMob, which is a way for a bunch of Hubbers to all write together on one chosen topic (more info in this Hub by Princessa), has now been a part of the HubPages community for over a year now, too. I initially started the beginnings of the HubMob by posting something in the forums titled So, I have crazy idea…A HubMob? and after much enouragement and help from the HubPages community, that eventually snowballed into the first ever HubMob that was themed All About Various Popular Hair Styles: Their history and how to create them, which to this day is still one of the most popular HubMobs that has ever been created (more on that later).

Well, nearly a year later the HubMob is now managed by the runway-walking, bike-wrecking and super-awesome Princessa who keeps the interesting themes coming each and every week and the forum action moving. The always helpful ProCW and Shirley Anderson have also chipped in quite a bit of their time along the way, which shows just how much fun the HubMob is and how important is has become to the rest of the Hubbing community.

So, now that the HubMob is over a year old, I wanted to dig into some of the stats that go along with it so that all of you can see just how great joining the HubMob has been for the HubMobsters who have chosen to do so. Take a look at the stats below and if you have a question that you’d like to ask about the HubMob or if you have some thoughts on how to make it better, please let us know in the comments below.

• The first HubMob was about various hairstyles and was first posted on September 8th, 2008 and there has been a HubMob posted up ever single week since (I actually think that we missed on over New Years, but who’s counting?).
• The first HubMob is still the most viewed with a total of 196,474 Hub views for just 38 Hubs.
• There are 52 total HubMobs and they have generated 1,882 Hubs that were published by 1,397 HubMobsters.
• On average, there are 36 HubMob Hubs published each week by 27 HubMobsters.
• The HubMob has generated 1,151,726 Hub views over the last year and this number is currently increasing by nearly 50,000 views a week.
• On average, each of the 1,882 HubMob Hubs have been viewed 611 times.
• The most prolific HubMobster is Patty Inglish, MS who has published 79 HubMob Hubs that have been viewed 60,608 times, meaning that on average each of her HubMob Hubs have been viewed 767 times.
• Out of the 52 HubMobs 30 have generated over 10,000 total Hub views.

As you can see, the HubMob has been going strong for over a year now and is showing no signs of ever slowing down. Thanks to Princessa and the rest of the HubMob helpers, I’m thinking that it will be around long enough for a 2 year anniversary post, too, which makes this Hubber very, very happy. If you ever want to join up with the rest of the HubMobsters, check out this link and you’ll always be directed to the latest and greatest that the HubMob has to offer you: http://HubPages.com/info/HubMob.

I know, I know — usually surveys are neither short nor sweet, but I promise that this one is just as advertised. Basically what I’m trying to do is crawl into the heads of Hubbers such as yourself, dig around a bit and see if there is any useful information that me and the rest of the HubPages team can use to help give you and the rest of the Hubbers out there the best experience that’s humanly possible with the time and other resources that we have to work with.

So, when you get a couple minutes to burn in your oh-so-busy-life that I know is already stuffed to capacity with more than enough to fill the 24 hours that we have in a day, please head on over to this Hub, check out the 4 survey questions and give us the most truthful answers that you can. Also, since posting this handy-dandy little survey it seems that many Hubbers are also giving us their thoughts in the comments as well, so feel free to do the same if you feel like your thoughts and/or opinions can’t be summed up in 4 simple multiple choice questions. Here are a few of my favs so far if you need an example to kick-start your creativity a bit:

From the always entertaining Marye Audet:

Personally, Ryan, I would love to see you guys come up with a tool that, when a hub was stolen and reprinted, the plagarist’s screen would say “YOU ARE A THIEF” and then the website would self destruct…5…4….3….2…

other than that..you guys are doing great.

And another from VioletSun:

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to answer the survey. I joined Hubpages to refine my writing skills, and in the process connected to other hubbers; its been a great experience, reason why I am still here. I would like to have the option to do some HTML with my hubs. At times, I would like to change the font style and color of a sentence or title for emphasis.

Haven’t made that much money, but its okay, the rewards of being here are great!

And one last (and slightly odd) comment from Daniel Carter:

Thanks, Ryan. You do good junk. I want to come and meet you guys one of these days. I would bring bubble gum and Britney posters for all.

LOL

Thanks again for all of your help with this and remember — help me help you!

This morning when I cam into the office, I made a quick stop by the kitchen and when I did a couple of Post-It notes that were stuck on two boxes of tea that were on the counter just happened to grab my attention. As I leaned in closer to take a look at them I noticed that they were written by the one and only George Edmondson, who is not only our office manger (he makes sure that stuff gets done around here), but also the father of Paul Edmondson, who is one of our three original HubPages founders (see the History of HubPages Hub for more info). Here is what each of the notes had written on them (pay no attention to the 70s-esque, yellow laminate counter top):

If you can’t read it in the image above, it says:

9-22-09

I know a person who helped develop this tea, and I would like to write a Hub about it. Let me know what you think.

-George

Where most people would probably just see this as just another note, to me it shows that all of us here at HubPages not only work here as employees, but most of us also love to write here (I know, I know, Paul Deeds only has 1 Hub to his name, but he doesn’t count). In the industry they call that “Eating one’s own dog food“, or something like that. Anyways, it made me happy this morning, so I thought that I would pass it along — enjoy!

When I logged into HubPages this morning I noticed a new Hub that was being showcased prominently on our homepage. The Hub is titled Hubpages Help - A Reading List For New Hubbers and was put together by the always entertaining and helpful Frogdropping who has put together a collection of some of the more helpful Hubbers and the Hubs they have written that are aimed at educating the rest of the HubPages community. The Hub currently has a HubScore of 99 and is attracting a lot of positive comments, which shows me that Frogdropping’s goal of helping out other Hubbers is definitely working, which is why I wanted to share her Hub with all of you in the first place.

So, when you get a chance, give this Hub a few minutes of your time and who knows — maybe you’ll actually learn something?

Just as I told you all about in the post that I put up last week after my first day at the Search Engine Strategies conference, having some fun and interactive way to get some of the attendees interested in your product is key in getting some value out of these types of events. Now that I’ve had another day and a weekend to think about HubPage’s presence at the conference and how my homemade keyword researching game impacted the attendees, I would say that we got a pretty solid bang for our buck. The game gave me an easy way to talk to complete strangers while still being related to HubPages and our overall value proposition.

Of course, there are a few things that I would probably change about how I ran the game (and other things at the event), but overall I think that it worked out well. If you’re interested in hearing some of my random thoughts, the following lists are some random thoughts on what I thought went well at the conference and what I could improve upon next time as far as our conference strategy goes:

Things That Went Well

1. I thought that the game was a great idea and was a great attention-grabber and ice-breaker for the attendees who walked by our booth.
2. The game was a relatively low investment ($100 X 2 days = $200) and since I made the boxes and everything else myself, the overall costs were very low.
3. The game got the attendees thinking about keyword research, which can be an important part of HubPages and it also allowed me to explain what HubPages was all about to every single person who played the game (nearly 75 players total).
4. We used a case study from the 100 Hubs in 30 Days HubChallenge and included it on a one-sheeter that we handed out to the attendees that stopped by our booth. Several of them mentioned reading it and saying that they were excited to give HubPages a shot (nice!).
5. We had some pretty sweet (and pink) HubPages mints (see below) that we were handing out to the attendees and I’m not sure why they loved them so much, but people couldn’t get enough of them. One woman actually said that they were the best free swag that she’s seen at the show! I’m not sure if I would say that (there was some really good stuff), but I definitely think that they’re pretty cool.
   
6. I was able to have a great interview with the guys over at WebMasterRadio, which was a lot of fun (podcast coming soon).
7. I met some amazing people who could potentially help HubPages become even more awesome, which is always great. A lot of people are excited to partner up with us on some interesting things, which is a sign that our name is getting out there more and more as we continue to grow.
8. This conference had a great lunch offering, which is rare when it comes to large conferences. Not really something that I had to add to this list, but something I noticed and wanted to throw out there nonetheless.

OK, so those were some of the things that went well, now for some of the things that I would like to improve upon before I hit up my next conference for Hubpages:

Things To Improve

1. I shared the booth with our parent company, YieldBuild, which made sense and was a great idea, but the fact that we only had 2 people in the booth made for some very long days. Until we grow, I don’t think that we can do much about this (we have 6 employees (James works for YieldBuild and HubPages)), but it’s something that I wanted to bring up.
2. I need to make the game more self-explanatory so that I can actually talk by the second day (and not have a sore throat). I think that I talked more than I have in a looong time during the first day of the conference, which is great, but the more energy that I can save the better and a lot of effort went into explaining the game that I was running. Of course, the explaining is what usually allowed me to tell the attendees all about HubPages, so I guess that I lost my voice for a good reason.
3. I feel like I should have made a better effort to meet more of the other companies that had a booth at the conference. This is easier said than done and even though I did meet quite a few, I still feel like I could have met more. Only having 2 people in the booth makes this pretty tough, too.
4. I feel like I could have made a bigger scene when I was going to give away the $100 each day by making the players be there in person when I give it away so that I could gather a crowd at our booth. Having a lot of excitement at your booth is never a bad thing, and doing it this way I could have probably made quite a scene.

Overall I think that the conference went great and just like with anything else, it takes some time to master the conference scene and as you can probably tell, I have some work to do before I attend my next one. If you have any other conference tips, feel free to share them with me in the comments.

One last thing — I never announced the winner of the second $100 that I was giving away to one of the attendees who picked the right box when playing my game during day two if the conference. There were only 4 people who picked the correct title the second day and the overall winner that I chose from that box was Peter F. Young, who is actually a professor who told me that he teaches his classes all about HubPages as part of his standard curriculum. I thought that this was pretty cool and be sure to check out another blog post that I’ll post all about him later on. Who knows, maybe he’ll end up spending his winnings on his students…I mean, $100 can buy a lot of pizza, right?

Here at HubPages we not only try to give you the best possible self-publishing platform that the web has to offer, but we also try to offer you world-class writing tools that will help you become the most successful Hubber possible. An example of one of these helpful tools that we offer is the Idea Bank, which is a place for any Hubber to go if they are wanting to find a great topic to write a Hub about. Here’s how we explain it more specifically:

It’s rich with topics readers want to know more about

Many writers who come to HubPages are eager to start writing, but may need some help deciding on a topic. The Idea Bank provides you with a list of topics. Thanks to HubPages technology, we’ve determined that these topics are requested by Internet users and have the potential to produce traffic.

Scan through them. Some may be right up your alley, while others may spark a  new found interest that will lead you on a whole new path of discovery. Either way, the Idea Bank is full of topics that people are eager to learn more about. Look through it for fresh, new Hub ideas.

I won’t go into detail how we find these topics and the truth is it’s more complicated than a guy like me can even understand, but even though I don’t really know how we come up with these high-potential Hub topics, I am the one who gets to approve them so that they show up for all of you to use. This is a pretty fun job because for about every good topic that I add to the Idea Bank there are probably about 15-20 that I end up deleting for one of many reasons. Some of these rejects are a little too risque’ for HubPages, some don’t make any sense at all and some are just plain ridiculous. It’s kind of fun sifting through these topics sometimes and since I’m usually the only one who gets to see the rejects, I’ve saved a few of them so that I can post them here for all to see.

Here are a few of these topics that didn’t quite make the cut for the Idea Bank — let’s see if you can figure out why:

• How to sleep eyes open - I’ve never really wondered how to do this, but I guess that it would come in handy at work if you wanted to sneak in a quick nap.
• How to end marriage - Even though this is potentially a high-traffic topic, I couldn’t get myself to post it into the Idea Bank. I mean, I am getting married in about 20 days, so it just didn’t seem right.
• How to end the world - I’m not sure who is searching for this, but I definitely don’t want them to find the answer. Please don’t write a Hub on this.
• How to catch a squirrel - I’m sure why you’d ever want to catch a squirrel, but I guess there are some people who are dying to know.
• How to cheese - Your guess is as good as mine on this one.
• How to break your wrist - Now why would you ever want to know how to do this? Of course, a simple answer to this would be “Buy a skateboard”.
• How to dress nerd - This is probably what my mom would have Googled if there was such thing back when I was growing up. I was definitely a nerd.
• How to sleep in - I’m not sure who was searching for this, but I’m sure that we could help them out with this. Simple answer: “Don’t get out of bed until after noon”.

OK, so those are some of the more interesting rejects that will never see the light of day in the Idea Bank. I hope that you enjoyed them and I guess that if you really feel like writing a Hub on one of them, the topic is now yours for the taking. However, if you ever are needing to find a great topic that’s a little more normal and has high seach potential, be sure to head over the Idea Bank to see the ones that actaually passed the test.

Today’s blog is an update from a previous blog.  Back then (8 months ago), we had 8 million visitors and 200,000 hubs and I wondered if the ratio of 40 unique visitors per hub would last.  It didn’t.  Our current ratio is 32 unique visitors per hub.

Writing a blog or a hub is a lot like fishing.  The bait (hopefully) is the quality content of your site.  Your best chance of finding a nice fishing hole comes from finding a place with the most fish in relation to the least fishermen.  This in essence is the justification for analyzing web sites by their ratio of unique visitors to content.

Let’s look at some popular web sites to see how their ratio compares with HubPages.  WordPress has a total of 115M blog posts published and gets 189.7M unique visitors each month so it’s ratio of about 2  Squidoo has nearly 900,00 lenses and gets 10.4M unique visitors.  Rounding up, that’s almost a ratio of 12.  Associated Content says that they have more than 1.4M published articles and gets 21.6 monthly unique visitors.  That’s a ratio of 15.4.  So, based on these sites, I think that a ratio of 32 is pretty good.

Let’s look at the rate of growth of our visitors over the last year:

It is interesting that one year ago, HubPages had roughly 7.1 million unique visitors worldwide.  Now, we have the same amount in the US.  If we were to repeat that trend, then by next year, we would have 13.3M visitors in the US which would make us (using the current numbers from Quantcast), the 48th most popular web site in the US (we are currently #123).

If we look at a graph of our content creation before we hit our 400,000 hubs milestone, we see the following:

Not surprisingly, this graph shows that the rate of growth of total hubs published outstripped the rate of growth of the visitors.

Will current trends continue over the next year?  Will HubPages become a top 100 destination in the US?  Will it become a top 200 destination world wide?  We at HubPages hope that this is the case.

For those interested in tracking the current number of hubs on HubPages, we now have a page with the current stats.