Monthly Archives: September 2009

Help Me (HubPages) Help You (Hubbers) By Taking Our Short (and sweet) Survey!

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!

Half a Million Published Hubs!

Today HubPages crossed the milestone of 500,000 hubs.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was talking about the 200,000 hub milestone.  But what a difference, a year makes.  Back then, we were getting 8 million unique visitors a month.  Today, we are getting over 14 million.

The 500,000th hub in case you were wondering was Do I have a Cold, Flu, or H1N1 by one2recognize2.

So, who created the other 499,999 hubs?

Over 751,000 people have signed up for HubPages.  As you may have figured out, many of those who signed up haven’t yet written a hub.  That’s pretty normal for an active web site.  In fact, most of those 751,000 are still holding off on their first hub.  Only 97,848 people have published hubs.

This suggests that the average active user on HubPages publishes roughly 5 hubs.  But I would suggest holding off on that judgment.  Averages can be misleading.

stendek, the most prolific hubber at present, has published 3,482 hubs.  If you look at the hubbers who have obtained a hub score of 100, the most prolific is Patty Inglish, MS with 953 published hubs.   If you look at authors by the number of fans, the author with the most fans is Maddie Ruud with 2,504 fans and 219 hubs.

There are 6 authors who have published more than 1000 hubs.  There are 34 who have published more than 500 and 461 who have published more than 100.

These folks are tilting the scales.  That’s why the average is as high as 5 hubs.

There are over 54,000 hubbers that have only written 1 hub and over 82,000 that have written 5 or less.  That means that over 350,000 of the 500,000 hubs were published by only 15% of the total published authors.  If you’ve written more than 5 hubs, then you are part of this select group.

You might be suprised that so few are responsible for so many of the hubs but this is a typical pattern on the web.  It’s known as the Power Law or the 80-20 rule.  It means roughly that the second most productive person usually does about 1/2 as much as the most producive person, the third most productive usually does about 1/3 as much, and so on.  If you are interested, the power law has been well described by Clay Shirky.

To our published authors, thanks for all your hard work!  HubPages is growing rapidly.  If we keep the quality up, then the traffic and readership will surely follow.  Great job!

An Awesome Note I Found In Our Kitchen This Morning

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!

Frank (our HubPages mascot) Has An Official Announcement To Make

Yep, it’s true and you heard it from Frank first — HubPages is getting ready to bust through the 500,000 Hub mark here sometime in the very, very near future (like tomorrow). As of the writing of this blog post we are at 498,349 Hubs (you can see the official up-to-date count on our stats page), so it won’t take too much longer to bust through that 500k mark.

I guess now the only question is when exactly will we publish the 500,000th Hub? Feel free to comment below with your guess (day and time, PST) and we’ll update this post with the winner, along with a link to their HubPages profile. I’m going to guess that we’ll hit it at 6:37pm tomorrow. But hey, that’s just me.

When do you think we’ll hit 500k?

UPDATE: It looks like a emievi came closest to guessing the day and time, which was right after 6pm on September 22nd.

New HubMob And HubNuggets to check out (yes, this means you!)

Every single week we have a few super-awesome Hubbers who have made it their lifelong passion to help make HubPages a more fun, interactive and inviting place to be by posting up both the HubMob and the HubNuggets (ok, maybe not their lifelong passion, but they do really enjoy them). If you haven’t checked out what they’ve got to offer this week, then you should give them a few minutes of your time over here whenever you get the chance:

Thanks, and may the Hub be with you my friends.

New Updates! A Forum For Every Topic And Email Digests

Yep, it’s about that time again — it’s time for some sweet, new HubPages updates! Of course, you (for some apparent reason) might not be quite as excited as I am (I’m actually doing cartwheels while typing right now), but I’m sure that you’ll really did these two new updates anyways.

The first update that we just rolled out has to do with the forums. A few months back we launched categories accross HubPages, which has turned out to been a very valuable addition. But, thousands of categories later we have now decided that the forums should reflect all of the new interests that these new categories have brought into HubPages, so we have now launched the ‘By Category’ forums that now match up with all of the higher level categories that are currently available to write a Hub about. This not only allows for all of you Hubbers to chat in more niche and dedicated forums, but it also allows us to show a more channelized Hub to visitors that are reading Hubs by adding a few of the more current and popular forum threads into the Hub’s sidebar.

Here are a few screenshots that will help you better see what I’m talking about:


Here is the new look of one of the category forums. Available subforums are shown in the red box.


A close-up of the subforums listing.


Relevant category forum threads are now displayed on Hubs as well.

Also, another update that isn’t going to be quite as noticeable is the ability to now be sent a daily email digest of the Hub notifications you would normally receieve from your fans as they happen. We know that a lot of Hubbers can get annoyed when these types of notifications begin to slowly fill up their inbox, so we now have this option available to make everything all happy again in HubLand. 🙂

If you are logged in, you can check out this new option by going to your Edit Profile page (as shown below).


Choose the new Daily Digest option to get sent one comprehensive update email a day

As always, please let us know what you think about these new features over here in the official forums announcement. Thanks, and may the Hub be with you all.

An Interview With A Hubber About Finding Success With The 30 Hubs In 30 Days HubChallenge

If you haven’t noticed yet, about a month and a half ago we launched an ongoing 30 Hubs in 30 Days HubChallenge over in the Forums so that the success that many Hubbers found after joining the first (and much more intense) 100 Hubs in 30 Days HubChallenge could be made available to all Hubbers. So far there have already been several Hubbers who have stuck it out for the entire 30 days and have not only come away with 30 brand-spankin’ new Hubs, but have also learned a ton of stuff in the process. Not to mention now that they’re done they have seen incredible gains in traffic, which is never a bad thing.

After reading some inspiring forum posts from a few of these first, successful 30 Hubs in 30 Days HubChallengers I wanted to see if could dig into the details of their HubChallenge experience and what they really thought about it. The first Hubber who has stared at the HubChallenge in the face for 30 days is cosette, who I sent a few questions to the other day. Check out what she had to say below:

1. How did you first find HubPages and what do you think of the HubPages community so far?

I followed a link about bunnies, since I own a bunny rabbit. HubPages is a very lively community. It is also very user-friendly and easy to create articles. I really like it!

2. Why did you decide to join the 30 Hubs in 30 Days HubChallenge and was it a hard decision to make?

I decided to accept the 30 Hubs in 30 Days challenge because I saw it as a learning experience, and to see if I could do it. I love writing anyway, so it was fun. No, it was not a hard decision to make.

3. What kept you motivated during the 30 days that you were publishing Hubs for the HubChallenge and how did you make it through to the end?

I was motivated by the threads in the 30 Hubs In 30 Days Challenge forum. It was gratifying to be able to add another hub onto the ‘finished’ pile, which is also what helped me make it through to the end.

4. You said that joining the 30 Hubs in 30 Days HubChallenge busted you out of the terrible writer’s black that you had at the time. Can you explain this a little more and how the HubChallenge helped?

I had just about given up on my endeavour to write articles, hubs or blogs with advertisements on them. I was at wordpress before but they didn’t allow ads. I tried doing it at blogger.com but there was no traffic. This was discouraging and caused me to be a little depressed, so I stopped creative writing and focused on my regular freelance writing. When I joined HubPages, I was immediately struck by the size of its member base, and how alive and kicking the site is. As I started writing hubs, it was fun to see it take shape as I assembled each capsule. Participating in the 30 Hubs in 30 Days challenge forced me to write, and as I wrote, my thoughts started flying about and ideas started formulating in my mind and from each new idea, new ones sprang forth. It is akin to pulling a bunch of weeds from a flower garden.

5. What other results (such as traffic, earnings, fans, etc.) have you seen now that you’ve finished up with the HubChallenge?

I have noticed more traffic and not earnings so much but I know that takes time. I have also noticed more fans trickling in. Not being one to solicit fans, it feels nice and it is surprising to see people interested in my hubs, which tells me that is a direct result of participating in the challenge.

6. Would you recommend that other Hubbers join the 30 Hubs in 30 Days HubChallenge? Why or why not?

Absolutely. It has had a positive impact on not only my hubs, but on my writing and creativity.

7. Any other comments that you would like to say? Let us have it!

Thanks for a great site, and for asking us hubbers what we think 🙂

Thanks to cosette for the awesome interview and if you’re looking for a way to get the most out of HubPages, be sure to join the new 30 Hubs in 30 Days HubChallenge now (it’ll be worth it, we promise).

UPDATE: How could I have forgot to include cosette’s stats graph? Check it out below (it’s awesome!)

Frogdropping Pulls Together Some Helpful Hubs

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?

An Awesome Wedding Surprise From The HubNuggets Team!

As with any vacation, it’s never that easy when you’re trying to get back into the swing of things (a.k.a. getting back to the ‘real world’), but lucky for me I was given a little bit of help with the adjusting once I finally came back into work after being gone for my wedding/honeymoon for 2 weeks. When I came back to my desk for the first time after returning to good ol’ San Francisco (yes, I remembered where it was), I noticed a card that was addressed to me sitting there just waiting to be opened. By now I’m more than used to opening up cards, so I grabbed it, tore it open and pulled out the card that you see below:

It, of course, was a wedding card, but I began to wonder who would possibly send me a wedding card to the HubPages headquarters? I thought that it was a little odd that a member of my family or other friend of mine or Stephanie’s would send a card to my work address, but once I opened it up it all made sense.

Much to my surprise the members of the super-awesome HubNuggets team had sent over the card and honestly, I couldn’t believe it! I don’t think that I could have possibly started out my day any better than with a card like this from a group of Hubbers that have added (and continue to add) so much to the overall HubPages community. So, I guess that this is my way of saying thanks to the HubNuggets team for not only the fantastic wedding card that they mailed to me, but also for all of the great work that they do with showcasing great, new Hubbers each and every week with the HubNuggets. As you can see below, this card put quite a smile on my face, which isn’t always easy when you’re coming back to work after laying around in paradise for the past 8 days. 🙂

Thanks again to the HubNuggets team and if you’re wondering what the heck HubNuggets even are, be sure to check out this Hub that gives you all of the info you need and more.