Earlier this week we alluded to Hub Hopping as a means of getting inspired. Indeed, Hopping a couple of Hubs every week can make a big difference in the success and failure of your Hubs. Here’s why:
- You will see a wide diversity of Hubs outside of your normal circles of favorite Hubs and Topics
- You will be exposed to a variety of writing styles and formats
- You will see many different subjects that might encourage you to reach outside your comfort zone
- You will see how each and every capsule is used, which can help you know how to begin using more yourself
- Because you actively rate each Hub you Hop, you will get a better idea of the substance, organization, and grammar standards to which your own work is being held
As you can see, this experience can be very instructive!
HubPages Blog 
You forgot to add that HP will save a nickle on every hub we hop too. I’d think this would be very important info to know.
Fair point, Randy Godwin, though considering how many Hubs need to be Hopped and how many Hubbers actually Hop them, we’d probably save like… $10. Hehee. 😀
Authors would learn a lot more if they could see the QAP scores for their hubs on the stats page + substance, organization, grammar scores. Also if a hub was idled – what was the reason – traffic or QAP. All of the points you raise can simply be gleaned by looking at hubs via the topics etc. The claim that people would ‘game the system’ doesn’t make any sense to me. If authors had a better idea what was wrong, fixed it and got feedback via the scores whether it worked – that’s hardy gaming – this is exactly what you want people to do – improve quality. Why not removed the blindfold? IMO Cheers
That’s a good point, John Anderson. We agree it would be nice to see those scores- those we also know of cases in which Hubbers would have a lot of trouble with those scores, so showing them is a double-edged sword.
Rest assured the QAP is very much a work in progress and nothing is set in stone right now. Hopefully the final product will include much more actionable feedback. 😀
Thanks for the information! I have always hopped but I didn’t do it for those reasons.
Very good tips for beginners to improve their hubs and learn to create well formatted hubs
seriously? Thanks for this tips. But how effective is this? Did anyone did this and prove it to be successful?
Thanks, Max Morado! Yep- a bunch of us on the HubPages staff have learned a lot from Hopping Hubs. 😀
Very insightful article. Short and straight to the point. It’s great; thanks for the advice.
There is a good reason most of us eschew the hopper, Simone. We have no faith in the ability of the QAP to actually know what may become searchable in the near future. Now publishing something in the hopes it may pass the approval of unknown raters or the QAP is not very encouraging to many of us. I really have little faith you guys know any more about what Google wants than the common member.
Otherwise there would be very little idling after the hubs are initially featured. Sorry, but this whole “idling” thing is simply a stab in the dark, IMHO. 😦
SSSSS
Sorry to hear about your discomfort with the process, Randy Godwin! Our moves with the QAP are developed around Google’s openly-stated policies and talks with SEO experts and feedback from Google employees, as well as our strategic decision to focus on high quality, in-depth, media rich content.
Umm….you will also see just how badly you can write and still have your writing published on HubPages. Mods are only interested in unpublishing articles that are too promotional. Flagging atrocious articles is futile.
Erica, you are correct in that we do not un-publish Hubs simply because they have grammar mistakes. To keep in mind, though, that grammar, structure, and substance are big factors contributing to a Hub’s being Featured or not, so poorly-written Hubs are not likely to get as much attention as their well-written counterparts.
One of the best ways to learn is by teaching. Explaining concepts to someone else will make you realize just how little you know about a subject!!