So Just What is Bubblews, and Is it Worth Joining?

My Bubblews Bank, April 17, 2013

Ever heard of Bubblews? It’s one of the newer content writing sites on the Internet that anyone can join. I joined on February 15 of this year, and that’s why I haven’t been here much. I have reviewed Squidoo, HubPages, Zujava, Wizzley and MyLot, all of which I write for occasionally now. But the bulk of my writing energy goes into Bubblews now.  Here’s why.

Bubblews can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to blog, you can blog there. If you want to share news and events about your life, you can do that. If you want to share and talk about  photos you take, people will be interested. You can write about anything that interests you – even lesson plans and funny things that happen in your classroom and get paid for it – as long as you write at least 400 characters and follow the very simple terms of service.

In the two months I’ve been a member I’ve earned over $100. You can get paid after you have earned $25.00. I have never written more than an average of three articles a day, though you are allowed to submit up to ten a day under current rules. Were I to come up with ten articles (called news on Bubblews) I would be able to earn three times as much in the same time period. You are paid for the views, comments, and likes or dislikes people give you when they visit your articles.

What I like best is that besides making better money at Bubblews than any other site I’ve previously reviewed on this blog, I’m also meeting new people and discovering that Bubblews is also a social network. One can invite one’s real life friends to join and you can get paid to do the same sorts of things you do on Facebook – as long as you write those 400 characters per post. That’s about four lines on the form on Bubblews.

The rules are just common sense and pretty standard.

1. You must write your own content. No plagiarizing or copying from other sites.
2. You must not abuse the system by joining like or view exchange groups or requesting other Bubblews members to connect with you and like or comment on your work.
3. You cannot use traffic exchanges, bots, or other non-human or IP manipulation tactics.
4. Your posts can include one or more photos, but you still must have 400 characters of text with them.
5. You cannot post anything pornographic.
6. You can’t make posts of less than 400 characters.
7. You must post in English. If you include text in some other language there must be an English translation.

Bubblews shares the ad revenue it makes with its members by the readership and reader interaction the members get on their posts. The more people who view and comment on your work, the more you will earn – as long as your posts follow the rules above. Before you are paid, your work is checked to make sure all the rules have been complied with.

One thing most Bubblews members really like is their bank page. Whenever you want to know how much you are earning, you go to your bank page and all your statistics will be there. Above I have posted my bank page for this morning, right before I redeemed my earnings. You can see all the statistics there. I check my earnings every morning and it’s very motivating.

If you enjoy sharing your thoughts and seeing what others think on a variety of subjects, I highly recommend Bubblews as a place to connect with others and earn money at the same time. My income on Bubblews is currently more than on either Squidoo or HubPages, and I’ve never had a problem with being paid. You can join Bubblews here.  If you use this link, I will make a small amount when you make your first post. The amount varies. Normally it’s only a penny, but it’s a bit more until almost the end of April. After you join, you will get your own referral link to use when you invite your friends to join you.

I will also mention that Bubblews doesn’t have much in the way of help files written yet. I have written what I call my Ultimate Bubblews Tutorial: All l Wanted to Know When I Joined Bubblews   . It will help you get off to a good start. I hope to see you soon, since it’s a great way to supplement your income by sharing what you know with others –right from your computer.

New Social Network Looks Promising

Although it costs nothing to join, Zurker lets its members share in ownership. I have just made my profile. Hint: Your profile picture needs to be 100 pixels square, and no commas are allowed in interest fields.

So far Zurker is in Beta and does not yet have all the features it will have. Bells and whistles will be added as more people decide to buy optional V-shares.  Although it’s not  a condition to join, I just may buy a few more V-shares when I can afford it. The important thing now is to get in on the ground floor and start inviting friends to make this a great social network that’s not owned by large corporations. If you join, you will be a part owner.  Why not take a minute and join now? Then invite your friends.

Have You Made Your Twylah Page Yet?

My Twylah Page

After viewing a friend’s Twylah page, I had to see what mine would be like. What you see above is the top part of it. You can see my entire Twylah page here. In case you haven’t heard of Twylah, its a free service that makes a page that looks like mine, above, except it organizes your own Twitter tweets in an attractive format. Best of all, it takes almost no work on your part. All you have to do is sign up on the Twylah site and they send you an email letting you know you’re on their list. Then after they approve you in a couple of days or so, they send you your link, and you see the magic.

This is a great way to share your interests with others, and it also makes it possible for you to share power tweets right from the Twylah site.  Whether you use only use Twitter on your home computer, or use it as part of your classroom activities, you can probably think up some interesting uses for it.

I’d love to see yours when you get it made. Feel free to post your own Twylah link here in the comments, along with your city, state, and country if you are outside the USA. I will moderate spam out of these, and will consider any comment with a link spam unless it includes your city and state.  Optionally, anything interesting about your education connections, if any, would be fun to know. Are you a parent, teacher, or home educator? What subjects do you most like to read about?

What I’ve Learned about HubPages

Back in 2009 I started a series in which I introduced the various on-line writing communities I belong to. I got as far as Squidoo and stopped.  I stopped because I got so busy writing at Squidoo that I lost interest in the other communities. Now, after becoming a member of the Giant Squid 100 Club and becoming a Squidoo angel, I decided to go back and take a closer look at HubPages. I had not really done much on the site, and I wanted to determine if it was a good fit for me. It has much in common with Squidoo, and I read a very good hub that compares the two sites. You might want to look at Hubpages vs Squidoo if you are not familiar with one or both sites for writers and those who would like to be.  It is objective and will give you a viewpoint other than mine. Its only fault is that it’s not up to date, so I decided to write an update on the recent changes at Squidoo.

Today I would like to discuss what I have learned about HubPages and its potential for earning income by writing. In August, 2009, I wrote four hubs at HubPages on unrelated topics. Then I moved back to Squidoo, and didn’t come back to HubPages until September, 2010. A writing contest lured me back. I was extremely lucky and won a total of $150 in prizes for this hub: Great Short Hikes in San Luis Obispo County. I decided there might be a future for me at HubPages after all. After writing a couple more hubs about living in wine country, I concentrated my time at Squidoo again to participate in a Rocket Moms session. For the past two weeks, most of my time and writing energy has been focused on HubPages so that I could  learn more about the community. I spent several hours over two days reading all the hubs that would help me get more familiar with the policies, tools, people, and techniques on the HubPages site.

One happy discovery was that they had added a few more writing capsules to work with . When I first joined there was no poll, no quiz, no table, no map capsule, and no video capsule. These new tools make writing a creative hub much easier.  One reason I like Squidoo so much is that it has so many different types of modules or lens building blocks.

Another thing I found at HubPages were many fine writers, and I read as much by them about the HubPages Community as I has time for.  I begin to interact in the comments on interesting hubs, and was reminded again how much more interactive the comments section of hubs is than the guest book on Squidoo lenses. Hub authors not only read and approve comments as lensmasters on Squidoo always do, they return to reply to most comments, and conversations start. This doesn’t happen as much on Squidoo. It does happen on Gather, which is a cross between a social networking and a writing site, but many people on Gather leave generic comments just to collect points and a comment like “nice” doesn’t inspire many replies. I will discuss Gather in a future post.

So, if we are comparing Squidoo and HubPages, a writer will find more varied writing tools at Squidoo than at HubPages, but he will find more interaction on his hubs than he might on lenses at Squidoo. As a writer, I find this refreshing, since every writer thrives on feedback. A writer wants to know he’s been read and understood, or to have a chance to clarify if his reader has not understood something he wrote.

A very subtle difference between the two sites is Squidoo’s emphasis on charity. Most contests at Squidoo give half your prize to the charity of your choice — as long as you choose a charity they partner with.  You are encouraged to give at least some portion of what you make through your writing to one of these charity partners. Because so many do give some or all of their Squidoo earnings to Squidoo charity partners, you can feel a great deal of pressure to do likewise, whether you can afford it or not.  It’s the same kind of guilt you might feel when you see solicitors collecting for the homeless as you enter the supermarket.   You might rather feed the hungry in your own community through a local program than donate to the charities  Squidoo partners with, but there is a certain amount of pressure if you’ve been around Squidoo long, to donate parts of your lens earnings to their charity partners.

At HubPages, it’s more like any other kind of job in that it’s assumed that the main reason you are there is to earn money, and there’s no pressure to give part of it away by donating all or a percentage of your hub earnings automatically to anyone through your hubs. That’s up to you when you get it. If you want to tithe it to your church or give it to the local animal shelter or homeless program, it’s up to you.

The policies at HubPages reflect the reality that most people work for pay as well as satisfaction and that they naturally tend toward self-interest . Example. If you are a salesman (and most squids and hubbers are affiliate salespeople, if only for Amazon), you don’t normally encourage your prospective customers to go to the store down the street to buy a product you also sell. Squidoo encourages lensmasters to do something very similar by encouraging them to link to other people’s lenses and recommend them. This is supposed to promote cross-traffic. But affiliate programs normally leave a cookie on a visitor’s computer so that when he makes a purchase, the affiliate (the one who wrote the lens or hub) gets a small commission. It is the owner of the last site through which a visitor clicks who gets paid, even if the review he first  read on a previously visited site actually convinced him to buy. Let’s say Jim is thinking of buying an I-MAC. He does a search and lands on Pete’s Squidoo lens with a great review of an I-MAC.  He is pretty sure he wants one and has already clicked through to check it out at Amazon. He comes home after work and goes back to the lens he visited earlier, and sees a link to my lens about what one switching from a PC to an I-MAC needs to know.  He follows the link to my lens and has his last question answered and clicks through my link to buy the I-MAC. I get the commission. Pete doesn’t. He doesn’t even have the satisfaction of knowing he helped Jim make up his mind.

At HubPages, where it’s easier to earn AdSense money, you get a non-monetary referral fee, so to speak. If Pete links to a Hub I wrote and Jim follows it, Pete will at least profit from a portion of my page views that come from HubPages’ share — not mine. If you use your special link to send someone to another Hubber’s site, HubPages shares some of the pageviews for that hub with you. This gives Hubbers lots of incentive to promote the hubs of others — not just their own, and they may not mind so much sending prospective customers down the street.

About Linking to Affiliates

One big difference between Squidoo and HubPages is your ability to sell from your lenses and hubs. Neither site will put up with a lens full of spam, but at Squidoo it’s understood that people are often writing lenses to promote the products of their affiliates, or maybe even a business they own. They allow you to have up to 9 links to any one top level domain that’s  on their white list. Only very well known sites that are pretty much accepted by everyone as reputable are on the white list. There is also a black list of sites you can’t link to because their reputations aren’t as sterling.

HubPages allows only two links to the same top level domain in a single hub, and they also watch to see how many of your other hubs link to that same domain. So if your primary reason for joining a writing site is to promote affiliates, you are better off at Squidoo — as long as you write original content that explains why the products you are promoting are worth while. If your lens is full of spam, you may have your article locked at either site, and if too much of your work is locked, your account will be deleted. Spam is not welcome anywhere.

If you were to join the Squidoo community today, you might feel a bit of culture shock. You would be entering a world where friendly monsters pop out to tell you that you just got points for doing something good. You would hear other lensmasters referred to as squids, and you would be considered a fresh squid. If you write a better than average lens, you are likely to be blessed by a Squidoo angel. Sometimes you will be invited to go on a quest, which is a kind of game that encourages you to visit more of other people’s lenses and write more of your own.

You do not experience that same culture shock at HubPages. HubPages has a more businesslike atmosphere, with no gimmicks. Policies and guidelines are clearly stated as they might be in a workplace. At Squidoo there is a whimsical flavor to even many policy announcements. It’s more like an amusement park atmosphere than an office. Sure, you work. But it’s also supposed to be a bit fun.  There are more creative outlets and game-like activities.  When I want to write in a straightforward, no frills fashion, I go to HubPages. I’m not expected to do more than write at HubPages, unless it’s to make my hub more attractive by adding pictures, maybe a video, or, if appropriate, a map, quiz, poll, table, link list, or Amazon capsule. But when I want promote my Zazzle store or do something really creative or innovative, I write a lens at Squidoo or take a quiz or go on a quest. Variety is the spice of life. All work and no play gets monotonous.

HubPages, however, has  frequent contests instead of quests. It appears that they happen quarterly. During a contest, there are lots of daily and weekly cash prizes, with a grand prize at the end of a contest month. When you enter, you have a fair chance to win something. This makes up for the fact that it might be some time before you get a payout for your Google AdSensse earnings.

What I’ve learned about HubPages in this last two weeks has encouraged me to spend as much time writing there as I do at Squidoo. Between the two sites there is enough flexibility to happily write anything I choose. There is potential for earning at both sites. At Squidoo you will probably earn more through affiliate programs than through AdSense,  since you won’t get a piece of the AdSense pie there unless your lenses rank among the top 80,000 out of at least 340,000 — and that was last week. New lenses continue to be written every day to compete with yours for that place in the top 80,000. Any money you earn from lower-ranking lenses will be through affiliate income.

At HubPages, you can expect to make more through AdSense than through affiliates, since you can’t link as much to your affiliates. You do not, however, have to compete with other hubs to get a share of the AdSense earnings. You get all the income from 60% of your impressions, and any affiliate income through HubPages capsules that occur during your share of the impressions. HubPages gets all the earnings from the other 40% of the impressions.

I hope this comparison will help other writers who are trying to find an audience for their work on line and make a supplemental income at the same time. On either site it takes more than a few articles to build up this income. I recommend at a minimum to have 50 articles posted on a site before you expect to get to payouts monthly, and that’s assuming they are quality articles — not rewrites of something you have published elsewhere. Both sites reward original content — not overly promotional pieces you might have used software to generate.  If you plan to work hard, write well, and be patient, you will finally see your payouts coming in. If you would like to join Squidoo, please click my referral link here and have an idea ready to start writing.  If you’d like to join HubPages, please click here for a great article by another Hubber that will be very useful to you: What I Wish I Knew When I Joined HubPages.

Update on April 17, 2013:  Many more changes have taken place at both HubPages and Squidoo recently. I will be addressing these soon.

What’s Happening to Communication?

I read in this morning’s paper that Facebook is aiming to make email obsolete in personal communication. Supposedly we are too busy to exchange long personal email and phone calls. Instead, we will tweet, email, and text short bits, and send all these communications to our Facebook page at the same time in a sort of one-click publishing  communication.

I’m wondering what has happened to thinking and real heart-to-heart or mind-to-mind communication. Must all our thoughts be reduced to 140 characters more or less? Perhaps the ugliness on the political scene is related to posting propaganda and talking points in 30 second sound bites and tweets thrown out at the world to whomever will listen instead of engaging each other in thoughtful face-to-face conversations.

Perhaps we do the same thing in personal conversations with family and friends. We laugh at the Zits comic strip as family members text each other, or text someone else while someone in the same room is attempting to have a conversation. But it really isn’t funny. People are tuning out those who are present in favor of those who are absent.

Supposedly the schools are trying to teach critical  thinking skills, but where do you use them in a Tweet or a Facebook post? Complex thoughts need complex sentences. Have our attention spans become so short we haven’t time for complex thoughts? For more than surface communication? No wonder people  cannot solve problems or reach consensus. It takes more than a few Tweets.

Squidoo Part 2: Why is Squidoo Useful to Readers?

In my last blog I talked about what Squidoo offers its lensmasters (writers). But writers have just wasted their time if no one reads what they’ve written. It’s true that Lensmasters read each other’s work and critique and rate it frequently. So if you create a quality lens, someone is sure to read it. But what can those outside the Squidoo Community get out of it? Why should they bother to visit the site?

Search Squidoo first.

First, it’s a great place to get organized information. Most people who are looking for information on the Internet usually try Google first. If people want to buy books or gardening supplies, they may have their favorite places in town or on the Internet to search. Me? I go to Squidoo. Why? Because lensmasters on Squidoo do a great job of presenting not only organized information, usually with related pictures, but also links to other sources they have already checked on their subjects that they recommend. Instead of being presented with hundreds of links to a subject of interest, the most prominent of which are often there because they paid to be at the top,  if you search on Squidoo, you will often find just what you want.

A Squidoo lensmaster writes about his or her topic of interest. – maybe a hobby, a product review, a personal experience, a trip, or how to do something.  Let’s say you want information on covered bridges. Google brings up over one million links, ten of which are on the first page. Most of these first ones are sponsored links and most are by state departments of tourism.  I tried to paste the results here, but it just didn’t format correctly. You can try the search yourself.

Used by permission of Mary Beth Granger

Now I will search at Squidoo. Although Squidoo also returns a few irrelevant results, there are a lot that are relevant. Let’s look at one of them: Visiting a Covered Bridge. (This will open in a new window so you can jump right back here.) The focus of this lens is one particular covered bridge at Sandy Creek Covered Bridge State Historic Site. You will learn about the history of this bridge and the history of covered bridges in general and why they were covered. You will view original photographs of the bridge from every possible view, as well as the inside the bridge. If you want to buy a gift for someone who collects covered bridge related items, you will also see some that are available and where to get them. There will also be links to blog posts on covered bridges. If you return to the search page, you will also find links to lenses on Covered Bridges in New Hampshire and Oregon Historical Bridges. Each of these is written by someone different and so each offers a unique perspective. All have information of the history and location of the bridges and some great photographs.

Used by permission of Mary Beth Granger

Suppose you’d rather see lighthouses. So far I’m on page five of the search on Squidoo and have not found one irrelevant link. Many focus on a particular lighthouse or the lighthouses of one particular state or country. Some focus on haunted lighthouses. Some are for those who want a lighthouse-related gift. One of my favorites is Light House Through the Palms about the Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse in Pompano Beach, Florida just north of Fort Lauderdale. You will find so much about lighthouses on Squidoo that you probably could forget Google altogether.

Suppose you need a recipe. We have a lot of good cooks on Squidoo, and you are likely to find several recipes for anything you’d like to make.  How about Christmas Cookies? My search at Squidoo located several pages and I could find enough results on the first page to keep me baking the rest of my life. But I moved past page one just to see what else was there and I found this lens on Christmas Cookie Exchange Tips.  If you need to host or participate in a cookie exchange, you won’t need to look anywhere else for ideas.

Used by permission of Sandy M

Need to plan a party? Search Squidoo. One of my Squidoo friends has a lens featuring great products to help you celebrate Halloween: Happy Zazzle Halloween! Need help with a Birthday Party? Just search Squidoo for “birthday  party.” I’m sure Squidoo will have ideas for all your other celebrations, too. Lenses teach you how to cook a turkey, make decorations, whatever you need to help you entertain.

I’m not saying you can find a lens about absolutely everything on Squidoo, but you can sure find a lot. Get information about books and authors, celebrities, historical events, music styles and artists, you name it. If you are an educator in a home or school, you can get great lesson plans and unit study ideas. The nice thing about searching at Squidoo is that each search result gives you the introduction so that you know whether you want to click or not. Google’s results normally only give you a line or two and then you can’t always find what you were looking for when you click. That’s why I search Squidoo first.

I have gone into detail about the advantages of searching for information on Squidoo. But Squidoo is also a great shopping aid. Most lensmasters will offer links to items you can buy that are related to the subject of their lenses. In some cases they have designed these items at Zazzle or Café Press. In others they recommend products they have used themselves, be it a cookie sheet, a book, or whatever else they may be writing about.  So if you are trying to find something to buy a collector, search for a lens on the subject of the collection (cats, owls, lighthouses, pens – whatever)and you will probably get some good ideas and maybe even a link to buy just the right thing.

So Squidoo can benefit you even if you don’t belong to the site. You can use it as a search engine. You can use it to shop. And if you are like me, you can use it to open new areas of interest. Most lensmasters have featured links at the ends of their pages, and I hardly read a lens that doesn’t tempt me to go read another one on something  totally different – maybe something I never knew existed. Remember: Try Squidoo first. Click that link and I’ll bet you will find something interesting to read before you even do a search.

Squidoo: Part 1

What is Squidoo all about?

This is the first of two blogs on Squidoo, a writing community I joined in April. I had no idea how involved I would become when I joined, nor did I realize how it would meet  the needs that arose right after I joined. I didn’t know what to write about for my first lens, so I walked around my neighborhood in Paso Robles, California and took pictures of what the neighbors were doing in their front yards and in the park on that first nice spring day of the year. I guess I wanted to showcase my neighborhood because I found it interesting if one took a close look. That resulted in this lens: http://www.squidoo.com/PasoRoblesSpringDay .

Squidoo is a neighborhood of “squids.” They write lenses that allow readers to see their unique perspective on a subject. New members of the community are “fresh squids.” When a member has written 50 quality lenses he or she can apply to be a Giant Squid. Giant Squids get special perks. I finally did achieve this goal in January, 2010.

When you picture writing, you may be thinking of books, newspapers, or magazines. Many squids do some writing for those kinds of publications. But on Squidoo their writing can take the form of a multimedia presentation, a photo essay, or whatever they want it to be. They build lenses with modules, and these modules each have special jobs. Some are for showcasing videos or pictures. Some are for text with pictures. Some bring a Google map in. Others automatically bring in news or blogs with your search terms that change daily or at intervals you specify. The modules make it easy for even those who do not know any html to use a lot of features that would not appear in a text file alone.

Some Squidoo members are very talented at using html code and these can add more color, style, borders, etc to their modules to make them even more attractive. But they don’t keep all these talents to themselves. They share their secrets with the rest of the community in special lenses that teach others how to do what they have done. So as time goes on, you will be able to add more and more features to your own lenses so they will better express what you want to do with them. You will soon begin to see each lens you write as a masterpiece you are building. When it is finished, you can still keep making changes easily after publication as you learn even more tricks or find added information on your subject.

So if you join Squidoo, you have many different ways to express what you want to say. Joining is very easy. Just think of a topic you’d like to write about and think of a title that sums it up. Then follow this link: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/BarbRad and go through the easy steps to becoming a lensmaster. You will be asked to supply a URL (web address) for your article, and that’s the only thing you can’t change. I normally use the title in small case, with the words joined by hyphens. You can later go back and change your title or key words. If you need help after that, all kinds of help is available from others on the site.

So what did Squidoo do for me? Right after I joined, we had a termite infestation. I was able to channel some of my frustration into http://www.squidoo.com/TermiteFight . Then, after a heat wave in late April, I decided the weatherman was wrong about the last frost date and went ahead and planted my tomatoes on a 90 degree day. That resulted in this lens, which I hoped would help prevent others from making that same mistake: http://www.squidoo.com/frostbittentomatoes . Two weeks later my daughter died. There’s nothing like writing to help with grief work, and so writing http://www.squidoo.com/Suicide_child helped me to bring things into perspective and deal with my emotions. During April and May I had no trouble at all thinking of topics – they just walked into my life and demanded expression.

One thing I neglected to mention is that you can make money on Squidoo. If you get a lot of traffic you can make some money from ad words on your pages. Some people have been successful in selling through various affiliate programs they belong to. Many simply use the programs Squidoo partners in. Squidoo has an affiliate relationship with Amazon and eBay and provides special modules where you can pick items to sell that go with your lens topics. If people buy, they split the commission with you. You won’t get rich quick and you have to work hard to make this pay for you, but some people who do work hard are making decent money.

For me the best part of Squidoo is the people I’m meeting, the help I get from the community, and the chance to express myself on anything that interests me, and know that what I write will find at least a few readers. Some of what I’ve written has found lots of readers, and some say what I’ve written has helped them. These are readers I never would have found on my own. Squidoo is my favorite writing community.

Update, March 6, 2011: I have just added another post for this series you might want to read: What I’ve Learned About Hubpages

Exploring Writing Communities on Line

I haven’t posted much in the past few weeks because I’ve been exploring and enjoying some of the on-line writing sites, and some of them can be addicting.  Each of the sites I’ve joined has its own personality and culture. Many people, including me, use all four. I’m going to share the little I’ve learned about each with the hope that you might find one that’s right for sharing your own work. The sites I plan to review are Squidoo, HubPages, Qondio, and Red Gage. I will deal with each of them in a separate blog. This post will be a general introduction.

Each site offers financial incentives to participate, but I wouldn’t plan on getting rich on any of them — especially quickly. People who have lots of time to devote to their writing seemingly do make a living out of it, but I’d be leery of those selling e-books and such telling you how to make hundreds of dollars a month in a few hours a week. Maybe they make it selling those books, but, in my opinion, those who do make money have been adding to their work over time until they finally reach a critical mass that starts producing income. I’ve been on Squidoo about six months and the other sites for less time, and I’m glad I still have my day job.

One thing to keep in mind about all these sites is that you won’t generate much income unless you market your own work actively and participate in the life of each community where you publish your work. You cannot just sit at your computer, write, publish, and forget about it. Instead you must tweet, blog, bookmark, and find other ways to get people to your site. Don’t just sit back and depend upon google or other search engines  to do it all for you.

The community aspect of all these sites is also very important. I am most familiar with the Squidoo community, since that’s where I publish most of my work and where I spend the most time. Other members of the community can make or break you, so learn the culture and treat everyone as you would like to be treated yourself. Help promote others and they will give back to you. Make friends. Thank people who help you. Tweet their work as well as your own. Join groups, read the work of others and rate it, and comment on what others have written. That is how you meet people and form helpful relationships.

You might wonder how writing on one of these sites differs from blogging?  First, I’ve found that you feel less isolated as a writer. A community of people surround you that will probably be your first readers.  They will read your work and comment on it because helping one community member helps build up the entire community. When the community grows and has more quality writing, everyone in it who contributes also benefits as the community becomes more well-known.

You not only feel less isolated, but if you are an active member of the community you will have plenty of encouragement as you try to improve your writing.  After I published my first few lenses on Squidoo, for example, I starting getting invitations to join various Ning groups for lensmasters that offer tips and provide discussion forums. One tends to run into a lot of the same people in many of the groups, and after a while you feel you are actually getting to know them. They critique and rate each other’s lenses, and you are able to let your group know when you have completed a new lens. This is quite different than tweeting and wondering if anyone will even see your tweet before it’s out of sight. You can actually visualize the exact people who will be reading your message and possibly, your lens.

So why would you want to join Squiddo or HubPages or Qondio or RedGage? First, if you aren’t a professional writer, but you do like to write and want to be read, this is a good way to get a responsive audience.  Second, if you have web sites or blogs you’d like to promote, there are plenty of opportunities to get back links for them from these sites, and thus increase your traffic and page rank. Third, you might earn a few dollars if you are diligent and market your work. Lastly, you might actually meet people you enjoy.

For more information and for comparison and a feel for each site, please see my profile pages.

See my Squidoo Lensography and sample my lenses.

See my profile on HubPages.

See my profile on Qondio.

See my profile on RedGage.

RedGage is unique in that it offers a way to market the content you have on your other on-line venues and you might even win some contest cash by actively participating in the RedGage community.  (I won once without even consciously trying. ) For example, as soon as I post this blog, it will automatically be imported to RedGage. You may also submit original content that does not appear elsewhere on line.

Now, go have fun exploring these sites.

Update, January 6, 2011: I want to state that I am beginning to get monthly payouts from Squidoo since I have made over 100 lenses, achieving membership in the Giant Squid 100 Club. I also made $150 in one month on HubPages by winning a contest with one piece of writing. I will talk about this in more detail  in future blogs. I have also discovered and joined a new site, Best Reviewer which I will address in a new post.

Update, March 6, 2011: I have just added What I’ve Learned About HubPages to this series.

Never Mind the Paper Trail! Have You Googled Yourself Lately?

A few days ago I got an email indicating I needed to approve a comment on the Squidoo lens I wrote about the death of my daughter, Sarah. When saw I the comment and who sent it, I was floored. It was from a friend I’d lost track of for a few years — a close friend. Both of us had moved and begun new lives, and that tends to make people busy and disinclined to keep up with people they rarely see. The urgent tasks in the present tend to blur the past a bit, for better or worse. Although there was no last name, I knew that those comments could only have come from my friend Dianne. But I couldn’t figure out how she found that lens about Sarah out of the blue. She hadn’t even known about Sarah’s death until she read it.

I was able to answer Dianne back through Squidoo, and I asked her how she ever found me and the lens. She replied that she had looked me up on Google. We have exchanged a few emails since then, but I was curious as to what Google had revealed to her. Tonight I finally had a few minutes and thought I’d take a peak. Amazing! So far I’m on page six of at least 15 link pages where my name is mentioned. I would expect to see my name on my blogs, web sites, and social networking profiles, but I was quite surprised to see the other places my name appeared — so far. I found that one statement I made was quoted on several sites. One article from my web site was quoted and credited, but with no link back to my web site.  It was also  summarized on a Chinese web site. I had forgotten about all the comments I had left on other people’s blogs. I even found myself listed in the county records as the informant of my mother’s death, since I was with her to the end and did report her death. Just now on page eight I filled out a form that appeared to give me a chance to correct company information on a directory listing. When I hit preview, I discovered it was a come-on to get you to pay for an upgraded listing. Boo! On page nine the listings start to be mostly  really not me or repeats.

What I discovered is what many have already said –  what you say on line tends to stay there. I try never to say anything I would be ashamed of if anyone I knew read it. I can see that when you start down the social networking road your name does get out there and stays out there. I suppose I also have a paper trail, but most of what I write is no longer on paper.

Guess I’m a Social Networking Junkie

“Twitter is limited to messaging, keeping people on the site an average of just eight minutes per month. Facebook offers far more diversions, with users spending an average of nearly three hours per month on the site, according to Nielsen.” by Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer from Facebook moving into Twitter territory posted 3/14/09

I’ve always wanted to be above average at something, but it’s hard to believe that so many Twitter users average only eight minutes a day, let alone a month. Maybe this is because I’m still in my Twitter honeymoon period, learning the ropes, and finding the right followers and people to follow. I want to connect with home school families and school educators in order to see what’s happening in schools of all types. I’m hoping I can cut down to eight hours a week on Twitter.

Facebook is a different animal altogether. I use it to connect with people I actually know or have gotten to know on Facebook groups. It’s an easy way to keep up with long-distance friends and the everyday lives of those I see once a week. It’s a great way to share photos with people who might want to see them. And it’s  way to let friends know which causes are important to you. I used to spend about two hours a week there, but since Twitter, I’ve cut down to maybe 30 minutes a week.  So maybe I’m approaching average there.

I have to admit I’ve changed my mind about Twitter. I used to think it was where teens kept each other posted on what they were doing all day. There is some of that, but I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned in a week on Twitter from those in digital education about the new face of education and how teachers are being encouraged to use computers in their classrooms. I get updates on CPSIA developments, and get links to terrific blogs and videos I would never have found any other way. Come to think of it, it’s not Twitter itself that I’m spending all this time on — it’s all those links it leads to. If you haven’t begun to tweet yet, try it.  You can follow me as barbsbooks and be among the first to find out about sales and new products for educators who are still using books. I’d love to network with you.