How to Help Others on Hubpages

You may see them as your competitors as you compare scores, writing styles, etc, but the fact is HubPages is more of a community of writers and taking the collaborative approach is beneficial not only for those you help but for your own success as well.

What do you do when you see that another author on HubPages has written a hub on a similar topic to one of your own? Do you feel threatened, see it as competition, worry if it is better than yours? Or do you read it, leave positive comments on it, share it, or ask if you can include a link to it in your own hub?

One of the things I like about HubPages is that it seems to be designed with a focus on a collaboration among writers and they have many tools available for you to "give a leg up" if you will to another writer. If you see someone that is new to hubpages, do you know how to help them get started?

Here are some things you can do to help another "hubber":

1. Comment--Leaving positive and encouraging comments on other's hubs motivates them to keep writing and helps a new writer to feel welcome. Even those of us that have been around awhile, who doesn't like a good and thoughtful comment on their work?

2. Answer Questions--There are many new hubbers with questions on everything from SEO to "how do I make money on HubPages?". If you jump in and answer a question or two, it doesn't have to take long, but both the one that posted the question and yourself will benefit in the process.

3. Share a hub you find interesting--There is a share button down at the bottom of every hub. You can share with your followers, Share on Reddit, Facebook, Digg, or Stumbleupon. Sharing a hub that is not your own benefits the writer, in obvious ways, but did you know you can benefit from some of the earnings if you direct traffic to any hub? Check out this from the Hubpages FAQ:

"Traffic Referral Program: If you send traffic to any Hub, you’re entitled to either 9% or 12% of total impressions. You’ll receive 9% if the Hub you’ve referred people to already has impressions allocated to an Affiliate. If there is no Affiliate, you’ll receive 12% of the total impressions."

How about that? Your fellow writer is getting more traffic to their site and you are also getting rewarded monetarily for just being a good neighbor! It's a win\win and takes no time at all.

4. Become a follower--Before you think this sounds like some weird cult-like thing, I must explain that following an author on hubpages simply means that you will be notified each time they publish a new hub. You must be careful who you follow, however, as hubpages warns that following indiscriminantly can lower your hub score. So don't just follow anyone and everyone just for the sake of following, rather find a particular author who writes engaging articles that interest you, maybe they write on similar subjects to your own areas of interest or you just plain like their style of writing. Either way, following can be a good way to help give a boost.

5. Leave Fan Mail---This, like nice comments on hubs, is really nice to receive on occasion and can help encourage someone to keep following their passion.

6. Answer some questions--Leaving informative, helpful answers to the questions that are posted is another way you can help out another hubpages writer and also it has the added benefit of boosting your hub Karma or possibly, though we can't know for sure as the ingrediants that make up Hub Karma and Hub Score remain top secret.

7. Including a link to another hubber's hub in your own hub of similar interest will benefit the readability of your own hub as well as the one you included the link to.

There are many ways to be a team player and help each other out here on HubPages, I have mentioned only some of them. My whole point of writing this is merely to showcase the advantages of collaboration over competition, precisely when it comes to your fellow authors on HubPages.