Hubpages Wednesday: Or, Whatever Happened to That Thing

You may or may not have noticed a severe lack of Hub updating from my end of the Internet. I have a pretty dang good reason for this:  I got Google sandboxed early last month.

What the heckity heck is the "Google Sandbox"? Succinctly, it's when Google's algorithm decides it's not going to send your website traffic anymore. There's a number of reasons this may happen, but the short of it is that it happened to me, and I stopped making money. Any money.

July actually started very, very excitingly. By the end of the first week I had made almost six dollars! I know, right? Up until that point my traffic had been steadily increasing, and I put out a huge effort to write as many quality hubs as I could to keep the hits coming. Somewhere at the end of June my hits TRIPLED and I started raking in some money. By the end of the first week of July I was pretty sure I would hit my very first payout the end of that month.

Then I logged on one day to see that my hits had tanked to ten.

And they never got better.

I went from making sometimes up to two dollars a day to barely making four cents a day. All I could figure, as it never improved no matter what I did, was that I had been sandboxed, and it was time to move on. So I did. I stopped hubbing mid-July and focused on my noveling.

Today I logged into HP to see what was going on hits wise. It had been over a month since I last checked it, too disgusted to even bother. Shockingly, I made a whole daughter this month. Woohoo. But what actually WAS nice? My hits were back up in the hundreds! That is, they were about June's average, right before my trafficked tripled.

So what does this mean? I think when I have some downtime I'll go through and start updating some of the older hubs and start advertising them again. Apparently, Google is liking me enough to give me hits again, so why not? But I'm not gonna wear myself out writing new articles if I don't feel like it. I have a couple unpublished ones languishing that I might as well get out. If things improve again? I'll let you know.

Hubpages Wednesday: More Fantastic J-pop For the Soul

It just wouldn't be a HW without me posting something about Japan, eh. Well, if you haven't noticed by now, I tend to blab on and on about my other love outside of writing, which is Japanese pop music (or, J-pop). This week's artist is one of the best (as always!) and a huge name that's been around for about three decades now. Namie Amuro is one of the innovators of "hip-pop" music, a fusion of hip-hop and generic pop music. Her super cool attitude and famous long-hair femme chic look are legendary in Japan and the rest of Asia. Her best songs range from 90's dance hits to her hip-pop flavor of the day.

Included in all these hubs is a review of her most recent album that dropped last week, Uncontrolled. Below is a teaser video of the entire dang album!

Hubpages Wednesday: Akina Nakamori, one of the greatest singers you've ever heard.

Yes, one of. She's gonna be pretty high up there. Trust me, I know a thing or two about great Asian singers.

Akina Nakamori is one of THE women from the Golden Ages of J-pop, also known as the 1980s. Her deep and sultry voice outranked her peers'  vocals, and while they all did the "girl next door" song and dance, Akina was showing a more striking image that would later be called a "vamp" image.

Akina was one of the very first "oldies" artists I started listening to, and she was basically my gateway drug into the whole subgenre. She's released over 20 original albums, over 20 best albums and collections, and numerous amazing cover albums. I implore all my readers to check her out below because she's just, well, amazing. You don't need to know Japanese to appreciate a woman of this caliber.

As for the hubs I've written about her, I recommend starting with Akina Nakamori: The Vamp of Classic J-pop. You can then hop on over and start exploring her extensive discography. I also have plans on writing up an article about her best songs and albums, but for now, I recommend checking out the videos below!

Weekly Writing Check-In: Character Birthdays and...well, nobody cares.

LOL "BIRHDAY".

Oh, Memorial Day weekend! How little you mean to the work-at-home, the freelancers, and the generally unemployed. (Read: me.) But, I am taking a bit of a break today, simply because I'm tired and I'm staring down a 25 page (single spaced in Word) chapter and nooooo not today. That said, editing is coming along as usual. This month I've managed to get through about ten chapters which is no bad business. Meanwhile, earnings are up at Hubpages. Still not making payout yet but I'm not complaining. It's still on the up and that's all that matters from that front! I am also still slogging through McCaffrey's "Acorna" series, and reading it gives me so much faith in myself. Especially in the editing department. Reading a book that has clearly never been edited in its existence really boosts ones own writing confidence~

All that shade thrown, it's May 27th. This date has two significances. The first one is that I've got about four days to prep for Camp. I was hoping to get this other chapter finished (since I like starting Nanos on chapter  breaks) but I don't think that's gonna happen. My best bet is to finish on a scene break. Will make keeping track of my total a bit more difficult, but eh. Somehow, I will manage. (However will I do that?)

The second reason is that May 27th is one of my character's birthdays and for some reason this is the only character birthday I know off the top of my head. All my other characters, I know what month they were born in (and what part, because I know all their signs) but I rarely can remember the dates. Okay. I lied. I know why I know this character's birthday - it's because her birthday passes in the first book of the series, and thus far no other character's birthday in any series gets a little spotlight in the plot. And since I methodically keep track of each day and date that passes (WOOOO 2007! fun fact - after February, 2007 and 2012 have the same days, so her birthday is also over Memorial Day in that year) I know exactly what her birthday is. (Not that I can remember my own at the moment though....)

So this week's check-in question is this: Do you know your characters' birthdays off the top of your head? Do those dates play a part in your plots? Do you even keep track? :P

Oh, and today is Miranda's 40th birthday. She's reaching flaming birthday cake territory.

Hubpages Wednesday: Gifu and Hiroshima

Gujo, Gifu, Japan.

I've recently started a small series of travel journal hubs called Japan's 47 Prefectures, in which I'll go into detail about each Japanese prefecture (in random order) and the top 5 things to do in them. Up first I have Gifu, the place I lived for over a year recently, and Hiroshima, a very misunderstood prefecture that's sadly only famous here because we bombed it almost a hundred years ago. I lived in Gifu and I spent about a week in Hiroshima a couple years ago, and both were very profound experiences in my life.

I pretty much have all my pics of those two areas up on those hubs, so if nothing else, if you'd like to see some pics of Japan, go for it!

Hubpages Wednesday: Kumi Koda, the Japanese artist you may have heard of.

...If you're into that sort of music, that is.

This week's theme is on Kumi Koda, a highly popular J-pop artist who has made her mark as a hyper-sexualized dance machine and ballad crooner. Okay, I love Kumi. She's amazing. But she's not everyone's cup of tea. But if you like dance songs and great ballads, you at least have to click on the video below and give her a try!

Up for grabs are two album reviews of hers: JAPONESQUE and Dejavu. I recommend JAPONESQUE out of the two, but of course you should read both of them. *hint hint*

That's all for this week. Bit of a hurry because there's only 15 minutes left in Wednesday and I have a novel to edit!

Hubpages Wednesday: Orange! WEAR IT!

I love orange, but I wouldn't wear these~

...I have no idea why I'm a day behind on all my posts. Except for the fact it's still "Japan" in my head. See, I always posted Hubpages Wednesday on Thursday mornings in Japan because...well, I could! Guess I still could, but it's actually Friday in most places now. Lol. Oh well.

Anyway, this week we're focusing on How to Incorporate Orange Into Your Fashion and Wardrobe. I'm kind of an expert on all things orange, you know. That includes wearing it. Wearing orange is something everyone should do. DO IT. Do it.

Now I want to talk about a little something else that's been going on at HP. A couple days ago, this happened:

All those red arrows (well dots, according to this small pic) indicate a rise in traffic! See, on Tuesday, my traffic across the BOARD tripled! Woah! I have no idea what caused this but I was so excited! Because my income that day more than tripled as well! Sadly, it only last a day. :( I hope to recreate it in the longterm but I have no idea what cause it to begin with...

But yes. Orange. What color do you most often wear?

Hubpages Wednesday: A lot of articles, all about Japan, Part 2

All my savings from Japan....in cash.

Can't believe I couldn't post these past couple of days. Cold keeps killing me. Well, more like the jetlag is still killing me now. Can't sleep more than five hours at a time usually, which leaves me totally exhausted and sleepy around sundown, and thus the cycle continues. Slowly making progress though!

In part 2 of today's fun, we're taking a look at the newest additions to the Living in Japan series over at Hubpages. Today we get to learn How to Take the Train / Subway in Japan and The Japanese Yen: Designs and Denominations. Personally I think the first one is more useful, but the second one has proven to be more popular by far. Go figure.

Anyway, I promised to talk more about my earnings thus far. If you're not worried about SEO strategies then you probably haven't heard about Google Panda or Penguin. Basically, they're new top-secret algorithms that are supposed to "help" get better results for your searches, but have proven to be anti-everywebsitebutownedbygoogle and have caused a LOT of people to lose hits and earnings on their websites, not just HP. Thankfully I haven't been hit too hard (yet, Penguin is still new as of last week) yet and still see gradually increasing earnings. Last week I almost made it to four dollars but since I was out most of the month I couldn't really give my articles the attention they need to thrive more. So I'm not worrying about it. I'm already at one dollar for the month and am shooting for five total this month. I'm casually taking part in the 30 Hubs in 30 Days challenge - I say casually because thus far I've written a hub every day but I'm not going to make it a focus of my month. But we'll see.

Well, off to do more market research and hub writing. These are my mornings thus far since being home =P

Hubpages Wednesday: A lot of articles, all about Japan, Part 1

Well, are you shocked? =P

It's been over a month since my last Hubpages Wednesday, and in that time I've written five more articles (two of them in the past two days with more on the waythis week!) It's amazing how much work actually gets done when you just sit home all day sick out of your brain. But since five is too much to adequately go over here, I'll break them up into two pieces over these next couple of days.

Part 1 has to do with J-pop. First up there's A Brief History of Japanese Pop Music, a subject I'm pretty well versed in. Second are two Ayumi Hamasaki reviews, the first for her mini-album FIVE and the second for her full-length album Love songs. If you're not sure about them, check out the commercials below!

I'll be back tomorrow with the other two which are a part of the Living in Japan series, and some discussion about my earnings as of late, mostly to do with the latest Google Penguin hit. Ugh.

Hubpages Wednesday: More Japan! More Music! More Japanese music!

I write about Japan and music and Japanese music a lot. It's kinda my ~thing~.

Anyway, two hubs for you this week! First one is a review of Ayumi Hamasaki's latest album called Party Queen It's mostly a favorable review so I suggest going to check it out and getting some new music - it's a track by track review with Youtube links to each track (assuming the non music video ones aren't taken down soon...sigh.)

Number two is the second part of my Living in Japan series, and is called How to Use the Post Office in Japan. Cause you might need to know some day.

That's all for this week!

A Very Special Hubpages Monday: What the heck is it anyway?

c. Hubpages

Seeing as how it's Monday and I can post whatever I damn well please on Mondays, I've decided to sit and squee about how much money I'm making on Hubpages lately. No, I'm not making hundreds, even dozens of dollars a day. But so far for the month of March I've made $2.02. Last month I made $0.82. The month before that? About 30 cents.

You see what I'm getting at here.

While I don't hold any delusions that I'll keep doubling my income on the site every month (payout is $50), there's a few things to keep in mind.

1) I wrote my first hub the day after Christmas.
2) It's been three months now.
3) I'm making money that actually adds up.

My goal is to hit monthly payout (that's $50 a month) by the end of the year. Will I make it? We'll find out. Right now I'm focusing on putting out more (quality) hubs and continuing to research SEO.

Well this is all well and good, but I'm sure by now most of your eyes are glazing over and going "wait, what?"

If you've been following me for a while, you know that every Wednesday I post an ad for my latest hubs. I mostly write about music, video games, and living in Japan. Right now my most acclaimed hub is one about the Legend of Zelda Timeline (which today became the highest ranking hub in the Adventure Video Games category!) and my most popular one by views is the first installment of my J-pop Oldies Idols series. There are people who are making more than me by this point, but there are way more people making less or nothing.

Hubpages is a freelance writing website. You sign up, write articles, and get paid by either ad clicks (Google Adsense) or ad views (Hubpages Ad Program). You can write about anything you want with the stipulation that it falls under specific guidelines (Hubpages is actively family friendly~) and that it's *original content*...you can write about the same topic as somebody else, but it has to be "original". As in, you can't just copy and paste from somewhere...including your own works! Anything you post at HP has to be there only. If you want to transfer, say, relevant blog posts, you'll have to delete them off Blogger first.

Writing articles is only half the battle though. You have to make sure they're appealing, well-researched, formatted nicely, and use the right keywords to attract a good Google ranking (you mostly get paid via visitors from Google searches). This includes building backlinks and generally advertising your hubs in relevant places. Not only do they give you more exposure, but they can help you rank higher as well.

Obviously like anything else, it's not a get rich quick scheme. You have to actually enjoy writing about things you love to eventually start to see earnings. =P And while I can't buy more than a couple candy bars a month with my earnings, that's still two more candy bars than I had at Christmas. And now I finally have a place to post my music reviews and video game ramblings and make a profit off them without much work.

My eventual goal is to hopefully make some decent passive income off this site. If I could even pay one bill from my monthly earnings, then I say it's an investment well done.

Anybody else on HP? Thinking about joining?

Hubpages Wednesday: All Hail the Queen

To celebrate over nine years of me stannin' the crap out of this amazing woman, I bring you Ayumi Hamasaki: The Queen of Japanese Pop Music. Don't let her initial squeaky vocals fool you - not only is she the most successful female singer in the history of Japan, she's also incredibly thoughtful, talented, and omg gorgeous brilliant. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Want some new music? Why not give her a shot?

Hubpages Wednesday: Getting Grub in Japan

You'd never guess I was in Japan.

Only one hub this week, but I'm sure it's bound to be helpful to SOMEBODY out there! Going to Japan? Just curious? Well now you can find out the etiquette and helpful words and phrases of eating out! From family restaurants to smaller eateries, you too can now eat in Japan. You're welcome~

In related news, I'm now making about two dollars a month from writing at Hubpages. Considering I just started around Christmas, and have "only" published 18 hubs so far, I think I'm doing pretty damn good. My goal is to be making payout ($50) every month by the end of the year. Kinda farfetched, but it's a goal nonetheless!

Anybody else write (or tried writing) at HP? Anybody wanna know what's up with it?

Hubpages Wednesday: All Japan, All the Time

Yu Hayami.

Two hubs for you this week! And yes, as you can tell from the title, both have to do with Japan - but in totally different ways!

The first one is a mini-travel guide dealing with the JR Yamanote Line: Tokyo's Circular Cruise. The Yamanote Line is one of the world's busiest train lines and takes you on a circular tour of all the hot sights in Tokyo. I photoblogged each and every station on the line. I had a lot of time one day in 2009...considering there are 29 stations...well yeah. Come see what sights and sounds can be found within walking distance at every station!

The second one is super fresh. As a follow up to one of my most popular hubs yet, here's Top 10 J-pop Female Idols of the 70s and 80s (Part 2). It's one of the best times you can have on the internet. Hop into my time machine and blast into the past for some great Japanese pop music!

Show 'em how it's done, Yu.

Hubpages Wednesday: AW YEAH MUSIC.

Once again, only one hub this week because I was super lazy. What can I say, it's that time when a lady like me decides to just collapse every day and die, pretty much.

ANYWAY, on the docket this week is a hub dictating Top 10 Tetsuya Komuro Produced Acts. You know you love your some 90s Japanese pop. You love it so much you want to watch this video.

Also, dedicating this post to Keiko Yamada, who I just discovered had to have brain surgery last October. Her and her husband TK's group "globe" were one of the very first Japanese bands I ever got into, and remain one of my absolute favorites today. Stay strong gurl. <3

Hubpages Wednesday: MOAR CATS.

I held every one of these cats. Jealous?

Only one hub to share with y'all this week, but it's one that I had a lot of fun "researching" and writing up!

Basically, Japanese Cat Cafes: The Best in Pet Rentals!

Cat cafes are like a beacon of light in my life here in the land of extreme weather and social isolation. Oh, and really, really missing my cats back home.

I had hoped to have another one this week, but my output has been less than satisfactory. Oh well. At least I know what my next one is going to be now. I'm starting to make steady cents now, and all my hubs are being ranked high and quality so, really, #15 (which is considered a milestone at HP) should be good!

Oh, and there's video at that there hub. That I took myself. Of lots of cats.

Lots of cats.

Many many cats.

Hubpages Wednesday: CLICK HERE FOR CATS (and music)

THE POWER OF MARU COMPELS YOU!

In this very special edition of Hubpages Thursday Wednesday, I post pictures of cats that are NOT MY OWN. Scandalous. But not as scandalous as Maru the Cat

This week I've got two big hubs for you - both figuratively and literally, that is. Figuratively, have a gander at the internet sensation Maru the Cat: In Profile, and In Boxes. He is the only cat in the world I deem cuter than mine, and for good reason. Because he is Maru. And your life is null and void without his Youtube videos streaming in your life.

The second, literally big, article is Top 10 Japanese Pop (J-pop) Albums, in which I wax on and on about...the best J-pop albums. I like to think of myself as an expert in this sort of thing - so take my advice and listen to some great music! Please, Zwei needs more fans.

That's it for this week. Join us next week when I continue to implore you to read my crap!

Hubpages Wednesday: Recognition? I'll take it!

Five seconds of Hubpages fame.

So last week a couple of pretty cool things happened with me on Hubpages. No, I didn't suddenly start making hundreds of dollars a day...heck, to this day I've only made about 27 cents. Nope, the next best thing happened, and that was having two of my articles featured in their categories!

The two articles were Top 10 Legend of Zelda Easter Eggs and The Official Legend of Zelda Timeline, both of which were featured in the Adventure Video Games section as seen in the screencap on the left! They were only in the featured wheel for about a day each, but still, it meant a staff member stumbled across my articles and thought they were badass enough to go up there to begin with. Awww yeah.

That said, I've only got one new article for y'all this week. The last of the Zelda articles, Top 10 Legend of Zelda Races talks about exactly what the title insinuates. Starting next week I'll be branching into other topics, including one about a very, very famous cat.

Hubpages Wednesday: More Fairies For Your Boys

run.

This week's Hubpages dump is brought to you by ZELDA AND MORE ZELDA. I got rather inspired by the last (first) one I wrote and decided to make a mini-theme out of it. I'm writing a total of five Legend of Zelda hubs before moving on to other topics - so far I'm at four, with hopefully the fifth to be out by the end of the weekend.

Anyway, we've got a range of Zelda topics here today, so if you like the game at all, you should find at least one of these interesting!

The Official Legend of Zelda Timeline: Reading and Understanding It - Since the official timeline came out in late December, lots of people have been confused exactly how it works. I did my best to explain.

Top 15 Most Iconic Legend of Zelda Songs - Because this game's got great music. You heard?

Top 10 Legend of Zelda Easter Eggs - Did you know you could beat Ganondorf with a fishing rod? Well, now you do. And you should. Go do it, that is.

Next week will be one more Zelda article and hopefully one more TOTALLY DIFFERENT THEME~ article. But I guarantee it will be adorable. And fuzzy.

Hubpages Wednesday: So I hear you like Fairy Boys

So much happiness...over 'shrooms.

This week's Hubpage from yours truly is the first of three/four planned about The Legend of Zelda video game franchise.

Because it is the greatest franchise ever.

In particular, this week I am talking about the Top 10 Legend of Zelda Games as parsed by myself, reviewers, and fandom in general. Hop on over and give it a read if you're interested in decent video games - your childhood kinda commands it.

Spoiler: The picture on the left is not the weirdest one you will see on there. Seriously. There's weirder stuff than owls, giant spotted eggs, a pantsless hero jumping for joy with a sharp object in his hand, and a Mario knock-off freaking out over mushrooms.