Colour My World: Penning My Thoughts

I started writing on a regular basis when I went to work in a holiday home rental company. They organised the rental of homes for holiday use throughout many countries on behalf of their clients who owned them. I was set to work writing about tourist destinations in the country of Spain which was the main bread and butter of the company. As I wrote I started to discover many interesting facts about this fascinating country. Their history was rich and had seen many changes having been impregnated with different cultures including the Romans, The Germanic tribes, the Moors and eventually the Christian Conquests. All of this history had a significant impact upon their culture. As this knowledge was not all necessary for their articles it seemed a pity to waste it.

My wife was homesick and getting more disconsolate. She had spent eight years in my country and longed for what she grew up with. So we decided to move to Japan at the beginning of September 2010, and moved into her parents’ home. It was not easy to make a living, my wife faced open ageism from employers - she was over forty. I tried to get a job and even though I had acquired a professional qualification in copy editing and proofreading with an A+ result it was not enough as many publishers required experienced proofreaders and editors. I tried to find a job teaching English but the criteria now required me to have a degree to do so.

Their parents helped us out but they were pensioners and with financial worries of their own. So I thought what if I put all that interesting information about Spain to use. Maybe we might be able to make a living. This was when I set up my website: theblagsmith.com. However, I soon started to discover, making money out of a website writing articles is not that easy with the biggest obstacle to learn about being Search Engine Optimization – the ability to advertise yourself sufficiently so you can attract the visitors you need. I also needed to learn the technical aspect of placing adverts, photographs and other forms of linking. A lot of trial and error burnt a lot of time and also made it difficult to write the amount of articles I would need to keep my trickle of visitors satiated.

One specific problem was that when I set up my website I chose a dotcom address. I found this to be erroneous as I was trying to sell my niche subject Spain. A dotcom address attracted a lot more American visitors than Europeans and I realised that America is pretty self contained when it comes to travelling, often using their own country to provide their holiday entertainment. The British on the other hand travel to Spain regularly to seek the sun but the Google UK search engine was not finding many references to my dotcom site. As I lived in Japan at that time it also defaulted to dotcom searches. After unsuccessfully petitioning Google to include my site on the UK search I decided to set up a .co.uk website. This worked but it still did not attract enough visitors.

So, I then decided I needed an easier platform to publish my writings. So I wondered what else there was when I stumbled across HubPages. It required much less maintenance than my website. It already had its own traffic which amounted to millions of visitors. What I needed to do was attract them to my hubs, so I concentrated on my niche market bringing out The Spanish Legacy of Food: The Romans and The Cheese and The Spanish Legacy of Food: Our Daily Bread. It received some very generous comments, but it was still slow. I realised I needed to work hard and give some time for it to receive the attention it needed.

On March 11^th 2011 in the afternoon the earthquake struck. After four days of no electricity, no communication and successive aftershocks we finally got some of our infrastructure back. We were startled to discover the full consequences. We already knew of the devastation of our local neighbourhood but when we saw the pictures on television of the tsunami’s devastation, I then realised why the rest of my family in the UK had done their utmost to get in touch with us. The day the power had been restored was in the afternoon but that morning through the power of social networking, the mobile networks were in use and through Twitter, my niece had communicated over six thousand miles away and encouraged a couple of locals to call at the house to check on us. Many of them wanted to know what was happening so I decided to use HubPages to explain our experiences as I did not want to have to keep on individually telling all of my family what had happened. It was not a selfish act I needed to concentrate on my direct family: my wife and children. I was surprised but also delighted that not only did it help my family to understand what happened but it also attracted a lot of readers to my hub. I wrote three hubs and an ongoing diary about these experiences.

Emotional experience etches deep into people’s understanding giving the vibrancy that may be illustrated by artists with bright and strong colours. There are also experiences that are learnt through our professions or from reading and researching that does not lie deep but is the backbone and basis from which we apply our craft as writers. I am learning to utilise these skills and tying these in with reciprocation to other hubbers and writers as I believe that this is ultimately the best gift we can give each other.

Thank you to the following hubbers whose links have graced mine:

The Roman Empire by darkside

A brief history of Spain by aguasilver

Living in Japan and the Reverse Culture Shock of Coming Home by leahcallis

Ageism: How To Avoid Being Labeled Too Old For A Job by Kathryn Vercillo

Google - Organic Search Engine Optimisation by bigmikeh

How to Advertise on the Internet by Paul Edmondson

Google UK : www google co uk : Search, Webhp and UK Google Homepage (in English) by humagaia

Reciprocal hubbers by pjdscott