How To Add and Edit Your Public Profile

Your public profile gives you the opportunity to tell readers a little bit about yourself. This is your chance to explain who you are, what your background is and why you're writing for HowToDoThings. You can share as much or as little information as you want to.

This is also a place where you can discuss your website, blog, book or business and link back to it.

1. General Info. While editing your profile, you can also edit your name, email address, username and password. You can choose to add your zip code, gender and birthday as well. These are optional and are used for gathering general demographic information.
2. Bio. Like any personal bio, you can include any information about yourself, your career, your education and your general background that you want to share. The bio field is similar to the article body field (which you use when submitting articles), so you have access to all the same tools and formatting options that are available when you're writing an article.
3. My Inspiration. Similar to the bio field, the "my inspiration" field gives you the opportunity to tell readers more about why you're writing. This is an optional field where you're free to share as much or as little about what motivates you as you'd like.
4. Author Signature. The author signature is a miniature bio that you can include on all of your articles. It can only be 350 characters (about 2 sentences) long. You should write it in the third person, explain a little bit about your expertise and include a link to your personal website or blog.

   Example: 'Mike McGarth is a gardening expert who has written two books and hosts a weekly radio show on WHYY in Philadelphia. You can learn more about gardening on his web site: www.youbetyourgarden.com'.

   Adding an author signature in your public profile will cause this signature to automatically appear beneath all of the articles you have already written AND all of the articles you write in the future. If you'd like to create a custom author signature for certain articles, you'll need to do so when you're editing that particular article, in the author signature field, beneath the article body field.

5. Favorite Web Sites. You can include a link to your personal website, your business's website or any sites that you find particularly interesting or useful. Please make sure to include the entire URL.
6. Picture. You can upload a picture of yourself that will appear on your public profile page as well as next to your byline in each article that you write. Please include an appropriate picture of yourself. You always have the option to delete or change your image here.
7. Account Information. Here you will find your Google AdSense account info. Once you've affiliated your Google AdSense account with your HowToDoThings account, you will see the email address that you used to sign up for AdSense with and the AdSense ID that Google assigned you.
8. Communications Preferences. If you'd like to stay connected with what's happening at HowToDoThings, you can opt in to our monthly newsletter by selecting "communications preferences" at the top of the page. Simply check the box that allows you to "receive the HowToDoThings newsletter" and hit submit.