by Michael Kimball

Created on: December 12, 2008   Last Updated: December 24, 2011

Helium truly revolves around the rating process. The higher rated articles get more visability by being placed at the top of the list. This visability enables your articles to be placed at the first of the pages when someone searches on the subject of your articles. This increases your income here at Helium. It also tells you how you stand with your peers. You can get feedback at certain places in the forum section. I have even gotten unexpected emails from people reading my  articles. After some additional ideas it is possible to improve your article with the leapfrog function.  Leapfroging an article can lead to a significantly better article being wrote.  This in turn puts the article back in the rating process causing it to go up in ratings.. 

ThisRating also helps me to write. I am learning more as I rate more. I am starting to learn how to look at several aspects of these articles. I start with grammer and format. I still have to work on my grammer as well and this is one of the best formats to learn. I also look for spelling and paragraph breaks as well as how well the information flows. After taking into account my knowledge of the random subjects I ask myself what does this article tell me or how does it affect me. After going through this general set of guidelines I can usually get a good rate. Sometimes I still have articles that are difficult to rate as they are pretty close in quality. There are also factors that are subjective to individual raters.  This is one of the many reasons ratings fluctuate  a bit at first but as an article gets more rates it settles in the rankings.  In addition to helping other writers rating can lead me to a subject to write about when I am having trouble finding something to write about. 

For the most part I feel the rating works as it is intended. It has encouraged me to stay with writing even though I have periods of inactivity. I am trying to reduce these periods of inactivity and thanks to the rating system I will eventually write more often. I even had one of my articles hold the number one spot for a couple of weeks. I have also had some other articles end up further down the list. Through it all I am having fun with it as I learn to write and rate.

Learn more about this author, Michael Kimball.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.