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On Helium, your up front pay rate is determined by your star ranking. The higher the ranking, the more you get. Just by losing one star can wipe out many dollars from your monthly up front payment. One way to get that star back is by revising your lowest rated articles and then using the leapfrog function. This sends the newest version to Helium readers to give your article another shot and a chance to rate it much higher.

But Say You Have 500 Articles

Many people write for Helium because they are allowed to write about nearly any subject they want. Over time, people can often wrack up many articles. This writer currently has well over 500 articles and recently saw that my rating had slipped from five stars to four stars. The challenge was to get that fifth star back before payment was determined at the end of the month.

But does this mean I have to go back and work on and leapfrog all of my low rated articles? Not really. For one thing, I just don't have the time to revise the dozens of articles in the bottom fifty percent of the ratings. I have to concentrate on just ten or twelve articles. If I can get all of them to raise even just one place, then there is an excellent chance that I'd get my fifth star back.

How Low Can You Go?

I have to take a look at the articles that are doing not only badly, but abysmally. These are the ones that aren't just 4 of 4, but 40 of 40. The odds of me being able to quickly find means of improving such an article are quite high. The odds go even higher if the title was originally a Marketplace submission that transitioned to Helium. The Marketplace assignments can have some very strange instructions, including bizarre keyword choices or word length.

For old Marketplace titles, I can then tinker with the article until it fits Helium's requirements. This means I can remove bizarre keywords, give a proper word length and add links. I can also give the article a little more focus in keeping to the title topic instead of whatever topic the Marketplace assignment was.

Limited Time Only

It's best to get all ten or twelve of these leapfrogs done by the 20th of the month in order to get a good chance at getting another star for your rating and pay rate. It takes a few days for a leapfrog to go through the Helium rating system and needs to be looked at by several readers.

And so, with just twelve leapfrogs (two of which were rejected), I got my star back in time for payment. In one sense, it's good that the star rating exists, or perhaps I'd never have the incentive to edit my older articles.

Learn more about this author, Rena Sherwood.
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