by Robert Wiley

Created on: September 29, 2009

Helpful tips for new Helium members

Writing at Helium can be a very rewarding and exciting journey. Watching your articles climb up the ladder amongst other titles is very gratifying. New members can become overwhelmed quite easily with the rating process and the sheer quantity of titles to choose which to write to. Here are some simple tips to help you get started.

Learn the Helium system.

Learn how Helium works. Read the guides and learn how to earn rating stars and what they mean. Learn how to earn writing stars and how they determine how much money you can earn by having them. New members should take the necessary time and learn how to leapfrog an article so that it would be ranked higher and help grow their earning potential. It can be difficult to play baseball if one doesn't first learn the rules. Learn the rules of Helium and get ready to take advantage of the rewards that quality writing can bring.

Rate.

Helium is based on a rating system. New Helium members should take the time and rate many articles before they even attempt at writing one. This will help to identify the difference between a well written article and one not so well written. Seeing these errors in other writers' articles will in turn help new members prevent making the same mistakes in their articles. In addition, rating articles earns the members rating stars. One star is required to earn any money at Helium and if one can earn five stars they will have a $3.00 rating bonus.

Write.

We're all here to write. Sure it's fun to rate other peoples work but let's do some work of our own for a change. Write what you're comfortable with. Write what you know about. Take the time and write well and write often. You should make sure to cite sources accordingly and never plagiarize. The rating process will let you know exactly how you are doing. As long as your articles are rated highly you're doing a great job. If not, there is some work to be done. The main focus on writing is creating a quality article that would stand up to others in the same topic. Research in advance and plan your article. Don't just come up with it on the fly and post it. Make sure to review the article for errors. Ensure that spelling and grammar are checked before posting.

Leapfrog.

Well, the article is posted. It can now be tracked for performance and earnings through the My Helium link, under Earnings & Payments. Hopefully everything went well and it is ranked highly. If it is not, do not worry, you can use the leapfrog feature. Under the My Helium link go to the My Articles and a list of all of your Helium articles will be shown with their rankings. Click on the Show Article Options and select Leapfrog. This allows you to make improvements to your article. Once submitted your article will be compared to the Leapfrog and the best one will take over as the article submitted, hopefully improving your rating.

Community.

Don't forget about the Helium community. A plethora of writers are willing to share their input and advice on just about anything. If you have attempted to leapfrog your article and it still hasn't improved, perhaps dropping a line in on a community forum where someone can offer their advice will help.

Helium can be a great place for writers. If new members take the time to learn how Helium works they will avoid confusion. Knowing the ins and outs of the rating system will help to produce effective articles consistently.

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