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Your "About Me" page is your personal biography, which is like your business card to the world.

If you wish to be taken seriously as a writer, you must present yourself professionally. This is the page that fellow writers, roaming editors and partnering publishers see when they're checking out the writer behind a piece that caught their attention. Or they could be looking for stock content or a regional writer who might be able to supply local content for them.

The very first thing that people will notice is your photo. They don't expect to see a picture of a keyboard or a llama, no matter how important those things are to you. Neither do they want to see a picture of you with 10 children, in which they have to look closely to figure out which one is you.

If you're only writing on Helium for pleasure or as a hobby, and you wish to come off like "your friendly next door neighbor," a picture of you mowing the lawn with your dog could create an "instant bond" with onlookers.

But if you are a published writer, editor, or blogger who wants to be seen as a professional, you want to appear like you would for a job interview: well-groomed and appropriately dressed. The picture should be frontal, or with the head/body slightly turned, without too many shadows.This is not the time to appear in gardening or jogging clothes or in an evening gown or tux.

Under your picture is your location. This is important to some publishers who are looking for writers to do news or travel stories from specific locations. If you don't want to list your exact location, try for a county, or general state area, or geographic part of a country, i.e., Western Canada.

Look at your bio page and notice how your "credentials" stand out. Your blue writing stars are the electronic credentials you've earned on Helium, marking the quality and general number of articles you've written. Your peers have helped you earn blue stars with their ratings and publishers are told that they represent the more experienced writers who have produced more content. Although a Helium writer can quickly earn a "Marketplace approved" badge, it requires more time and effort to earn a "Marketplace premier" badge and some editors require that level for writers to participate in their Marketplace requests.

Gold stars mark those who participate in Helium ratings, and again show those who are most active on the site since the stars are based on 90-day rotations.

Now, notice the list of your last 10 published articles. A quick

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