by Eric Bailey

Created on: February 20, 2010

Helium.com has established itself as one of the top-tier online resources for knowledge-based articles on a wide variety of subjects. In order to attract the best freelance talent on the web to contribute high-quality submissions, Helium offers its members regular payments for works and page views. However, the vast majority of ad revenue for a title goes to the three highest-ranked pieces for that topic. How does Helium determine the rankings for the content on its channels?

Unlike some websites that allow for non-member scoring, anonymous reviews, and 5-star or 10-point systems, Helium utilizes an innovating head-to-head peer rating system, in which members view articles side-by-side, then determine which example is better and to what extent. For doing so, they earn payments, including a bonus payment if they achieve enough quality ratings a month.

But this raises another issue: What is a “quality rating” and how can one rating be better than another? As it turns out, Helium not only scores the rankings of articles, but also has algorithms in place to deduce how well members are performing the process of rating. Not rating well enough means not earning a rating star, but you must have at least one rating star to earn payments for writing, so quality rating is an essential task for any member, even if you only need to rate a handful of articles per month to qualify for earnings. In order to ensure that ratings are being done well, there are a few tips to remember.

Topical Relevancy

Before all else, it is absolutely essential to ensure that the content of the article matches the subject of its title. This may sound like it was be an absolute no-brainer; but perhaps surprisingly, not only are many submissions not quite relevant to their title, but many contributors choose to spend their content relentlessly self-promoting rather than actually offering useful information. If an article is completely off-topic, it should be reported. But if it is just a bit off-topic, while the other is spot-on, so far you have solid grounds to deem the other superior.

Mechanical Mastery

If a Helium member is contributing articles, they should know how to write. This would imply a basic working knowledge of English grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, etc. Especially for web content, though, they should also be concise, exercise proper structural formatting, avoid the first-person voice, and other tenets of the genres. If an article fails to follow even rudimentary

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