by UmiNoor

Created on: February 21, 2010

The number of writing stars you get on Helium will determine how much upfront payment you'll get for the articles that you've written on Helium. If you want to get upfront payment for writing on Helium, it is imperative that you get at least one writing star. No writing star means no upfront payment even if you're the first to write to an orphan title (a title with no articles written to it) and no empty title bonus.

Conditions for getting writing stars

These conditions are implemented to make sure that only deserving writers get the writing stars.

The first condition you must fulfill to earn a writing star is you must have at least four articles in a competitive title. A competitive title is one which has three or more articles written to it. After the 16th article, you must have 10% of your articles in competitive titles. So if you've written only four articles, all four must be in competitive titles and if you've written one hundred articles, ten articles must be in competitive titles.

The second condition you must fulfill to earn a writing star is that 90% of your top-ranking articles must be in the 75th percentile. If they are in the 85th percentile, you'll get a bonus star.

The second condition deals with the quality of your articles. If other Helium users rate your articles as better than the others in your chosen title, you'll rise up through the ranking and be in the higher percentile.

For example, if you've just written four articles, you can get a writing star if all your articles are at position number 2 or better for titles with four to seven articles.

How does Helium calculate your rank percentile?

The calculation for your rank percentile is 100 - (number of articles above yours divided by the total number of articles x 100). So if your article is in position three in a title with three articles, your rank percentile would be 100 - (2/3 x100) = 33% which will make this article one of your low-ranking articles. If your article is one of three articles in a title, you must be in position one if you want to be in the 75th percentile ranking.

However, if you want a writing star but can only manage a 70th percentile ranking, then you need to write at least three hundred articles of which thirty must be in competitive titles and two hundred and seventy must be at the 70th percentile ranking and to be on the 70th percentile ranking, you must be ranked in position number two in titles with four to six articles.

Earning writing stars on Helium means you must have 90% of all your articles in the 75th percentile and what this implies is that you need to write good quality articles that will be ranked well by others.

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