by Elizabeth A. Marion

Created on: July 17, 2010

Writing stars on Helium come with higher upfront payments for articles written to eligible channels and, of course, bragging rights.You can maximize your earnings by getting more writing stars and writing to titles eligible for upfront payments. Getting and keeping writing stars will not be difficult for the Helium writer who contributes to the site regularly.

Quantity

The more articles you have, the lower of a writing percentage you will need to have a writing star. This will make it easier for you to get and keep writing stars. In other words, the more articles you write the easier it will be for you to get writing stars. For example, if you have 100-299 articles, you need 71% as your writing percentage to have one writing star, but once you hit 300 articles 71% will get you two stars.

Quality

The higher your ratings are the more writing stars you will have. Avoid typos, poor sentence structure, poor format, and off topic articles. Write quality articles. If you see a typo in an article you have published on Helium you can send Helium an email. If there are three or less typos in the article they will fix it for you. If your article is off topic or needs to be edited you can leapfrog it. Go to your "My Articles" page and click on leapfrog for the article you wish to edit. Once you make the changes and submit the new article, it will be rated with the original. The raters will ultimately decide which article is displayed on the site, so it is better to write the best article you can before you submit it so you won't have to rely on a leapfrog to bring up the ratings.

The Helium Community can also help you out if you have low ratings for your articles and are not sure how to improve them. There is a section on the Helium discussion board for critiques. If you post your article there you can get feedback from other Helium members on how to improve the article and perhaps gain some insight as to why it had low ratings in the first place.

Writing regularly is the first step to getting a writing star. As you gain more experience the quality of your articles will improve. Be willing to listen to the advice of other Helium members and be open minded about how you can improve. If you have the right attitude those writing stars will not be very far away.

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