by Karon Brandt

Created on: January 13, 2008   Last Updated: October 22, 2011

Helium's founder, Mark Ranalli, believed that writers should be able to contribute what they know to a worldwide readership who were searching for reliable information about topics of interest.

Mark felt that readers wanted a choice of viewpoints on a subject, which is why multiple articles are written to the same topic, and he knew that publishers needed a better way to get the content they wanted. The old "slush" pile was replaced by edited, user-approved, writer-ranked information readily available through an online search through Helium.

Ranalli created Helium as a writing platform to showcase articles and reward productive, hard-working writers with proceeds as a revenue sharing co-op.

How to maintain and improve quality at Helium? 1. Always write your best as you would for any "final draft" that is going to be published with your byline. Every article represents you as much as a business card.

Practice makes perfect. You will see your works improve over time; that is to be expected. Then you can go back and improve your old, outdated works, which leads to the next step.

2. Revise ("leapfrog") and re-fresh low-ranked articles and bring them up to par with others in their topic. No matter how good the article is, it is not always readily received by the public or the raters. Look at your low-ranked articles with fresh eyes a couple weeks later. You might be able to bump them up a bit with a fresh viewpoint or better-presented information. 

3. A site that contains informative articles depends on authenticity and credibility to attract repeat readers. Helium knows that and is asking writers to cite valid sources carefully to add reliability to the site. The disadvantage of Wikipedia is that user-contributed information is only as reliable as its sources. Since most of the contributors are unknown, the information is questionable and is constantly changing as new unknowns keep "editing" the information.

Therefore, offer your readers credibility. If you yourself are an "expert" concerning the information you are giving - as a nurse, electrician, plumber, doctor, father of five, 20 year veteran, etc. - work that into your article.

Otherwise, weave the source information in and add a link to it if it's available online. For example, the "Center of Disease Control (CDC) offers these stats from 2011." Create an active link to the keyword "CDC" (to the specific reference page you drew the information from) on Helium's "Write now" publication page. Insert the

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