Saturday, July 28, 2007

Writing articles that earn high ratings at Helium

Articles Must Be EYE CATCHING, and EASILY READABLE! in order to earn high ratings at Helium.
Readers find the article first, and then read it, and later on rate it. That is the common sense. That is the core principle we must remember in writing articles. T
How can we make the readers want to read our article? It must be EYE CATCHING! How to make it EYE CATCHING?
Every writing medium has their own characteristic. Writers have to adapt their style with the unique characteristics of the medium it self.
The style of article written for news paper may be different from the style of article published in the internet, and so on, and so on.
Helium, as a medium to publish articles in the internet has its own unique characteristic too. Its unique characteristics are:
1. Narrow content column
2. Ratings by other writers
3. Lists of same title articles, written by different authors.
Now, have a close look at the characteristic # 3. If we browse to read articles in Helium, we will see, that a popular title will have a long list of articles written by many authors.
Will readers read all the articles written under a title? I believe NOT!
Helium will rank, list the author, and include a few initial words of every article listed under the same title.
For example, at the time this article written, Articles titled "Writing Articles That Earn High Ratings At Helium is listed:
# 1 by Adelene C
Writing articles that earn high ratings at Helium can depend on 3 i... read more

# 2 by Allison Whitehead
Make sure you pick popular subjects. Making money online seems to ... read more

# 3 by Whitney Weatherby
If you want to get high ratings, you have to improve your writing s... read more

# 4 by Barbara Whitlock
Helium's writing community developed consensus on guidelines ... read more
Now, do you see? Helium list the first 66 characters of every listed articles! I called it THE RULE 66!
Based on that rule, perhaps my article will be listed by Helium as:
# 5 by (my name)
Articles Must Be EYE CATCHING, and EASILY READABLE! in order to ea ... read more
Is it right? Regardless of this article's rank, I bet my ears that I am right!
So, to make our articles EYE CATCHING in Helium, We must begin our article by the most attractive, less than 66 characters sentence!
Now, let's see Helium's other characteristics, that is narrow column, and rating by other authors.
The final displays of our article is completely different than when we look at it in the Helium's text editor.
What seems easily readable in the text editor, can be less easy to read in the final displays, and in the rating window (2 windows we saw when we are rating articles).
I am very dizzy and will left the article unread if the author of the article never mind herself to skip a blank line between each paragraph, or there are so many lines in each paragraph
I adapt my writing style to this unique characteristics.
As a rule of thumb, what seems like long 1 line in the text editor may be 2 lines in the final displays.
If we stick to the old rule: 'one idea for one paragraph,' in Helium, every paragraph will contain so many lines. It makes the readers dizzy and not interesting.
I anticipate that problem by composing articles in simple and short sentences, and always skip a blank line after one or two long sentences.
As a reader myself, I found it easier to read an article written that way.
As the CONCLUSION:
1. Write the most attractive 66 characters sentence at the beginning of the article.
2. Try to compose articles in simple and short sentences.
3. Always skip a blank line between every one or two long sentences.
This is the TRICKS! because high quality content does not guarantee that an article will be a success. Of course, easily readable article will not have a high ratings if it just a baloney.
Both Quality, and Tricks must go together along the way.
To gain good quality, content of an article must be rich substantially (rich in substances), and grammatically correct (every sentence must be correct in grammar, and vocabularies).
Yes, we cannot guarantee that our articles will be grammatically 100% correct, but remember! Grammatically correctness is not the purpose itself.
The real purpose is to make our readers understand every bits of explanation in our articles. If the readers could understand the article, then just consider the purpose of the article is satisfied, and therefore, the article is a success.
So, what do you think?
PS: Comments and corrections are invited.
Please note that this article is provided for information only, and is not to be construed as opinion or advice about anything. Under no circumstances does the information in this content represent a recommendation or encouragement to do any action. The author is not responsible or liable to any losses or damages suffered by the third parties, as a result of any decision or execution in relation to the usage of this article as a reference.

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