Helium title closed Grrrrrr!

I normally only submit articles to competitive titles when I absolutely have to but lately by writing score has been severely challenged. I made the mistake of venturing into the contests not once, but twice and now my writing score is sufferning the consequences. It takes so long to set your writing score to rights again with empty titles I finally relented and decided to take the advice that is often given about find a title with 100 articles.

Most of my articles are 1 of something so they fall into the top 24% bracket that helium uses as a yard stick but I am finding the more articles I post the less of an impact it has on my writing score. It never goes up past 80.something and at one time, when I had fewer articles, it was very high.

I finally tried for a marketplace article last week. I wasn't super happy with it but it had to let it go and not think about it anymore. It is not going to transition so I don't know what will happen with it once the selection is made. I will be very surprised and delighted if my article is chosen, but I have no way of knowing who else submitted one and how knowledgeable they were on the subject.

On the other hand I crossed the $10 threshold with the page view income this past month. I truly see the potential of passive income with the site and I have gotten better with SEO and since I don't have the time to devote to writing and deadlines that I would like to have submitting articles to helium works for me for now.

I did consider looking for a similar title for my article and I guess that is what will eventually happen, but still... If I had known beforehand I could have spent the time working on something else.

Oh, well...

And I suck with seo and need detailed help - no one seems to be volunteering.

If you are worried about your writing percentage, try leapfrogging some of your older articles and get their percentages up. It will jump start the ratings and you might get a higher rank. The only other thing I can think of is for you to go to the forums in Helium and ask for advice on how to maintain your writing percentage. Others may have some insight that I don't have.

For maximizing SEO optimization, you have to think about what people are looking for on search engines. Your keywords are as important as how you use them. At some point during the process of writing your article, go to google or yahoo and think about what words people might use if they sat down and started looking for information on the subject you are writing about.

You want to use those key words in the first and last paragraphs. Ideally, you want to put your key words in the first sentence. You also want to use a different form or variation of those key words throughout your article. Ideally, you want 5-10% of your article to be key words. To figure this out, take the number of key words and divide by the total number of words in the article. That will tell you the density of them. Don't use too many, or the search engines will ignore it, too few and the search engines won't see it.

This is a very short and condensed version of how to maximize your SEO.

Tren, you need to EMAIL me when you need help with an article! BTW, silly me, the link is in my profile. If you can't rememeber how to find me just go to your own helium article on passive discipline I am the person who wrote the other one.

Sierras, I try to mention the keyword or phrase at least once in each paragraph. I did try leapfrogging a few articles but it didn't help. Some of the titles only have 6 or 8 or 3 articles so leapfrogging doesn't do much. I have started looking for titles with 40 - 100 articles since the math is better as it's easier to be in the top 25% with those.

Well, I looked at the list and found a similar title. The focus is a bit different which means a re-write and there are 6 articles for the titles. That means no upfront payment and less of a chance of being in the top 25%. If I post to this title I could actually harm my writing score instead of improving it.

If this were a different title and I felt my article would absolutely be the best I might do it but I doubt there will be much page view income if any from it. I now know to check to see if I can submit a new article before I spend the time churning one out.

Live and learn...

Awwww! That's really sweet of you! Thanks!

i just hop eyou feel better this time and that hug relieves you in a way...here's more mama hugsssssss!

I found another title that had several articles and I think last check I was rated number 3! That made me fee good. I posted another empty title this evening and checked my writing score and it was actually above 81 for the first time in forever!

Yes, I think they started closing them around the time of the title splitting adventure. As has been mentioned, with 399 articles in a title very few of them are actually being read each month. That is, unless of course you have a following of readers and your fan base grows each month, but more than likely they are just there.

Which in a sense might be ok since if you had a handful of articles posted to titles that had over 100 submissions a) it would be easier to be in the top 25% and b) you could repost them elsewhere for page views.

I have been concentrating mostly on empty titles up til now because it is how I maintained my writing score but that has become more difficult lately. I can not seem to pull it above 80.something and I can not stabilize it there either.

I realize that as long as it does not dip below 75 it's all good, as the saying goes, but my ego wants to see it soar again up where it belongs.

LOL. I didn't think you had an ego as such. LOL I think it is hard to maintain a writing score on Helium because of how the rating system works. I think you can maintain your score if you can get raters that are decent. Your writing is great, I don't know what the rating problem is.

Well, it is finally starting to creep back up again. If you can pick the right competitive titles it helps, but pick the wrong ones and you are you-know-what out of luck. I can't wait to see what it is tomorrow after today's empty title post.

YEAH! You found some empty titles to write to. My score is going up and down by a point or two a day. It looks like a yo-yo.

Mine is doing its thing. I guess I found a way to be successful with competitive titles. There just have to be enough articles for you to be able to make it into the top 25%.

I can't believe this. Today it is at 79%. Oh, that's great for me. LOL I have been averaging 75%, I think. I am still doing pretty good with page views from ac. I am over $4 this month so that is good. Helium I have 63 cents. LOL I will have another payout by the time my kids retire. LOL

I am at 84% but I think that is due to the marketplace titles I submitted. I see some of the competitive titles climb up a bit but I posted to two more titles that each had 1 article so who knows how next week will go. I think I have 118 articles now so I am getting closer to the next goal. If I can find the right seasonal titles for the month I might get to $15 or $20 in page views!

I have 73 articles and am a little over 80%. That's so exciting for me. YAY. LOL Still won't see another payout until my kids retire, unless I post some more articles. LOL

Those fingers were made for typing!

LOL. I will type away then. Most of it is reposting articles from AC. I guess my regular content approver is on vacation. I just got two offers for more than what I have been getting. LOL I guess I better submit a lot of articles this week. LOL

I am thinking of reposting to Bukisa.

That should probably help. I think Bukisa pays pretty good for page views. I am still trying to post to Helium like mad. I stopped for a couple of days, but I need to start again.

Well I am averaging one article a day right now at helium. I am satisfied with that for now since I have so many other things I need to get done.

When I get on Helium to add my articles I am doing about three at a time. I am up to 91 articles at 80%, so I guess if I can keep my writing percentage there I will automatically get my third star when I reach 100 articles. LOL Yay me. I still have 43% of the articles competitive. It's not for lack of trying though. LOL

Good for you! I am finally back at 85% even though I submitted a couple to titles that had articles already. One is 22 of 51 and I just knew it would have made it into the top ten! I may try and leapfrog just to get it back into rating circulation again.

Well I made it over 100 articles and now I went down to 79%. Go figure. I keep trying to go up just to go backwards. LOL

That is because of the quantity of articles. I went through that for a minute but now at 121 my score is like 85 or 86%. Keep posting those empty title articles and look for competitive titles that are in subjects you are good at where your articles are usually ranked well.

You wouldn't believe! Today I looked and my score is down to 76%. I swear it doesn't make any sense to me. I posted a couple of articles today, so I am hoping it will help and tomorrow I will be safe from losing my third star. It was 80% when I was at 100 articles and then it steadily dropped. Doesn't make much sense. Darn gremlins.

I'm telling you that is exactly what happened to me when I reached 100 articles. My score was in the toilet and it kept fluctuating on a daily basis. It was driving me nuts! My competitive ratio was way up (past 30%) so I kept posting to empty titles and it finally started climbing back up. It was up to 86 the other day, though today it is at 84 (grrrr!) because I haven't been posting anything I guess.

I think mine was at 77% this morning. Honestly though, I was surprised to still see it that high. It keeps going up and down like a yo-yo and I am almost scared to write any more articles until next month so I know I will get money for what I wrote this month. LOL I think I wrote about 40 articles so I should get about $60-$80 dollars with the $1 bonus for suggesting a title. I can't wait for that!

Well, you may not be soaring in life at the moment but you are at 10 here:-) It was a significant dip, which is understandably disappointing, but I know how you can bring it back up. It is such a general category that everyone posts there when they don't know where else to go with their discussions. To see yourself back on top respond to everything in life I have responded to no matter how old and we'll keep your life line alive and you'll float back up to the top. It is all based on activity and now that I think of it I may have the angle for your story. Will PM the idea with the helium link.

Thank you - that would be swell!

I tried to reply to you in the PM earlier but when the page reloaded it had redirected to the home page so I will just email you so you remember my email address.