Do I Suck and Not Know It?

[cdoug]

This is pretty self-serving, but I am honestly questioning myself a bit. A few days ago, I posted an article on Helium (because I wasn't aware of better options, nor of the one-year exclusivity agreement) on "Financial Advice for People in Their 20s." It's around 1,000 words. I was pretty happy with it, though I used a lot of first-person since I wasn't aware that it was a bad idea/against guidelines. It quickly became rated #1 out of 4, and even though I don't figure to ever see a penny from it (or Helium, since I'll never gain or maintain even a single star) I was fairly satisfied with that. Here it is: link.

I looked today and my article has plummeted to 6/6. The top-rated article looks to be about 300 words of shallow advice (you can find it here). It's reads fairly, in my opinion, though it ends abruptly and manages to reference a i]Wall Street[/i] character from named Gordon Geek-o. The second place article is one that mine quickly surpassed initially. It also has a grammatical error in its very first paragraph and just doesn't read very well to my eye in general (not trying to dump on it -- I've seen much worse).

My article is in a category that's currently part of a contest, so there's bound to be more competition, but it seems like Helium's system would be hard to "game" outside of blatant plagiarism. As a result, I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm like a parent, blind to my article's faults? Not that I think it's the greatest thing ever, but I just cannot fathom how it would rank so low against its competitors. I doubt I'm being slammed repeatedly for first-person by the average Helium voter.

Would any of you with a spare moment mind taking a look? I'd really appreciate it a ton. People completely fool themselves all the time, so I'd really like some trained eyes to let me know whether or not I'm crazy.

I'm definitely not fishing for compliments or reassurances. If my article sucks (outside of the first-person thing), please let me have both barrels, stomp on my head, then draw-and-quarter the corpse, burn it, and scatter the ashes. Thank you for listening to me, and for any help you can give.

Edit: I was afraid that I'd come off overly proud of my article, so I'm rereading it now. Besides the POV, there's so much I want to change. I guess I'll re-work it in a year. I still think it's better than the competition, though -- if only because it's much more informative.

[Celeste Stewart]

Ah, Helium's rating system . . . Remember, the people rating the articles aren't necessarily impartial judges. They're other Helium members, contest competitors, friends of the competitors, and so on. Casual readers who stumble on a Helium article and non-Helium members aren't likely to vote. I wouldn't use ratings as a measure of any writer's worth.

[jak]

Celeste is absolutely right. I used to post non exclusive work at Helium when I sold pices here for usage rights, and I fell foul of the rating system. I can't do that any more as they insist on exclusive rights for a year. But I'm doing alright here. No reason why you shouldn't either.

[Celeste Stewart]

Also, I wanted to give you some constructive feedback as I know you were looking for some of that too. One thing I highly recommend is to reduce the word count by 30% or more. Not just for this particular article, but in general. This isn't just for you, but for all of us The Web demands conciseness. Readers don't want to click through three pages to find out if an article is going to answer their specific questions. Web readers skim to start with and if they see lots of text filled with superflurous phrases, they're going to skim even faster (or go elsewhere), missing out on the hidden gems within. Not only that, conciseness forces you to focus on your keypoints which makes for a better read.

For example, while I love the Einstein quote, the whole aside into the debate as to whether he said it or not is a distraction. That section becomes more about the debate than the power of compound interest. The original paragraph had 72 words. Here's a 17-word way to say the same thing without the distraction about the debate:

Albert Einstein is rumored to have said, "The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest."

We all know Einstein was an intelligent man, so there's no need to say that either. It's a great quote, so let it speak and then you can explain what compound interest is and how it can benefit 20-somethings.

So, here's a challenge for you on your next article: No matter what the final word count is when you're done with the first draft, go back and cut it by at least 30 percent. I guarantee you'll impress yourself.

[cdoug]

Haha... yeah, it's kind of useless. I was worried about using the quote and then having my reader go, "But... he didn't say that!" I could simply have said something like, "According to a popular quote attributed to Albert Einstein . . . " though.

It's definitely a fatty article, and I really appreciate the feedback. Thank you. I've been making an effort to be more concise and focus, but 30% gives me a hard number. I like hard numbers.