When you see a How To Rush Week task that interests you, click on it, claim it and make the page really, really great. Each Wednesday, we look at all the approved pages from that week, and pick out our favorites. Chosen writers are then invited to join the How To Team, and will be able to start making a lot more How To pages, all the time, and may even start suggesting some topics of their own!

We'll also pick out our four favorite Rush Week submissions and award the writer an additional M$25 prize for doing such a great job. It's just our way of saying thanks for your hard work, and recognizing the people who go above and beyond to submit the best-quality How To pages possible.

You can work directly on that page, filling in the appropriate boxes and including all the sources you used to find the information. Your How To Task will require the following sections to be completed before you submit:

Guide Note / Introduction

This is a clear and concise paragraph or two (around 200 words) introduction to your how-to. What is useful about the process? Who would benefit most from learning how to do it? How complicated is the process, and will someone need special tools and/or training to carry it out successfully? What other essential info should we know after quickly scanning this Guide Note?

Tips

These are similar to Fast Facts on a Mahalo SeRP. They are brief, bite-sized pieces of helpful information or advice that readers quickly can scan before they begin the how-to process. The tips should also be mentioned within the steps of the guide, but pick out a few of the most important pieces to be highlighted in this section. Put in at least 3 tips for your article.

Steps 1, 2 and 3

Each step must be titled as "Step 1: Join the How To Team," "Step 2: Select a Task," etc. The content for each step should be about 200 words (give or take), and written in clear, easy to follow, complete sentences. (A good example of well constructed Steps are here: How to Throw an Office Holiday Party).

If you need to add more than just the basic 3 steps, just click the "Add Another Step" button at the bottom of the Task page, and it will add another box for you.

Related Mahalo Pages

This section is where you highlight pages already existing on Mahalo, that relate to the "How To" you are creating. Take a look at How to Become a Professional Skateboarder for an example of a good list of related pages, featured on the task. Add the titles of at least 5 related Mahalo pages that exist. Put double brackets around the title of the page (like these: ), and separate the titles with pipes (like this: | ).

You can find related pages either by searching around inside Mahalo or by doing a Google site search. To do this, just type in a word or two from your subject (in this case, let's try "muffins") into Google followed by the term site:mahalo.com

Once you have your related pages picked out, just list them in the Related section with double brackets around them, like this:

Video
Find an applicable, instructional video from YouTube or Hulu, and put the link here. Then, write a 50—100 word synopsis of the video's content.

Citations
When citing facts put forth in your article, always use references (more on this below).

By clicking "Submit," your work will automatically be saved and sent to Mahalo's Quality Control (QC) team. They will then evaluate your work for accuracy, originality, grammar/spelling, citation of sources and general adherence to Mahalo's high standards for content. They will either approve the task or send it back and allow you to try again. Either way, you may receive feedback and advice for future Tasks.

If the guide approves of your task, you will be awarded the tip and 10 points towards your next belt level. Don't worry about moving your information onto the Mahalo page itself -- this will be done automatically when your submission is approved.

NOT ALL USERS WHO HAVE HOW TO PAGES ACCEPTED DURING RUSH WEEK WILL MAKE THE TEAM

We will only be taking the best writers and accepting them to the team. However, if you don't make the team on your first try, we'd invite you to try again the following week. Please only claim ONE Rush Week Task per week, as we will only evaluate the first submission we receive as your application for the How To Team.

If your submission is rejected, the Mahalo guide who looked over your work will offer you constructive feedback and, in most cases, will offer you a chance to try again. You will be offered an opportunity to reclaim the task and fix whatever was missing. In some special cases, a guide may choose to open up the task to different users, and it will return to the Mahalo Tasks front page.

Users are then invited to join the How To Team's e-mail list, will be able to access How To pages that have been specifically set aside for team members, and will be able to request specific How To pages they would like to build. Complete instructions, along with the process for requesting pages, will be sent to you when you are accepted to the How To Team.

Team members receive 7 Mahalo Dollars for each completed How To page that was requested by Mahalo, and will be compensated for the pages they request themselves based on a sliding scale. Mahalo staff determines how much to pay for pages suggested by users based on a number of factors, including:

1. The estimated amount of time it will take to build the page
2. How urgently the page is needed on Mahalo
3. The potential revenue that will be brought in by the page
   
   

Please ensure that you thoroughly search Mahalo BEFORE suggesting a How To term, to make sure we do not already have a page on that or an identical topic.

When you complete a How To Task - whether you are a How To team member or just completing a task for Rush Week - you will automatically become the manager of that page. (Even if you have already claimed the maximum number of pages on your account, you will still get to control pages you build in Mahalo Tasks!)

So what does a page manager do? A few things...

Update the page with recent news

Obviously, this is not as essential to a How To page as it would be on a page that dealt with an ongoing news or entertainment story. Nevertheless, when something changes that alters a project that has been described in a How To, it's the responsibility of that page's manager to come in and make edits to make the instructions and information as up-to-date and accurate as possible.

Enhance and expand the page's content

A How To page that has just been created through Mahalo Tasks is complete, but it usually does not reflect the maximum possible amount of information on the Web about that topic. Once a page has been created, and is being managed, it should be expanded and improved over time. Not every How To on Mahalo has to be as good as How to Play Guitar for Newbies, but that page represents the ideal...The more through and information-dense your page becomes, the better it will rank in search engines, the more blogs and other referring sites will link to it, and the easier time you will have promoting it.

Promote Mahalo pages

A page manager should spend a good amount of his or her time promoting Mahalo pages through social networks, social bookmarking sites, the Mahalo Answers community, blogs, message boards and elsewhere. For a more detailed discussion of promoting Mahalo pages, please see our guide to How to Market a Mahalo Page.

Image Sections

All How To pages should have an Image Section added to them after they are moved over from Mahalo Tasks. To add an image section, simply go to the "Page Builder" in the upper right hand corner of the page, go to the "Add Section to Links" drop-down menu and select "Images."

Then go to the newly created Image section and look for the best image that fits the subject of the page. Move this image to the first slot in the section by using the arrow buttons, and then use the "pin" button to stick this image in place. That will make this first pinned image the default in the page's Guide Note, or for whenever this page is referred to on Mahalo (such as when it gets linked on the front page).

If you can't find any good images in the image search, it might be a good idea to change the term that's being searched, to get better results. To do this, just click "Edit" at the top of the image section and then change the search term to something that will probably produce good results. For example, on the page How to Become an Airline Pilot, the search term "pilot" would probably make for some quality images.

For more thorough instructions on page management, read our Mahalo Page Management Guide