How To Join The How To Team

Mahalo How To pages are the best resources on the web for instructions on doing pretty much anything, from making a delicious tropical cocktail to completing a home repair project to planning the perfect romantic evening.

Mahalo's How To pages are written in our Mahalo Tasks system by members of the How To Team. They are paid on a per-task basis, and they make anywhere from M$5 - M$15 per task, depending on how long the assignment is and what promotions we have going on that month. This page will give you complete instructions on joining the team and building Mahalo How To pages.

To get started in Tasks, you'll first need an account with Mahalo. Just click the "Join" button in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen and create a profile. It just requires an e-mail address (though if you want to add an avatar, it'll help us recognize you!).

Please take note of the Mahalo formatting and citation requirements at the bottom of this page. The rest of this page will hopefully answer all your questions about writing How To pages for Mahalo!

If you're interested in getting started writing How To's quickly, just e-mail three great writing clips to join@mahalo.com!

What is a Rush Week? It's a time when we post a lot of How To's into the system and allow anyone who wants to make How To's to claim one (and only one). These pages are easy to find, as they are all labeled HOW TO RUSH WEEK.

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 each of these four writers 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.

When you first load up the page for your Task, you will see a box filled with instructions and advice for completing the page. Please read it thoroughly, then click the button marked "Claim This Task"

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 (200-300 words) introducing your how-to topic. 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 before beginning this How To?

Tips

These 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, such as "Step 1: Join the How To Team," "Step 2: Select a Task," etc. The content for each step should be 200-300 words, and written in clear, easy to follow, complete sentences. (A good page with well-constructed steps is 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 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.

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. Also, include a title for your featured video.

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.

For Mahalo formatting and citation requirements, please read the Mahalo page How To Write a Mahalo Page.

Once you submit your work to Mahalo, we will perform what we call a Quality Check (or "QC"). Mostly, we're looking for "stop errors" -- problems with the writing or facts that would cause a person to stop reading and question the content. These could include difficult-to-read sentences, particularly incorrect spelling/grammar, factual errors or a failure to cite sources for information.

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.

Every Wednesday, Mahalo staff posts a new thread in Mahalo Answers naming the new people who will be invited that week to join the How To team and the four pages that will win the M$25 prizes for being the "best of the week." These users should then e-mail Mahalo staff (lonharris@mahalo.com and anne@mahalo.com) that they wish to sign up for the team.

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.

The added bonus of being on the How To Team is that you get to manage the pages once you've built them. Mahalo page managers split the ad revenue for their pages with Mahalo, getting 40-50% of the total revenue back in Mahalo Dollars. Because How To pages are among the most popular on all of Mahalo, this can add up to hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars per year.

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 thorough 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

Each How To page should have an Image Section added to it after it is moved over from Mahalo Tasks. (If the Quality Controller didn't add the image section for you, 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.")

Go to the 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 drag and drop button, 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 the little pencil in the tool bar 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 and How To Write a Mahalo Page.

DOUBLE BRACKETS FOR INLINKING

Put double brackets around all proper nouns, years, dates and any other terms that Mahalo has or should have a page about. This will create an internal link (inlink) to that page.

• [[Mahalo]] is an Internet [[search engine]]. will look like this:
• Mahalo is an Internet search engine.

To refer to a term differently in the text than what the page is called, you can use a pipe to separate the term, placing the page title first and the text second like this:

• [[New York State|NY]] will look like this: NY, and it will inlink to the page titled New York State.

BOLD AND ITALICS

All video game, book and movie titles, as well as ship names need to be in italics. To use italics, put two apostrophes on either side of the word or phrase you want italicized. Put the apostrophes outside any brackets that you have put in order to inlink the term. Here is an example:

• ''[[The Great Gatsby]]'' will look like this:
• The Great Gatsby

You may use boldface sparingly for emphasis or for subheadings within a section. To use boldface, put three apostrophes on either side of the word or phrase you want bolded. Put these outside of any brackets that you need to inlink the term. Here is an example:

• '''The Great Gatsby''' will look like this:
• The Great Gatsby

CITATION OF REFERENCES IN TEXT

Whenever you write a fact in a text section of a Mahalo page, at the end of the sentence, just after the period with no space after the period put <ref>URL</ref> to link to the authoritative website where you found this fact. Take a look at this sentence as an example:

• [[Barack Obama]] is the 44th President of the [[United States]].<ref>http://www.mahalo.com/barack-obama</ref> will look like this:
• Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States.http://www.mahalo.com/barack-obama

Click that footnote number and it will take you to the bottom of the page, where your URL is now automatically listed in a "References" section.

Please note that every fact must be cited. This means that you will need to verify everything that you write. Do not rely on your personal experience, education or opinion. Especially, do not show your opinion nor any bias in your writing. Not even favorable opinion or bias. Remain neutral. Present just the facts. If it makes sense on your topic to present popular opinions, then present both sides and let the reader make up his or her own mind which one makes more sense. Make sure and cite references for these popular opinions, too.

WHITE SPACE

Hit "enter" three times between paragraphs. Otherwise, there won't be any space between your paragraphs. Write many short paragraphs, rather than one long paragraph. Whenever appropriate, break paragraphs up even further into bullet points or numbered lists of statements. All this makes your web page easier on the reader's eyes. Remember though, that the first text section on your page - the guide note - needs to be free of bullets or lists, for page formatting reasons. For more information on writing great guide notes, see How To Write a Guide Note.

BULLETED AND NUMBERED LISTS

Type * before every item in a list, or # to make it a numbered list. Otherwise, the list will not format correctly on the completed page, and will just look like a regular paragraph. Make sure to align the * or # all the way to the left. Capitalize the first word in each bullet or number.