I signed up for Helium over two years ago, but did not publish
my first article with them until January 2007. The first year or so, I admit to not doing too much with Helium. I put up several non-exclusive articles on Helium, just to see how they performed, as I do with any writing site I’m asked to review for
my forum, and the pennies trickled in slowly. I do mean sloooowly, but they did trickle in. I saw the other parts of Helium, too, though I never participated. I kept thinking, “I must be missing something here,” because Helium had a thriving, active, large membership.
Earlier this year, Mark Ranalli, the CEO/President of Helium, contacted me via email, asking me if I’d be willing to discuss Helium with him. I welcomed the opportunity, and later that week, we managed to hook up via telephone and talk about what Helium has to offer.
First, I must say Mark impressed me. He is professional, courteous, and my impression of him is that he is genuinely interested in the growth and success of Helium, not just for the business itself, but also for the writers on the site. I really enjoyed hearing his vision for the site and the direction Helium is going in the future. Mark has since contacted me via email a few times, and I am very impressed with him and his vision and professionalism.
Shortly after my phone call with Mark, I decided to give Helium an honest go and report my experiences with it. Unfortunately, poor health got in the way, as many of you know I was in the hospital for awhile and even now am still struggling with issues, so I was not able to dive into Helium immediately. Recently, though, being unable to ‘work’ due to my health, I’ve taken some time off and used this opportunity to play around with other aspects of Helium and delve into what the site offers.
Below is my impression of Helium and the features Helium has to offer. These are my personal opinions based on my personal experience, combined with the feedback I’ve received from other writes who have used the site. Your mileage may vary, depending on what your goals are when you sign up for the site.
RATING ON HELIUM
Rating is, as Helium touts, the heart of the site. It is what makes the site different from the majority of content writing sites out there. Here’s what I’ve learned about rating: you get more page views, more rates of your own content, and more money if you rate regularly.
RATING ON HELIUM – PROS:
Personally, I can’t stand the rating. I do it because I have to. Well, okay, I don’t have to rate; no one I has to. I was on the site for quite some time and never rated a single article and I still earned my pennies.
I can’t say I know how it works, but I can say that my earnings increased significantly when I started rating regularly the last month or so. In addition to my earnings increasing, my ratings on my own articles began to rise or at least fluctuate more frequently. The only conclusion I can draw from that is: the more you rate, the more you get rated. I’ve told other writers who have complained about low ratings on their articles to rate more, and they have seen their ratings increase on their own articles.
Of course, your articles have to be well-written enough to rise in rank. If your writing isn’t competitively strong by comparison, rating more might cause you to sink to the bottom. Given enough rating over a period of time, I do believe the cream rises to the top and the duds or stones sink to the bottom. The question is, how much rating does it take to make the ratings really mean something? No one truly knows that answer, I don’t think. Yet, if you are a decent writer and you wrote on topic, rating others obviously helps increase your own rankings.
I know some people who love rating on Helium. They feel it gives them some control, they enjoy reading other people’s work and learning, and they use it as a chance to develop their own writing skills. Usually, the people who like rating are not professional writers though, but rather hobbyists looking for a little cash from their writing.
RATING ON HELIUM – CONS:
The negative side to rating is that I only seem to get stars for rating by volume, and not by ‘quality rates’. I don’t know if perhaps I’m having problems with ratings because I’m an editor and so I rate or review content differently than an average reader, but I actually do take the time to look at things like grammar, structure, syntax, and how the content matches the title, and formatting. Still, the highest I’ve ever managed to get on rating is 80%, I usually am around 73-76% maximum, and rating is time consuming for me. (*Keep this in mind when I get to the next part below with the *)
I’m an editor; I review content all day long, and here Helium wants me to do it essentially for free. That’s not my idea of a good time, working for free.
Most of the professional writers I’ve spoken to, do not enjoy the rating, and I am one of them. If you are a writer, you want to write. Rating is more a way of paying dues on the site, getting work from the writers for free, essentially, and time is big money for me these days, not to mention very precious since with my health, I’m down more than I’m up.
WRITING ON HELIUM
Rating and writing are both essential to make Helium work. I listed rating first, simply because there are tons of content sites out there where one can write, but the ratings are somewhat unique to Helium. Let’s look at writing on Helium.
WRITING ON HELIUM – PROS:
Helium does not require exclusive content, and for me, that is a huge plus. It allows me to recycle older content that has gone stale, is no longer published but once was, etc. What that means for me as a freelance writer is that Helium can bring a small residual income, without too much effort on content I’ve already written. Additionally, I can refresh content, update it, and put it up on Helium and choke some more money out of my work. For a freelancer, that’s an awesome thing.
Another positive is that Helium allows you to write on just about any subject or topic you’d like. Submitting titles is relatively easy, assuming they accept them. They have recently made searching for existing titles much easier too. Getting a title accepted isn’t really that difficult if you’ve searched existing titles already.
WRITING ON HELIUM – CONS:
There is very little chance on Helium to really break out and come up with a topic that just kills in page views and readers and thus money. It’s because with the way the site is set up, it’s nearly impossible to write anything unique. Helium puts up titles, or writers on the site do, and you can bet several people if not hundreds are all going to write to that title, using similar keywords and concepts. This means you are not really competing with other writers on Helium for ranking as much as you are sharing revenue with them in the order in which you are ranked.
Some of my highest paying articles weren’t to print magazines, believe it or not, but rather to content sites paying by the page views, where I picked a topic that rocked in page views, because it was unique and properly keyworded and searched for. With Helium, I can write the perfect article to draw traffic, but I’m at the
me
rcy of those who rank my writing not knowing anything about web content and/or writing to assure it gets ranked highly enough to get indexed in Google to even be seen by anyone other than the raters. It’s just too risky, and as such, I wouldn’t knowingly give Helium one of those types of articles.
Article for article, I make significantly more money on Suite101 (about a dollar per article per month average) and Associated Content (about $22 per article per year on average) than I probably ever will on Helium (41 articles over the course of over a year averaged .30 cents per article, excluding Marketplace sales). However, if you are recycling and refreshing content you’ve already written, the few minutes it takes to put that content up on Helium is well worth the extra residual income.
DEBATE ON HELIUM
Ah, Helium debates. Not my cup of tea, usually because people become too argumentative and nothing ever of real value gets relayed. I quit debating when I chose to drop out of law school, stoped being a contract negotiator, and became a full time writer. Well, Helium has found a way to take a debate and let both sides share their thoughts in the form of an article.
HELIUM DEBATES – PROS:
Both sides are able to be equally and fully present and represented, with no interruption, where each debater can provide information, facts, stats, resources and their personal opinion on an array of topics. There are some great arguments on the site.
HELIUM DEBATES – CONS:
No chance for rebuttal, and some of the ‘articles’ are more like mini-rants than professional sounding opinion pieces. There are as many poor arguments on the site as their are great ones.
CONTESTS ON HELIUM
At first, I shunned the Helium contests. I’d read on other message boards and sometimes even on Helium itself, where writers were accusing the ratings of being fixed, there was talk of some ratings circles where people were emailing their articles to each other and then they would look for those articles when rating, allowing one person to ‘win’ one contest while someone else ‘won’ another, in return for the promise of their rates later, and other such activities.
I was even told by a Helium employee that the ratings will fluctuate wildly upon the close of a contest. Why would contest ratings fluctuate wildly when other non-contest ratings would stay pretty standard?
I am not saying the ratings are fixed. I have no clue if they are or if they even can be fixed. I do know that the staff and channel stewards are adamant that it is impossible. I also know they say they police this internally to prevent any type of ratings fixes, and I believe they make an honest effort to keep the contests and the ratings as fair as possible. However, I don’t believe it’s impossible, but I can’t say it is or is not happen.
HELIUM CONTESTS – PROS:
Contests bring out the competitive spirit and allow a writer to push themselves to write compelling content. I like a good contest now and then, and so as a trial, I have actually been submitting contest entries to this week’s Helium contests. The topics are diverse, so there’s likely a contest channel to fit you at some point during the month, about things you might already know quite a bit about. I put up one article a couple of days ago, and I’m already listed as a contender in the contest section.
HELIUM CONTESTS – CONS:
The contest winnings are low. For the current contests, the first place winner will receive $60. If there are 20 articles in the contest channel, and a writer submits to all 20, the payout would be $3 per article. That’s extremely low pay for a freelance writer, it’s lower than what most people can make on Associated Content, and it’s significantly lower than I can make freelancing for non-content sites.
Generally, the articles I write for freelance for mags, websites, and newsletters AVERAGES 75 bucks per article, with some quite a bit higher than that, so $60 for a prize for a contest that might require 20 articles is not really a prize to me.
MORE HELIUM CONTEST PROS:
You don’t always have to write all 20 articles in order to win one of the three prizes. Since the contest is based on points, not number of articles, it is possible for someone to win the contest by writing just a few well-rated articles. However, keep in mind, a lot will depend on how many the other entrants will be writing too, so while one contest can have a winner out of someone who only wrote four or five articles, some channels are going to require you to write all 20 to win.
Only you can decide if the time to invest in the contests is worth it. I figure if I’ve already written some articles on that subject, or can write one quickly because it’s a topic I know, it’s worth it to see how it goes. I’m not very experienced with their contests, having only entered one accidentally awhile back, and now the one I’ve entered this week. I will update if anything interesting happens with the contest.
MARKETPLACE ON HELIUM
The Helium Marketplace is where I believe Helium shines. The Helium Marketplace takes some of the better features of other sites’ freelance arenas and combines them in the marketplace. There is no bidding, like on the freelance bidding sites. There are no queries and wondering how much you’ll get paid like freelancing on your own. There is no bias or favoritism as some have accused AC of with their targeted Calls.
The concept is quite simple: a publisher tells Helium what they are looking for and how much they are willing to pay, and writers on the site can submit an article that meets those requirements. After a certain period of open submissions, the publisher can review the articles, and choose which one to purchase and then the writer receives the posted paid amount as a credit to their Helium account.
HELIUM MARKETPLACE – PROS:
You know how much you’re going to get paid and how much work is required upfront by reading the guidelines, so you get to choose if you think it’s worth it. You aren’t competing with a ton of freelance writers, like you would querying to mags or online sites with posted submissions. For Marketplace articles, I’ve seen some with as few as three or four submissions and some general articles with as many as a couple of hundred. Still, this is a lot less competitive than open submissions in the freelance market.
If the article doesn’t get purchased, you can still make some money off of it when it transitions to Helium and then you can, of course, put it up on other sites that allow non-exclusive content.
HELIUM MARKETPLACE – CONS:
Not all publishers use the Marketplace exclusively for their content, so it is entirely possible, though I know Helium tries to limit this, that the publisher decides not to buy any article from Helium, even though writers have submitted.
You put a lot of extra work into a Marketplace article so that it specifically meets the publisher’s guidelines, but if you are not chosen, the article transitions to Helium’s regular article queue, where it will only make pennies. If the Marketplace had the option to opt out of transitioning, I think more writers would write for the Marketplace. I know I would submit more frequently.
Also, once an article transitions
, it might not match the title as well as someone new writing to the title could (since you had to adhere to the publisher’s needs), so new writers who can now write on the transitioned title can exceed your ranking. Helium’s official answer on this in their forums was to use a leapfrog to make it match the title better. That’s fine and dandy, assuming the ‘raters’ even accept the leapfrogged new article, and if they do, it’s having written two articles for the trickle of pennies they offer.
* (note from above) When two articles I wrote for the Marketplace were transitioned (meaning not purchased) from the Marketplace to the regular article queue, I went from having two articles rated at 1 of 25 and 2 of 65 before they transitioned to them being ranked 25 of 26 and 65 of 66 when they transitioned.
I do not see how this is mathematically possible. I was extremely upset with this too. When I requested an explanation of how this can happen, two days later I received an answer and an apology for taking so long to respond, which was greatly appreciated. The answer, however, still doesn’t satisfy me. New articles are brought in at the mid-way point. It was explained that if articles are submitted at the last minute, all vying for a position and Helium having to mark them linearly, then some articles will be bumped down.
I get that. But that doesn’t answer the question as to how, when the Marketplace CLOSED, no more articles could be submitted at that point, and I watched it close and change from Active, I was ranked in the first and second spot respectively, and then when they transition, I go to neary dead last. If I had been at or near the halfway point, I get that possibility. But in the first and second positions, it mathematically makes ZERO sense. One would have to assume that every person who rated my article in the transition period would have to have said the other article by comparison was much, much better than mine.
Yet now, my articles are slowly rising back up to the top and as of this morning are now at 5 out of 26 and 20 out of 66, and I figure since I haven’t been rating much the last two days, they’ll continue to increase when I start rating again. Just goes to show they did not belong at nearly dead last, and the explanation given to me simply doesn’t make sense anymore than the ratings being so low made sense.
I talked with a few other writers about this occurrence, and I am not the only one who has had this happen with Marketplace articles. I was, of course, assured that the ratings didn’t mean much to publishers, but I’ll argue that they do to some publishers, and every advantage matters, and they mean something to me and my stars on the Helium site too. Those two articles took my three star rating and for a couple of days, knocked me down to two stars (I only have 53 articles, so the third star is a quality star, and when the quality sinks on the ratings, so do my stars.)
MISC HELIUM INFORMATION
One of the things I did not like at first on Helium was the $25 minimum payout. It felt like it would take me forever to reach payout levels. Now, a couple years down the road, I have no issue with the payout levels, and it actually makes sense to me. If you have a good quantity of articles and you rate regularly, and if you enter any contest, write for the Marketplace, etc, you’ll reach payout every month. As it is now, with the 50 some odd articles I have up on Helium, I could easily reach payout every other month if I did nothing else but rate 3-4 articles per day to keep active. A friend of mine has over 300 articles, and she makes payout every month and never really rates anything at all.
There are some really strange topics on Helium that have made me scratch my head. One that was featured on the front page today was: Is it possible to have a literate nation? The title doesn’t define what a ‘literate nation’ is, but when I read some of the articles that responded to this, I get the impression I’m not the only one who wasn’t sure what the title meant. That seems to happen with a lot of titles.
I submitted a title: Are identical twins really identical?
My title was rejected with a note that I found a bit snarky that stated “…it is unlikely that identical twins would be absolutely identical.” Well, my article would have answered that, but it was rejected by the title alone. Then the person who provided this response went on to offer a title for me to write to: What it means to be identical twins. This title had nothing to do with the title or the article I proposed.
Because I could only submit a title, the article would have clearly supported my title, but not the one that was suggested. What this person doesn’t know is that I’ve written on this topic before, and on every site I write on it about, I get very good page views, because the title is a commonly searched for search term about identical twins. Now, in Helium’s defense, the person who rejected it did send an email that clearly said if I wanted to discuss it I could email them, but I simply chose not to and will put the article up elsewhere. Again, communciation on Helium is pretty good.
I have found mistakes and grammar errors in titles, capitalization and punctuation in titles that are atrocious, and that does lend some discredit to Helium. I would hope they police those titles better. Things such as using IT’S when it should have been ITS prevent me from writing to those titles, but if I tried to submit a similar title I would be rejected and told to write to an existing one.
I have found the Helium forums to be less than welcoming, and many of the channel stewards to be abrupt and somewhat rude at times. I have lurked in their forums and posted only very infrequently (like only three or four posts total). The answers are often curt and to the point, and some of the things I’ve seen lack professionalism, both from the writers and the channel stewards. I believe this is in part because they use high profile or highly prolific Helium writers as their channel stewards and sub-channel stewards, and these people aren’t staff working for Helium as professionals. I’m not saying they do a bad job, nor am I saying all of them are this way, but the tone and the feel of the forums left me very cold.
I think mostly I’m spoiled because my own writers forum is very supportive and helpful, that these other forums where people are competitive and blunt just don’t leave me with the same feeling. Helium’s forums leave a lot to be desired. I also do not like the fact that the forums on Helium are open to the public, when it is a site-specific forum, but that’s a personal issue.
The channel stewards should be setting the example of how the site runs, the expectations of the writers, and be setting the bar for behavior on the site, at least in my opinion, and I don’t feel some of the stewards do this well.
The few times I have had to correspond with Helium, they have answered relatively quickly, which is impressive for a site of this size. Communication, while not always overly friendly, is at least professional and usually quick.
There are reward programs frequently to allow writers on the site to make additional money, such as the Summer Reward-athon, and the stimulus pay, and special contests. These usually require a minimum number of rating and writing star
s to participate, so not everyone on the site is eligible for everything. I personally would prefer Helium simply offer some type of upfront payment review and skip all the contests, but I’m sure there are plenty of non-professional writers who enjoy the fun of the contests (and probably some pros who enjoy the change of pace too).
Personally, I’m in it for making a living. I’m a professional freelance writer, and as a professional writer, whose sole source of income is from writing and editing, the part of Helium that appeals to me the most is the Marketplace. I look at it especially when I’m slow on other jobs and needing something to fill in some free time.
That said, even for a professional writer, Helium provides a residual stream of passive income. Putting up some older non-exclusive articles from other content sites, putting up some articles you wrote but never sold, or even writing a few quickies now and then when you have time in between paying gigs, can really give you a nice little side income stream that is there for as long as Helium is around, and it looks pretty solid and growing to me.
So the bottom line, while I won’t recommend Helium as a place to get a paycheck, and you shouldn’t expect to make full-time income at Helium anywhere near what you can make on some other content sites or by freelancing on your own (unless you really work the Marketplace full-bore), Helium does have some great features. As the site continues to grow, I anticipate more opportunities for paying leads through Helium’s Marketplace, higher pay, and more contest/prize/award packages as well.
The last thing I’ll mention, and this is a major plus for Helium, but it’s not my cup of tea, is the Journalism Awards. I am not a journalist, and I am barely a columnist most days. I don’t care too much for reporting, so the journalism aspect just doesn’t appeal to me, but for those who are journalists or who are seeking to become journalists, the site has some amazing opportunities in this area. You can check them out for yourself here, but I can’t really review them since it’s not an area I’m familiar with.
If I could offer Helium any advice on how to improve the site overall from the perspective of the freelancer, I would offer the following suggestions:
1) Allow us to choose whether or not Marketplace articles transition to Helium. It’s not appropriate in all channels and venues for them to do so.
2) Allow for formatting, bold, italics and links in the Helium article template. Using Latin terms for medical or plants and such require italics, headers and sub-headings are the way content is done on the internet, and would benefit the Marketplace buyers too, and links really help with resources.
3) Offer more and more-frequent opportunities for upfront/flat pay so that people reach payout sooner, and reward more than just the star members (although it is nice to reward those who put the most into the site), so that new people can start seeing benefits more quickly. Flat out: pay more or pay something upfront. You know, we all want more money!
All in all, for new freelancers, those wanting to branch out into freelance, stay at home moms, college students practicing their writing skills, or just anyone who wants a little bit of money for answering questions, writing articles, opinions, and commentary, and challenging themselves in contests, Helium is not a bad place. For professional writers, Helium still leaves something to be desired in pay, venue and how the work is presented, but the Marketplace is changing and growing and is a great place for another avenue of paying leads. Some of those articles have paid well into the hundreds of dollars.
I would recommend Helium in general, as long as everyone who goes into it does so knowing it’s not going to be a big paying market and you shouldn’t expect to get rich there. And that is my very long-winded, in-depth review of my experience with Helium.com.
If you haven’t checked them out, I suggest you do so, if for no other reason than to see all they offer. There really is something for almost everyone, and if you have a few non-exclusives you’ve written elsewhere, it can’t hurt you to drop them in there under an appropriate title and experience for yourself how Helium works for you.
Good luck and hope this helped!
Love and stuff,
Michy
PS: Like this wasn’t long enough but this one is major important!
Fix it so that when we send feedback to a writer while we are rating, they don’t get our email address!
I have sent a few emails with quality eedback to a writer, only to have them get my email address and two of them added me to their email forwards list to send me all sorts of happy, sappy, goofy emails that I don’t want, and two of them asked me for free writing coaching and editing help! Use an on-site email/inbox or don’t allow any contact, but don’t give out my email address to others on the site! I won’t give feedback to writers anymore because of this, until it is improved.
