Helium.com - Writing for Fun or Writing to Make Money?

Helium.com is a site where you're paid to write articles, by a combination of one-off payments and revenue share. There are other revenue sharing sites - so is Helium a good choice or can you do better elsewhere?

On the plus side, Helium.com is a place to sharpen your skills against other writers. It's not just a place for revenue-sharing: you can take part in contests, or you can compete to sell your articles to publishers in the Marketplace. The site forces you to read and assess other writers' work, and to see it ranked against your own, which can be educational (and sometimes frustrating!).

But if your goal is to create a passive income source from your writing, there are reasons to have reservations about Helium.

Passive Income on Helium

There are several ways to earn money at Helium. Like other articles writing sites, Helium pays a daily share of the site's revenue on each article. On Helium, that's based on a secret formula.

If I compare my revenue share on Helium with my revenue share on HubPages, I get the following:

Helium: 190 articles earning $20 monthly = 13 cents per article per month (average)

HubPages: 94 articles earning $120 monthly = $1.28 per article per month (average)

Note these are averages - some of my articles earn far more, others earn much less.

On these figures, HubPages wins hands down. Even more so, when you consider that articles tend to earn at a faster rate the older they get: all my Helium articles are well over 2 years old, whereas my Hubs vary in age from 2 years to only a few weeks.

It's true that Hubs take longer to write than Helium articles, because they perform best when enriched with photos and videos. However, at HubPages there's no obligation to read and rate other Hubbers' work, whereas at Helium you must spend time rating to qualify for earnings. Many Heliumites overlook rating time when evaluating the two sites - in my book, it evens out (and I find embellishing my own Hubs more fun than rating!).

Helium members are coy about revealing their earnings, but those that do mention their earnings on the forums are earning around the same - an average of 10 to 20 cents per article per month.

It's harder these days to get accurate figures, because Heliumites rarely talk about their passive income, only their total income, which includes upfront payments and Marketplace. However a prominent steward was recently spruiking her success on the forums. When I asked her to state just her passive income, it sounded impressive because she has thousands of articles. But sure enough, it worked out at less than 20 cents per article per month.

To make matters worse, Helium's passive income is no longer truly passive. It's still paid, but now it's conditional on maintaining a minimum level of activity on the site (currently one rating star).

Helium changes the rules

For the first couple of years, Helium marketed itself as a place to earn long-term passive income. Writers contributed hundreds of articles, believing such a fundamental feature of the site would never change.

It has. You don't earn a cent on Helium now unless you maintain a "rating star". It's true that doesn't take much effort - a few hours rating articles once a month. But it does mean you can't go on a long trip and expect your articles to go on earning while you're away - and it's an example of how Helium has changed the rules several times.

Helium's original standard for articles was only 100 words, and there were no conditions on earning income. Since then the following changes have occurred:

Change #1 - Minimum article length of 200 words (later increased to 300, now 400). Articles under 100 words deleted.
Change #2 - 1 rating star required to receive payout of earnings.
Change #3 - "non-performing" titles deleted, and with them all the articles within those titles.
Change #4 - One rating star required at all times to earn income. Articles earn no income on days when the writer has no star.
Change #5 - Upfront payments of 50 cents to $2.50 introduced for writers with writing stars. Criteria for earning writing stars tightened - higher standards, and creative writing does not count.
Change #6 - articles under 350 words now being deleted.

The trend is clear, and there's no reason to suppose it won't continue. Helium keeps on raising the bar - I suspect it won't be long before they require 2 rating stars to earn income. And if you don't like the changes, too bad - you can't take your articles away.

Which leads me to the point which, for me, is the major downside of Helium:

Helium is Permanent!

Once you post an article on Helium, it’s there forever. You can’t delete it, even if you cancel your membership. And if you get banned for any reason, they keep your articles.

Helium will tell you it's only taking "first rights" - you can publish your articles elsewhere as often as you like.

But that freedom is illusory. Why? Because there is a widespread perception on the internet that search engines don’t like duplicate content.

If this is news to you, read this Hub on Google and duplicate content. It is just a theory (because Google doesn't reveal all its secrets!). However, most websites rely heavily on Google for traffic, so they won't take the risk of buying articles that already appear elsewhere online. Why do you think successful Marketplace articles are deleted from the site?

Book publishers also like to publish original work. Last year, there was a poet on Helium who lost out on being included in an anthology because her poems were on Helium, and the publisher wouldn't use them unless they could be deleted from the site.

It is possible to rewrite (or "spin") articles so they're different enough not to trigger duplicate content filters. However, it does take some effort. And for thing like poetry, it would be almost impossible!

Upfront Payments

A positive rule change at Helium was the introduction of upfront payments. If you are eligible, you get a one-off payment if you write one of the first 5 articles in a new topic, on top of the usual passive income.

Eligibility is based on the quality and quantity of the articles you already have posted on the site, indicated by "writing stars". If you have one writing star, you get 50 cents upfront, rising to $2.50 upfront if you have 5 writing stars.

To get one writing star, you theoretically need to write only 4 to 29 articles - but 90% of them must be rated in the top 25% of the topic. To earn 5 writing stars, you must have over 300 articles on the site, and 85% of them must still be in the top 25%.

The rating percentile is the problem, because rating is something over which you have less control than you think. Writing a quality article doesn't automatically mean a top ranking. You can leapfrog a poorly performing article, but there's no guarantee it will move up.

To fairly assess the value of the upfront payments, you need to take into account the amount of time spent on writing, rewriting and leapfrogging to gain and maintain your writing stars.

The "Big Money" on Helium

The big earner on Helium is the Marketplace, where you compete to sell articles to publishers on a topic they specify, for a pre-set amount. If your article sells, it’s deleted from the site – which just illustrates my point about publishers not accepting duplicate content! The good news is that most Marketplace publishers completely ignore the ratings in making their choice.

You can also compete in regular contests. The big problem with contests is that the winners are decided on ratings (see the "Rating" box above), so there's no guarantee the best article will win.

But I have reservations about Marketplace and contests. The topics are hotly contested - if you're good enough to win consistently against hundreds of other writers, you're probably good enough to get better-paid work on freelance writing sites like Elance or Guru.com.. And on those sites, if you don't sell the article to one publisher, you still own the article and can try selling it to someone else.

Helium as Portfolio

Helium claims their site is a great place to build a writing portfolio - a showcase to which you can refer publishers who might be interested in hiring you.

Personally, I think it's the worst possible place to build a portfolio. Why would you refer a publisher to an article on Helium, when there's a risk the article could be rated 18 out of 25 that particular week? True, they can still see your article is good - but a bad rating can't help but have a subconscious impact.

Besides, as you writing improves, you can't delete any articles you may now be ashamed of - and revising them through the leapfrog process is not always easy.

There are plenty of other places where you won't face such restrictions - right here at HubPages, for one. If a publisher likes the Hub, you can delete it from HubPages so they can buy it. And you can dress it up with photos and layout, which (like the rating) don't have a direct bearing on the worth of your article but can't help but have a psychological impact.

Helium for Internet Marketing

Last month, I briefly started writing on Helium again, because it's now possible to include hyperlinks in articles. I thought that meant I could use Helium to promote my other websites (if you're not sure how that works, read the Hub about blogging for backlinks at Today dot com).

However I soon discovered that all links in Helium articles are "no follow" - which means they're useless!

The Bottom Line

If you enjoy competing with other writers, Helium.com can be fun. But given the site's habit of frequently changing the rules, it doesn't make sense to rely on them as a source of passive income - you simply can't be sure that a future rule change won't turn off the tap.

For an interesting comparison of Helium with other writing websites, read Hal Licino's Hub on what writing sites pay.

If you like the site, I recommend you write exclusively for the Helium Marketplace section. Any articles that don't sell will at least earn you ongoing pennies.

Make Money by Blogging

With the financial crisis in full swing (don't let the government Inc fool you), many people are turning to the internet as a way of making money. I have made my living online for three years now, and I can promise you - it is no easy feat.

A few lucky souls hit big time by chance, and I am always amazed at the occasional "rags to riches" stories. You know the ones - single Mum starts a blog about the trials and tribulations of raising three kids alone and gets picked up by a network with a big deal TV show and goes on to world wide acclaim and fortune. I will let you in on a secret - NOT GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU. Sorry - reality bites. The chances of this being you are so slim - you would be better off buying a lottery ticket if this is any part of your plan to online success.

It is competitive out here; and I mean really, really competitive; the sort of competitive you can only dream about in the "real world," because you are not limited by geographic location and are competing with the entire world. I have had sites hacked and taken out of commission for successfully targeting the right keyword. I have people following me around and buying sites with similar names to the ones I own, and then emailing me trying to sell them to me. I have people here on hubpages copying what I write and writing an article about the same thing 3 days later. I spend more time protecting my personal sites from hackers and spammers, building links and doing background work than I do writing.

When I first started out to make money by blogging, I had this idyllic image in my head. I am well educated, can turn a mean phrase and like to think I can be witty when the moon is in the right ascension. Piece of piss - I will sit down at a computer, write about the world according to Mark and be rich and famous by next month. Ha!

Sadly - the qualities our society seem to value are not the ones I speak about. I am neither controversial enough or nasty enough to be a total success. I should be paying some Russian hacker to break into my competitors sites and destroy their databases. But - I am too much of a nice guy to do that.

Don't get me wrong - despite the fact that I live in Europe and get paid in dollars - I make a reasonable living, but it is at least 10000% harder than I anticipated, requires constant adaptation and is far less lucrative than a lot of people would have you believe. Most of the people making real money online are doing so in an underhanded - if not criminal - fashion. And that includes google.

Making money at hubpages. I would heartily recommend - if you are a beginner - starting out on hubpages and using them as a way of learning what will and will not work as far as making money goes. This site os not a blog - nor will it ever be, but there are distinct advantages to using their technical knowledge that is worth giving up 50% of the income. And yes - I know hubpages only takes 40% of the impressions - but the site is set up ion such a way as most people visiting will only visit one page of yours.

If you wish to make money by blogging, there are a number of skills you will need to learn that are completely unrelated to writing. You will need to learn how to do keyword research and create incoming links to your sites, you will need to suck it up, admit there are things you do not know and find some one you can trust to ask about where you are going wrong, but most importantly - you are going to have to learn that - even if you do everything right - it is still possible to fail. The best advice I can give is to diversify - whatever that means to you. Find as many different clients as possible if you are a freelance writer; find as many different affiliate programs as possible if you are an affiliate marketer; find as many different, unrelated niches as possible if you are making money with google adsense. Diversify, diversify, diversify.

Good luck.