Practically every alternative person browsing the Internet nowadays is already a writer or a potential writer looking for opportunities to unfurl his hitherto hidden writing talents! Internet is now an ever-growing storehouse of useful information, useless information, news, non-sense, facts, fiction and filth. Thanks to the burgeoning success of Google’s Adword context sensitive advertising and the Adsense program of sharing the advertise revenue with webpage owners, there has been an explosive growth in the demand for written material in the web-world.

So, we have blogging sites, web-content publishing and sharing sites, web-magazines and so on which welcome writers with both hands (at times with both legs too!) luring them to write on their sites and offering them “great earning opportunities”.

Many people with or without writing talents, with or without good command in English language get lured by these sites and join them hoping that they will rake in dollars sooner or later by virtue of their writing virtuosity. While some succeed, many get disillusioned either to drop away or to ditch one site and try their luck in another!

The mistake many of such people do is not going deep into the terms and conditions of each site, the qualifications, capabilities and commitments demanded and the “fine prints” in the Terms of Agreement. Result? Disillusionment and whining. Some people even go to the extreme of labeling genuine sites as scams and start mudslinging exercise.

This article is meant to guide such of those writers who are either looking for new avenues of earning or looking for switch over from one avenue to another, to know the minimum basics of 2 popular sites: Helium.com and AssociatedContent.com

1) Helium.com:

• Any one above 13 years of age can join.
• Writers from India, Phillipines, Taiwan (and a few more countries) are currently not permitted to write in the site
• No editorial scrutiny of articles at entry.
• No profanity, vulgarity, pornography please
• All your posts are accepted on non-exclusive basis (It means you can post articles published elsewhere too). No insistence on original content. You are the copy right holder.
• Multiple articles under single titles
• No scope for posting pictures and videos
• You have to earn writing stars to start getting up-front payments for your articles. (stars depend on your writing quantity and quality). Upfront available even for non-original content. (No. Not plagiarism!)
• You have the obligation to rate other writer’s articles
• You have to have at least 1 writing star to get your page view earnings ($0.5 to $2.5 per article based on no. of stars)
• Every page view of your article generates some income. Not related to ad-clicks. The rate of payment (how many dollars per 1000 page views) is not disclosed.
• Opportunity to write in weekly contests to win big money
• Opportunity to write in “Marketplace” in competition with other writers and if selected, good payment assured ($12 to $120 and even above).
• Minimum payout: $25 (Caution: Unless you earn upfront etc, it may even take years to cross this amount by page view pennies alone!)
• Payment through: Paypal (Caution: Countries like Pakistan have no Paypal services)
• ARTICLES ONCE POSTED CANNOT BE DELETED.
• Even if your account is terminated, Helium has the rights to keep your articles in publication (non-exclusive basis).
• Account will be terminated if Plagiarism is done.

2) ASSOCIATED CONTENT:

• Any one above 18 years can apply for joining the site.
• You have to submit your first 3 articles for editorial scrutiny and only if they are approved, you can start writing regularly without editorial scrutiny.
• 3 major modes of accepting articles:
  
• (1) Exclusive: original, unpublished, articles eligible “upfront payment” Accepted articles cannot be deleted, nor published elsewhere. These articles are also eligible for “performance payment”
  
  (2) Non-exclusive: original, unpublished, articles eligible upfront payments, if accepted. The writer is free to re-publish it anywhere else. Posted articles can not be deleted. Eligible also for earning performance payment.
  
  (3) Performance-Payment only: Any number of articles freely and all such articles can earn performance payment. The articles need not be unpublished ones. The author is free to delete them. Articles rejected in previous 2 cases can also be posted here.
• Upfront payments can be from $3 to 12 or more.
• Warning: Non US authors cannot get upfront payment.
• No profanity, vulgarity, pornography please
• Every page view of your article generates some income. Not related to ad-clicks. The rate of payment is $1.5 per 1000 page views. More earnings possible based on your “clout” rating at AC.
• Pictures and videos too are accepted
• Minimum payout: $1.5 (This is a great plus point!)
• Payment through: Paypal (and Check inside US)
• Account will be terminated if Plagiarism is done.

In the next part of article, we shall study about a couple of more sites.