Helium - Can You Make Money?
83Introduction
I joined Helium about 2 years ago with mixed results. I was curious to see how satisfying it would be as a writing workshop but also attracted by the idea of being paid to write. More about earning, money and wealth later!
Helium certainly works as a platform for producing written content although it has a number of limitations as a publishing tool:
- There isn't the freedom to be creative in terms of layout, fonts, photographs or illustrations (unlike HubPages)
- The rating system is flawed
- You can't delete articles once written (ie you loose control of your own content)
- Articles are difficult to edit because a 'random' Helium user has to decide if your edited version is better than the original or not - try changing one word and getting the change accepted!
Helium Rating
On Helium, unlike HubPages, writers are encouraged to write within a predetermined title. Helium then groups articles together with the same title. These articles are then rated by other helium users and are arranged in order of popularity. This 'popular' poll has its limitations and it can be discouraging to find articles poorly written with no punctuation moved above your own superbly crafted piece.
The way to get your own work to 'move' is to rate other people's work. If you chose to rate then you are presented with two 'random' articles in a broad catagory you have written for yourself. You then have to decide 'is article A 'better' than article B?'.
What Goes Up must Come Down
This is highly subjective. How much should you be influenced by content and how much by presentation, style, punctuation, grammar etc.? On the basis of having written a humourous short story, I found myself having to review some painfully bad poetry. Anyway, I would argue that it is almost impossible to 'rate' poetry unless you have some clear criteria. Poetry is more a matter of personal taste.
The results of this rating system are very mixed and often the top article is not the 'best'. My experience is that new articles tend to move rapidly to the top but then tend to slide down the order with time regardless of whether the writer takes the time to rate other people's articles. Perhaps that's why they call it Helium? Even noticed how a toy helium balloon floats skyward when you buy it and 24 hours later it's resting on the floor?
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The Money - Peanuts or Real Cash?
How do you earn money? Helium are a bit caggy about exactly how this works but it appears to be based on a number of hits or impressions (1/10th cent per hit?) on the article. Initially the number of hits are relatively high because:
- Helium often features new articles within the site
- The search engines find the article and initially give it greater prominence because it is new
- New articles rise in the Helium ratings initially
The Catch
The good thing with Helium is you don't need to sign up with cash-earning programs such as AdSense. But there is a catch - you need to earn $25 before you can realise your earnings (via PayPal). Surprisingly, most people complain they never reach this modest figure.
Initially, I wrote 10 articles of varying quality and content. At first I was earning around 50c from my better articles per month but this rapidly fell so now my best article is earning around 7c a month and the rest 0-1c a month. This means unless I write more articles it might be another decade before I can cash in my first $25!
In practice, I suspect Helium seldom have to pay out and if they do they still make plenty of interest on their writer's earnings during the period the total takes to reach the payout value.
Marketplace
Two people have responded to this article pointing out that you can make more money using the Marketplace area of Helium. In this case you write articles for an external publisher who, if they decide to buy, pay an agreed amount for the article. There is still the problem that it is competitive and your articles will not necessarily be bought.
Helium is fine as a social networking site and some people find it a great place to learn writing skills. But don't go there if you want to make serious money.
Do it for Writing, not for Money
The mistake many people make with Helium projections is to assume their initial earnings on an article will be sustained over decades. The reality is most Helium articles have a short shelf life and the lack of control over your own content and the advertising plus the quirky rating system make it far less attractive than a site like HubPages.
Clearly there are good writers out there earning more than $25 a year but they are the exception and they will need a large number of articles in order to reach this level of payment.
In other words, don't join Helium purely to make money or earn a significant income!
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Comments
Yes - early days for me but so far I find Hubs much more flexible than Helium
Good information. Thanks Rik.
I will have to look into it, thanks for the info.
Well explained, Rick. Recently, one or two writers have started to be very successful on Helium, but when you look into it more deeply, you'll see they're making their money by selling to publishers on the Marketplace (where ratings are irrelevant to whether yr article sells).
I have to correct you on the ratings - I've had many of my articles on the site for a year and they've moved up the ratings, not down. But with around 180 articles, I make around $7 a month. Not much when you think how many hours they took to write!
Thanks for your input Marisa. $7 a month sounds pretty good for Helium but I agree its not a good hourly rate for the effort you've put in. You could make more money selling a single article to a magazine once a year.
`Thanx Rik I am a member of Helium I am glad you did the work for me ;-)
My first real report I made I thought was not very good really. I published it myself using 7dollarsecrets script. To date I have made over $300.00 selling it for $7.00 In a year! I thought that wasnt good But if I made several more I would out do hubpages,helium, and associated content! I wrote a hub on 7dollar secrets . Again Rik Thank you !!!!!!!
The problem with writing out in the real world is finding someone to buy your stuff. I found a magazine about 10 years ago that would buy almost anything but they only paid around $50 an article. Unfortunately it doesn't exist any more. Writing for more serious magazines is more hit and miss because they don't always take what you submit - I am keen on HubPages but finding it difficult to find the time to write with my day job ...
Helium is okay, I've only been a member for a couple of months, and I've got 70 dollars in my account. The key is to only spend time writing in the marketplace, where publishers list articles they need, then write for those and hope you get picked. Some of my articles have only made about three pennies since the beginning, and that's a waste of time. I agree the rating system is goofy. I doubt that anyone actually reads those articles before they pick their favorite. I've had really good articles end up at the bottom of the list, it's annoying.
Yes CTwritergal, what you say lines up with Marisa's comment about marketplace being where the money is. I've only being doing Hubs since christmas (6 hubs) and have made more than twice as much as I've made with Helium (10 articles) posted 6 months ago.
WriterGig left this message which I accidentally deleted -
"Check out eHow. I am making way more per article with eHow than these figures for Helium articles."
Its a good article - worth reading!
Thanks for the heads up, sounds like it would be a hard slog to make any cash from helium. Better off publishing on my own site.
Helium is not all that bad. This is actually a very biased article based on your unsuccessful experience.
I have been with Helium for 6 months now. I started writing actively 3 months ago. I have sold one article in marketplace for $100 and I have won several contests. Also if you write articles that attract a lot of hits, you can make good money from that article. Example: working from home, computer articles, technology....
Right now Helium has a upfront payment thing going on through April. You can get up front payments per article.
Your article is good but you should mention that Helium is not totally a waste of time. It has actually helped me generate a portfolio which helped me land a blogging job where I am getting $500 per month.
Anyway good Luck
A
Thank you for the information. Looks like I wont be wasting my time at Helium.
I think there have been some improvements so it may still be worth checking it out.
Glad this article was of some use.
Looks like it's better to write for the market
I've been on Helium for a few months but felt discouraged writing there- mainly because of the rating system and because of my fragile ego...lol....I needed more encouragement (which I get here at HubPages!)I also like the fact that I can be more creative here at hubPages, like you said with pictures, adsense, ebay and amazon capsules.At some point if I get really desperate I'll try writing for the MarketPlace but I'm trying to stay away from writing someone elses content for right now-I've done that with my art and my art passion turned commercial- and I don't want to see that happen with my writing too. Once you start writing what someone else dicates it changes the whole writing experience.
Dorsi
Thanks for stopping by - I see you are on blogatiser (like me). I know exactly what you mean. Quite a bit of my day job involves writing but most of it is so dull! The great thing about HubPages is the freedom to write what you like, when you like. I'm not going to get rich here but it is a great place to be.
I have been at helium for months now. It isn't worth the time and effort. In order to grow as a writer one needs feedback not just a thumbs up or thumbs down vote. This is another great thing about Hubpages.
thanks for the advice. Really helpful
SirDent - Yes totally agree. Feedback is great from Hubbers and I like the freedom to edit when I want, adding pictures, graphics etc.
Fianita - Glad you found it useful Welcome to HubPages!
I tried helium, and got frustrated for the same reasons you did. Great hub, and hubs are better!
Thanks for the feedback Don!
I am new to Helium and just wrote my first article. I was thinking about trying Helium too, but it doesn't sound like it would be worthwhile. I'll stay here with HubPages and see if it is profitable. Another decent site is Ehow.com. Thanks for your input. Please check out my article when you get a chance.
Thank you for this article. I am new to both HubPages and Helium. I joined HubPages first. I love writing, been doing it all my life. New to this Interweb thing, though. What I got from your article and some of the comments is that on Helium I should devote most of my time to the Marketplace section. I'm gonna keep at it. Thanks again.
I think EHow is better than Helium, as you said Helium is so hard to edit and I don't care for that!
Wendy - HubPages is good - you won't get rich overnight but I like being able to add visuals to my writing and editing my Hubs whenever I like.
HC - Yes i keep meaning to try Helium marketplace but never get round to it.
02SmithA - Must check out Ehow as Wendy has also mentioned it - Thanks!
Thanks for sharing. I've written about 8 articles for Hubpages and earned a grand total of 0.04c.
The money does improve with time. One of the good things with HubPages s you get 10% of the earnings from people who sign up via your hub. I have 27 of these with 260 hubs so far so I earn far more from referrals than from my own Hubs.
Good experience you had about making money. Its very nice and informative hub.
I am also a helium writer and in the past year made almost 27 dollars.
Tnanks for that Health Care - that sounds a reasonable amount - how many articles?
I also write for Helium. I joined in June 2008 and have written 42 articles. I am currently making about 30 cents per day on my articles and have not yet written one this year. I received 2 checks in 2008 and am about to receive another. I only sold 1 article last year.
The keys to success on Helium are writing articles that people will be interested in and linking to other sources. You can make a little money there.
Thanks for this - I accept Helium has improved since this hub was written.
hubpages is better. I have tried Helium. In Helium you can't do any editing like you can do on Hubpages. Well, there are leapfrogs but this obviously reduces a writers potential. You'll have to wait until you get a leapfrog just to make a few changes?!....No, Hubpages is much better, if you take editing into consideration. Now, you can also make money with Kontera on hubpages. It's good enough and I guess much faster than Helium where the earnings are really slow.
Luigino - Couldn't agree more - I found leapfrogs infuriating - I want to edit my own work when I want and delete it if I want too or move it somewhere else. With Helium you effectively loose the copyright to your own work!
Rik, Helium has made several changes recently - I've updated my Helium Hub if you want to check it out (won't link here - don't want to spam!). Income is no longer truly passive - you have to maintain at least one rating star at all times, otherwise you earn nothing.
Marketplace is still the only worthwhile part of the site - but as someone pointed out to me, if you're good enough to compete against 300 or 400 other writers to sell a Marketplace article, you could sell it for the same money on a freelance writing site or on Constant Content.
As far as the passive income is concerned - yes, I agree that if you write good articles you'll get paid, but my Hubs earn more per month than my Helium articles on similar subjects.
Thanks Marisa for this - Yes its the rating thing I really object to - I spent hours having to compare two bits of (bad) poetry or even worse comparing 2 apparently identical articles and guessing which one had been edited. I've lost my star so no more Helium cash for me!
On the other hand, here at Hubpages, we can rate an article up or down or add a constructive comment, as you have done here, regardless of Hub Score and totally independent of what we earn!
Well said RikRavodo,
You can eanr only if you are interested to write, if you are interested to earn you will write only useless artciles..
Trsmd - so right - good content is the key!
Rik - one positive out of all Helium's changes is that my earnings have gone up (I assume because there's a lot less authors eligible to earn these days).
So now I'm taking the trouble to maintain that rating star so I can continue to earn on the articles I've got (though I'm not going to add any more). You only need ten "quality" rates per month to earn a star. It's long been rumoured that time is part of the algorithm, so I rate slowly - I open Helium in a separate window and leave each pair of articles up for several minutes before I go back and rate them. It seems to work!
I was on Helium for many months. Earned$!1.42 Hubba Hubba Yeah!
Marisa - thanks for your update. I must try and find the time to 'revitalise' my account by rating and see if I can earn again.
Tom - Yes Helium certainly isn't a get rich quick scheme!
Triond is the same story. I wish it was as simple as write what you want and earn money, but that seldom happens.
Cashmere I agree. I find there is a compromise between writing what I enjoy and making money so I try to do a bit of both!
I had the same issues when I was over at Helium. Already I enjoy Hubpages style much more. Nice hub
rallenbrewster - Yes I look at Helium occasionally but HubPages is my writing home now. Thanks for stopping by to read and Welcome to hubPages!
Great article! Here's one of mine: http://hubpages.com/hub/writingcontest
I loved the Helium Marketplace until they started requiring you to qualify to write for the marketplace. To be qualified you have to maintain writing and rating stars.
m2mboyz - I agree Helium just doesn't work for me because of the rating star thing ..
Kimberly - Thanks for stopping by
I was a contributor to Helium since its beta stage but unfortunately, they had this change where writers that aren't from English-speaking countries aren't allowed to contribute. I was able to reach $25 fairly fast because I won the contests and a number of my articles were in the top 25%...and earned more after that. I think Helium helped me develop my writing skills (and reading skills as well because of all the rating I had to do!). I have to admit I still feel bad that I got sort of booted out just because of the circumstance that I'm not a native English speaker.
Anyway, I agree that Helium won't work for you when it comes to earning a lot if you don't have enough time to invest writing good quality articles and rating other articles at the same time.
Kuirq - thanks for your thoughts. Yes it was the Helium rating system that I really didn't like. Here at Hubpages there is no pressure to rate at all and if you don't feel like making a comment you can just click the 'up' or 'down' buttons.
For me, the rating system wasn't very discouraging though, I kind of liked being able to read random things. HubPages is very appealing, I especially like that we have control of our hubs and I like the idea of capsules.
Thanks for the info.I guess I'll skip Helium.
April - thanks for reading this Hub!
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Rudra says:
2 years ago
Never tried Helium. Looks like Hubs are better.