Writing For Helium - It's Time To Return If You Stayed Away
69Helium, one of the popular “information exchange” web sites where many freelance writers write their articles and earn nominal income, became a shade unpopular in the last few months; it was owing to some policy changes the site made in the terms of contract related to earnings and payments.
This created lot of complaints from Helium members and after quite some fireworks at the Helium discussion boards, Helium has recently taken some corrective measures to assuage the genuine feelings of its members. Before going in to what has happened recently and why it is now time for those who left Helium to return to the site, let us have a brief look at what really happened in the last few months.
Making Upfront Payment a Permanent Feature by Helium
Helium, based on the success of the two “rewar-athon” programs they conducted to attract writers and articles at large scale, decided to make payment of upfront fees for each article published by writers under all channels, except for a few ineligible channels as a permanent feature. Based on the number of “writing stars” that one possesses, the Helium writer -member can earn from 0.5 dollar (for 1 writing star) to 2.5 dollars (for 5 writing stars) per article.
The Need for Having 1 Rating Star at Helium for Getting Upfront Payment
The only lacuna was that the writer should also maintain 1 rating star as minimum to become eligible for getting the payment. (For those uninitiated: in Helium, in addition to writing, members are expected to “rate” others’ articles to sort them in ranks based on the quality and value of articles under each title. Based on the number of ratings one does in a monthly as well as quarterly cycle, rating stars are awarded).
The crucial issue in this condition was that on the last day of each month at the specific “closing time”, the member should possess at least 1 rating star to get the payment for whatever work he/she had done over the entire month. In other words, if a 4-star writing member had written some 25 articles over the month, done his share of rating, but somehow if the single rating star blinks away, the member loses the entire monthly earnings on upfront payment ($50 in our example)!
The Need for Having 1 Rating Star for Getting page View Earnings
In addition to upfront payments, Helium also pays “page view pennies” to the writers based on the number of viewers visiting the authors’ articles. Helium originally promised its members that this payment is perpetual and as long as a member continues to be active in Helium (based on certain conditions) their past articles will keep on earning money for them based on readership.
However, Helium changed the rules to the effect that unless the members maintain at least one writing star on a continuous basis, they will lose their “page view earnings” on day-to-day basis. It means, if a member happens to lose a single rating star even on a single day, his penny earnings on that day will not be credited to his account.
This condition too created heartburn for many writers who have contributed a lot of articles in Helium in the past, but somehow are not keen on being continuously active in Helium. It means, their perpetual earnings promised earlier will not come, unless they do rating at Helium, irrespective of whether they write afresh at Helium or not.
Further several members were not sure of maintaining their star on the crucial last day of the month. Naturally, there were lots of complaints on this issue at Helium discussion boards.
Helium Has Done Corrections Now on all these Issue
Helium is one site which maintains excellent interaction with its members. Helium is mostly receptive to new ideas coming from members and the site always tries to redress genuine complaints.
In this case, though the issue dragged for a while, Helium has done some tweaking to the rating star algorithm now. It is now much easier to get and retain your rating stars.
Earnings made much easier
Helium has now totally done away with the condition of possessing 1 rating star on last day of month to get your upfront earnings. So, even if you do not rate, you are assured of your upfront earning for all articles you have written under eligible channels.
However, you have to maintain your 1 rating star minimum, on day to day basis, if you want to get your page view earnings.
A new rule now - upfront payment eligible for titles with 5 or less articles only
This is not a big issue in any case. There are a plethora of titles available for you to write. You can create your own titles too and if approved and if you write the first article, you are eligible to get a dollar bonus too!
Welcome back to Helium
So, such of those writers, who have kept away from Helium, can now do a rethink. Since upfront payments are there permanently and Helium pays it for non-exclusive articles too, it is quite advantageous to be in Helium. Rating burden has been lessened. Hopefully, Helium may ease some of the conditions regarding payouts further in future.
As a 5-star-writer who has tasted success in Helium, I welcome you writers to Helium!
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Comments
I agree with what you have said Lisa, in your last para. But I hope Helium will rectify some flaws over the long run. Though it is human tendency to deny existance of a problem, Helium, in the past have always been turning around to rectify them eventually.
CV, I've been at Helium for over two years and I found them very responsive in the early days. However, in the last year they have made many changes which have changed the way the site works, making it more difficult to earn passive income. To me, it is morally wrong of them to renege on the promises they made in the early days, and I have no confidence that they will honour their bargains in the future. In other words, I don't trust them, and therefore don't feel comfortable contributing more articles.
Hello CV, as a former Helium member I must disagree with your assessment of this site. You may have had good relations with the staff of Helium but this was not true in my case. I was banned from the site with no chance of reinstatement or clear explanation of why they took this action. Of course they still display my articles and profile as if I am still active there.
Helium seems desperate now. They are losing many of their writers because nothing is certain on the site. The TOS can change at any time and does so often. I feel bad for those members who have many articles published there because Helium seems doomed to failure. By the way, welcome to hubpages, it makes Helium seem like a joke.
Randy, I do think Helium will continue to survive because it seems to lure in newbie writers, and many of them never think to "look above the parapet" to see what other options exist.
If CV writes mainly for the upfront payments, he's probably not to worried about the risk of a ban - but what he doesn't emphasise is that you must have writing stars before you can earn any upfront payments at all. It has been getting harder and harder to earn writing stars at Helium - I once had four, and now (for the exact same set of 191 articles) I have one.
That means anyone wanting to earn upfront payments must first write a whole lot of articles for virtually nothing - and in assessing your true pay per article, you really must take that into account.
Marisa,
I agree that it is not too easy for the new-comer to get stars today in Helium, unless he/she is dedicated to the site, be patient to write quality articles on titles having more than 5 articles (without upfront) to get a better rating percentile, be attentive to the site by regularly leapfrogging the articles etc.
For an established writer like you, perhaps what makes you lose the stars is the absence of periodic leapfrogging. When others keep leapfrogging, there are chances very much that your articles go down in rankings.
What I have seen in any site, be it Hubpages, Helium or S101, dedication matters more than anything else.
While you have seen a perceptible success in Hubpages, I have not seen it. It may be to do with lots of things like subject, SEO, hot key words etc etc. For me, the $2.5 per article comes to my pocket in Helium if I spend just 45 minutes to craft a reasonably good article without many of the above concerns. No formatting, no adding pictures, no videos, nothing.
A bird in hand at Helium, has so far proved to be worth 10 in Hubpage's bushes for me!
Of course experience varies for individuals.
CVR
Marisa Wright says:
6 months ago
CV, I agree with you that it seems to be easier to get and maintain a rating star - in fact, I just checked and find that I have two, an unprecedented event! I also notice that my earnings have improved since the rating star requirement was introduced, presumably because the site's earnings were being shared over fewer writers.
However, it doesn't change some of the basic flaws in the site, especially the fact you can never delete your articles. I also find the pay is still pitiful compared to my HubPages account.