by C.V.Rajan

Created on: November 22, 2008   Last Updated: May 16, 2011

As a writer on Helium, I would love Helium to be respected as a good quality site where reliable information, knowledge, facts, news, views and creative writings can be read by visitors. I would definitely love to see the number of visitors to Helium site improving  and as a consequence of it, my earning potential, as a writer, increasing from the site.

Some of the aspects of the site are quite attractive to me and I definitely feel Helium is well placed in these segments. They are

- the design and lay out of Helium

- The menu structure and ease of navigation through the site

- The organization of the subject groups, titles and the constantly expanding array of topics

- Helium's excellent interaction with its writers through the community discussion boards

- Helium's promotional efforts to encourage authors to keep constantly contributing to the site

- Helium's effort in getting reasonably paying freelance writing opportunities to its writers through the Marketplace (now called Content source) route.

However, there are some aspects of Helium where I feel Helium needs improvement. As a writer in Helium, the following are my views on how Helium can improve further:

(1) More honest, and transparent business practices:

In my 4 years of experience at Helium, I have always seen one disturbing trend or culture: an  element of over-smartness (bordering on stealthiness) to bite a larger share of the cake in business, but declaring outwardly that it's all for the benefit of the writers.

Many times, whenever changing trends in the web-world causes some compulsions in business,  Helium goes ahead blindly with change of rules and practices with this over-smartness, only to back track some of them, after getting lots of flak from its writing members. In this process, some good writers leave the site disgruntled and they post damaging statements about Helium through blogs.

Helium seem to frequently grope in the dark when it comes to undertaking a new course or changing a course. The site seems to make experiments and learn the bitter way, than through confident, well planned and ethically sound  moves.

Helium is perhaps the only site where Terms of Service keep changing very frequently . Invariably such frequent changes end up either curtailing the authors' rights and privileges, or their earning potential from the site.

Coupled with professionalism, Helium needs to become a more transparent business with equitable responsibility to the needs, rights and

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