by Amber Hilton

Created on: December 30, 2009

The Empty Title Bonus is one of the many ways that writers can earn money on Helium. Although this one dollar bonus may not seem like much, it adds up quickly for those writers who submit a great deal of content, especially when combined with other earning opportunities, such as Upfront Payments, Helium’s Marketplace and daily ad revenue share.

Eligibility requirements for the Empty Title Bonus:

The eligibility requirements for the Empty Title Bonus are the same as those for Upfront Payments. As of July 2009, this means that only the first article written to an eligible title qualifies for the bonus. Most of Helium’s 27 channels are eligible, with the exception of:

* Creative Writing
* Politics, News & Issues
* Religion & Spirituality
* Society & Lifestyle
* Entertainment
* The Recipes sub-channel within Food & Drink
* The main “Other” channel
* Articles written to Debate titles

A rating star is not required to earn the Empty Title Bonus, but members must have at least one writing star at the end of the month when bonuses are calculated in order to be eligible.

How to earn the Empty Title Bonus:

Given that you have met the eligibility requirements outlined above, there are two main ways to earn the Empty Title Bonus.

* Using Title Finder: Helium makes it easy for writers to locate empty titles through the Title Finder tool. Located in the left hand menu of the “My Helium” page or under “Write”, in the upper-right of the Helium home page, the Title Finder tool allows writers to search for titles using keywords or keyword phrases. Once you have entered your search criteria, selecting the circle next to “Empty only” ensures that only titles with zero article entries are shown in the search results.

Although the Title Finder is an amazingly helpful tool for taking advantage of the Empty Title Bonus, it does have a few limitations. Firstly, a writer cannot currently leave the search field empty in order to bring up all possible empty titles. When you’re not sure what you would like to write about, having a list of all the empties might spark some inspiration, but the Title Finder is not set up to work this way. You must have some general idea of a topic in mind in order to utilize the Title Finder tool.

Secondly, from time to time a glitch occurs on the site that allows more populated titles to show up in the results even when a writer selects “Empty only.” Sometimes it is evident that

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