by Sandra Piddock

Created on: April 05, 2010

The earning and payments page is the bringer of Helium good news, because it tells you how and where you are earning dollars from your writing. It's also a useful tool to help you increase your earnings, if you look past the dollar signs to see what your statistics really tell you about your writing.

The highest ranked articles are not always the highest earning

While it usually follows that highly ranked articles will earn more, it isn't always the case. I have an article about singing karaoke which is ranked at 1 of 128. This is great for my writing score, but it hasn't even earned a dollar in the year since I wrote it. So, while I enjoy writing humorous articles and life experience stuff, I ration them to one or two a month.

If you're trying to up your writing score to earn extra stars, writing to a title you know a lot about with 100 or more articles is the way to do it. If your looking for page view income, however, creative writing, memoirs and humour is a non-starter. This is not just my own experience - all my online writing friends say the same.

Look for the consistent earners

Most Helium writers find that certain titles are consistently at the top of the earnings page by the middle of the month, where they remain. In my case, my top earner is an article on retiring to Spain. Although it's ranked 3 of 3 ever since it was written, and leapfrogging hasn't made a difference, it's earned $15 in page views since it was written, at about the same time as the well-regarded but ignored karaoke title.

From this, I've learned that articles about travel and retirement are reliable earners. The rest of the first earnings page - and the next 5 pages or so - consist mainly of diet and fitness articles, relationship articles, and writing articles.

Ignore the earnings pages for the first week of the month, because you'll find that odd titles will earn a cent or two and appear on the first page, then disappear without trace as the month progresses. I don't know why this should be, but other writers report this phenomenon as well. It's consistency that counts here, so write mainly to the channels that always appear on the first few earnings and payment pages.

What you like to write isn't always what people like to read

My speciality is English Literature, particularly Shakespeare, and when I first joined Helium I had a ball writing to the titles. No false modesty here - I know my stuff, and the articles ranked high. However, they hardly earned anything. Most

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>