by Georgina Crawford

Created on: May 11, 2010

So, you’ve joined the Helium site and can’t wait to start writing, but before you begin it’s worth taking a little time to investigate what the site has to offer, and to decide what type of writer you want to be.  If you look around, you’ll find lots of helpful tips for Helium writers.

What Type of Writer Are You?

You can use Helium in a number of different ways, but probably most people join in order to earn that elusive stuff called money.  If you’re not interested in earning money, you could use Helium to publish your creative writing and there’s a thriving fiction and poetry section on the site.

However, if writing for Helium is part of your professional portfolio, there are several ways to make money on the site.  You could write for Marketplace, that part of Helium for people wanting to earn via copywriting.  You could enter contests to see if you could win some prize money.  You could write to empty titles and earn a $1 bonus each time, or you could simply take your share of the ad revenue generated from your articles.

Read The Rules (and re-read them)

It’s up to you to make Helium work for you, but, the one thing that is absolutely vital is that before beginning to write anything, read the rules thoroughly, otherwise you will be writing away and not earning a cent. 

Research

Research your subject well, and make your article rich in the type of information that your audience would like to read.  Make sure there are plenty of facts rather than padding, but try to avoid jargon; you may know what phaeochromocytoma is, but your audience may not (and spell check does not like it).  This leads nicely on to the accuracy of your articles.  It’s important to publish without typos or formatting errors, so it’s best to write your article elsewhere, in Word, for example, spell and grammar check it, read it through yourself and edit it before uploading to Helium.  If you discover an error after you’ve published, it’s not the end of the world, you can use the leapfrog section of the site to fix problems and re-publish.

Don’t Plagiarise

While it’s OK to look at others’ work, it’s important to be original in what you write, and not to copy articles.  Plagiarism anywhere on the web just isn’t tolerated.

Avoid the First Person

Try to avoid the ‘first person,’ save your ‘I’ words for creative writing, as articles written in the first person do not rank well and hence earn less money.  A professional, measured tone works well for most articles, but they don’t have to be ‘dry,’ it’s OK to inject a little humour. 

Ask The Experts

There is a lot of help available on the site and you can always ask an expert, or even find a mentor if your success is not building as quickly as you’d hoped.  You can also learn a lot via the forums, or by joining specific writing groups.  The more you participate in Helium, the better the rewards you will receive.

Ultimately, the aim is to write quality articles, that rank well on the search engines and that earn both you and Helium money, so start writing and polish up those Helium stars.

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