by Elizabeth A. Marion

Created on: July 06, 2010

For a Helium writer who writes articles regularly, it's a great way to make a little extra income. As you write more articles and learn more about Helium you will be able to increase your earnings from the site.

Ad revenue is the most basic way of making money at Helium. In order to earn ad revenue you need to maintain at least one rating star. You can do by doing just a few rates a day. You can also earn a three dollar bonus each month if you can maintain five stars. Once you have a rating star and begin earning from your articles you can increase your ad revenue by promoting your articles. One of the best ways to do this is by using a social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter. The more page views you have the more ad revenue you take in, so promotion is an important part of increasing your earnings. To make promotion easier, you can also use sites like Hootsuite and Socialoomph so you can set up articles to be tweeted on a cycle instead of having the manually enter them each time.

Empty Title bonuses and Upfront Payments are payments you get when you write to titles with fewer or no articles in them. To earn these, you also need at least one rating star. If you write to a title that is completely empty, you will get one dollar as an Empty Title bonus and an Upfront Payment. The Upfront Payment varies depending on how many stars you have and can only be collected when you write to titles with five or less articles. If you have one writing star the payment is fifty cents, but if you have five writing stars the payment is two dollars and fifty cents. When your payment is calculated at the beginning of each month you will receive payment based on how many stars you have at that time, so even if you write to a title when you have one star you can earn more from Upfront Payment if you have three or four stars at the time of calculation. Leapfrogs and typo corrections are a way to increase your writing stars by improving your ratings.

Writing to appropriate channels is key to earning the most from ad revenue. Pay attention to your Earnings and Payment page. Make a note of which channels are earning the most ad revenue and focus on writing to those channels. You can also take advantage of seasonal holidays and celebrations by writing to those titles when they will be most popular, or by writing to titles that are about topics that happen to be popular at the moment. Writing to the "hot topics" may even help you get featured on the Helium homepage, which will greatly help your Helium earnings.

Finally, Helium writing contests and Marketplace are another way of earning money at Helium, though they are also more challenging. The contests are hard to win and the rating for the contests tend to frustrate a lot of writers. The earning potential from Marketplace is pretty good, but the publisher has to select your article in order for you to get paid. Earnings from Marketplace and contests are usually quite good, but they are also challenging.

Increasing your earnings at Helium will become easier as you write more articles and become more familiar with the site. Being aware of the different ways to earn from Helium is the best way to move forward. Use the community board and other Helium articles to get ideas from other writers about making more money at Helium.

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