by Jillian McCoy

Created on: August 17, 2010

Each time you write for Helium, the article submission page reminds you that your article needs to be at least 400 words long. Did you know that in addition to a word count minimum, Helium articles also have a word count maximum of 1500 words? These may seem like arbitrary even numbers, but there are good reasons why your articles should meet these word count requirements. Here are a few of the most important considerations:

Quality

First and foremost, conforming to a minimum word count ensures that writers can't just write a few sentences about a title and have it count toward their total number of articles. Especially in the case of empty titles, this would be an unfair way for opportunists to “game the system” and benefit financially without doing honest work. Keeping a minimum word count in place helps maintain the overall writing quality on Helium.

It's worth noting that creative writing and poetry titles don't need to fit the minimum word count. There's no way to make a haiku 400 words long, after all. These exceptions give creative writers the opportunity to write for Helium without having to stick to non-fiction.

Speed

Another good reason to stick to the word count guidelines is writing speed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that shorter articles get written more quickly. This will make it possible for you to increase your total number of articles on Helium, which translates to more opportunities to earn money. You may also find that while writing shorter articles, you're not able to adequately address every facet of a topic like you might in a 3000-word article. This has the happy side effect of giving you more writing topics. Instead o trying to write all 8 main tenets of a subject, you can break each one into its own shorter article and earn from each of them individually.

Attention Span

The most important reason why word count matters when writing Helium articles is based on the writing medium. Compared to magazine or book readers, readers on the Internet have a much shorter attention span. We expect to read things online that are informative, but still short and sweet. If an article is too long, we usually lose interest or click away. Conforming to a shorter word count sets up your articles to be digestible to Helium's audience.

In most cases, articles written for an online audience should conform to between 400-700 words. This gives writers enough space to address their subject without losing readers' attention. Depending on your subject matter, you may be able to bend these rules. If you're writing a blog post about a video, for example, 400 words may be far too much. In that case, all you really need to do is tell your readers what the video is about and why you think they should watch it.

Besides losing readers' interest due to the length of your Helium articles, the existence of multiple pages is also a factor. While it might seem like a good idea to have articles long enough to be spread across multiple pages, this is also a way you'll lose your audience. When a reader reaches the bottom of the page, they'll have to decide whether they enjoy your article enough to click onto the next page. More often than not, this is when that short Internet attention span will kick in and your readers will click away instead. Using a shorter word count will allow readers to finish the article in a single page, ensuring they absorb all the information in your article.

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