by Kimberly A. Smith

Created on: April 08, 2008   Last Updated: January 31, 2009

Earning money on Helium is based on several factors, including quality, traffic, and advertiser interest. Finding appropriate locations to link to your articles is one of the best strategies to increase your earnings. The more page views that you accrue, the more earnings that you will see.

Before Starting

Before you begin a traffic campaign, check out your existing articles. Make sure they are your best possible work. Low quality writing will not generate as many hits or improve your Helium earnings. Write on popular topics that will generate many searches, and make sure you have the best possible keywords. Carefully proofread your work for errors that are not caught by the spell check. Search engine optimization (or SEO) is the set of techniques used to help your articles rank high on Google or Yahoo searches. Learning about these strategies can help build even more incoming traffic than links and self promotion can.

Websites and Blogs

The easiest places to begin are with personal websites and blogs. If you post something on your blog that relates to an article that you have written, add a link! Having good content with your links will encourage more people to click and help build your readership. Even a personal website should not contain only promotional links. Give people a reason to want to click. Posting the first paragraph of your article followed by the link may entice more people to visit.

Forums and Message Boards

If you are a member of a forum that allows personal links in signatures, add one. You can also link to your author profile from any forum profiles. Depending on the forum guidelines, if you are an active member you may be able to link to your relevant articles in a post. Make sure that it is a useful contribution to the discussion, however. Remember to never spam your link or join forums just to promote Helium.

Social Networking

Don't forget to add links to your MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster pages, or any similar community-building websites that you participate in. Not only will you gain some traffic, but some of your friends may be interested in joining. Invite those members, and you will earn a bonus from them as well. While websites that require a log-in such as these are not the optimal locations, every little bit helps.

Social Bookmarking

One of the newest trends in website promotion is social bookmarking. These sites, including Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, all encourage users to post interesting links that they find. The key to using social bookmarking for self-promotion is to do it sparingly. Only join these websites if you want to participate. Post great stuff that you find around the web, read the submissions of others, and comment on what you like. If you only post your own articles, you will find that you get little traffic (or even end up banned).

Academic Websites

Getting your article linked to on academic, corporate, news or popular websites can be a huge advantage, though difficult to accomplish. Make sure your articles are of high quality and relevant, and that your About Me page is professional. Remember that Wikipedia is a website that should not be linked from in a self-promotional way. Any links probably would be edited out by other members.

Continue to build your number of well-written articles and link as appropriate. You may start to find that your articles are linked to on websites you have no affiliation with if your content is useful. Then watch your earnings grow. Happy writing!

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