FAQs

Writing
Rating & Ranking
Community
Money & Earnings
Marketplace
Policy & Copyright
1. Will people steal my work? Isn’t there a risk of thumbing through a cheap magazine at the dentist’s office, only to find my article plagiarized in some form or another by a hack who wanted to make a quick 50 bucks?
2. What does Helium do with the addresses I enter when I send invites?
Technical Issues
Flags and flagging reports

Writing

How do I improve my articles?

Review the Helium Writing Standards.
Scour Helium’s training forums. Find writing tips, peer critiques and writing advice. Go to the Writer’s Workshop forum on our discussion boards to unlock your writing potential.
Check out the Open Members’ Feedback forum, where members can post links to their Helium articles to receive real opinions from other Helium writers.
Get your very own mentor. Helium members are available via private email to help you further develop your articles. If you would like to be paired with a mentor, please forward the article you would like help with to our Mentor program. Write “Looking for a mentor” in the subject line. Or maybe you’d like to mentor someone? Write to our Mentor program with “I want to be a mentor!” in the subject line.
Write a better version of your article, use Helium’s Leapfrog feature.

How do I edit or delete my articles?
You can’t, directly. The only way to edit an article is to submit a new version by using the Leapfrog feature. If you have only a few typos, use our Typo Fix system as explained at the bottom of the How to edit your articles using Leapfrog page. As for deletion of an article, once published, you cannot remove your article. If you feel there are special circumstances, please email the Content & Community Team.

How long should my article be?
Articles are not allowed on the site if they are shorter than 2,400 characters, or 400 words in length, and longer than 1,500 words. Overly long pieces tend not to do well in rating.

What is a Leapfrog and how does it work?
Good question. Look in the “How to edit your articles; Using Leapfrog” section of this User Guide.

Why was my article title changed?
Helium reserves the right to change new article titles or reassign articles to existing titles as part of our article submission process. We revise titles for clarity and search engine optimization. Sometimes, however, we make mistakes. We’re human, too. In this case, email the Content & Community Team and explain why you feel we messed up. We’re always happy to work with you to find a title that is both searchable and appropriate for your article.

Does Helium have creative writing? Where is it?
Yes, find Creative Writing on the left-hand channel navigation bar. To learn more about writing poems, short stories, novel excerpts and more, read the “Creative writing submissions” section under How to write for Helium in this User Guide.

Is it better to submit articles directly to the site or to initiate new articles?
It’s always better to have your article be part of a title that has several articles. Search engines send more viewers to Helium article titles that offer many articles. Initiate a new article only if you can’t find another title that matches the topic you want to write about.

Rating & Ranking

In rating, how do I skip topics I don’t know anything about?
Use the “Skip” feature! On the rating page you’ll find the “Skip” link above the “Submit” button. You get 10 skips per session.

How can I get high rankings?
Write interesting, high-quality articles.

How do I find out how many times my articles have been read and rated?
Rely on your earnings and rankings to know whether your articles have been read or rated or not and how often. There’s no way to tell either of those things numerically, though.

Why is my article ranked immediately after I submit it?
Your articles are automatically placed at the 50th percentile to start out. If you think about it, it wouldn’t be fair to place your new article either at the top or the bottom of the list, but it has to start somewhere. This way, once it is rated, it will rise or fall according to its quality level.

Community

How many posts does it take to get more stars in the community forums?
When you join Helium and begin posting in the community forums, you’ll see stars under the label “Board status,” which represent how many posts you have on Helium. When you start posting, you’ll have one star. It takes 50 posts to get two stars; 100 for three stars; 400 for four stars; 1,000 for five stars. The fancy colored stars mark Helium staff, forum administrators and forum moderators.

Remember, the stars for “Board status” represent the number of posts you have in the forums. There are separate stars for your writing and rating prowess on Helium.

How do I direct people to my article for feedback?
Go to the Open Members’ Feedback Forum on our Community boards. Take a look at some of the other postings. Then click on “New topic” up in the gray bar on the right. Paste the link to your article in there and ask for feedback. You’ll get plenty of encouragement!

I’m new here, and I still don’t understand something. What should I do?
Before you post your question, check if others have asked the same thing in Helium’s Community forums. If you can’t find anything, by all means, post your question in a thread on the “Ask Questions, Share Ideas, Express Concerns” forums at Helium. Please be clear and concise, post the question or relevant subject in the thread title. Also, if you look around a little, you may find your question is answered in this User Guide.

How do I leave comments for other writers? How do I send private messages on the forums?
Use the “Contact this writer” link on a writer’s “About Me” page or article page. To use this feature, you must be a logged-in member of Helium.

Money & Earnings

Do you earn more from initiating a new title than from adding an article to an existing title?
No.

How much do I get paid, and when?
This is an important question. That’s why we’ve addressed it in the How to earn money at Helium section of this User Guide.

How do I increase my earnings while sitting on my couch eating chocolate chip ice cream?
Easy. Here’s the scoop. Read “How to increase your earnings while sitting on the couch eating chocolate chip ice cream” in the How to earn money at Helium section of this User Guide.

Why don’t my article earnings add up to the total?
It has to do with rounding. Accounting is done in very small increments and individual article earnings are stored as fractions of a penny but displayed as whole cents. So you may have three articles that have each earned 3.8 cents, so they are displayed as having four cents each. However, the total is 11.4 cents, which gets rounded to 11 cents, so it looks like it doesn’t add up properly.

Can I earn money by referring writers to Helium?
Yes! You can earn extra money with the Invite a writer™ program.

Marketplace

How do I find Helium Marketplace articles?
You can get to the Marketplace page in two ways. Click on the “Marketplace” link in the HIGHLIGHTS navigation bar at the top left of any Helium page outside of the Community forums, or click on the “Write” tab in the top navigation bar, then the “Go to Marketplace” button in the Marketplace box on the “Write” page.

How do I write for a Helium Marketplace article?
Click on any title in the Helium Marketplace for which you wish to write, and then click on the “Write Now” link. If you are not logged in, you will be prompted to do so. Then you may write your article. Be sure to address the description provided by the publisher for article length, focus and style.

What happens if I am selected?
When a publisher selects your article, we will notify you via email to the email address we have on record. We will either let you know that your article has been selected; or we may ask for confirmation that the article has not yet be published elsewhere and that you will not sell it for publication to any other publisher. We will indicate what response we need from you, if any.

When are the winning writers posted?
Once a publishing partner has contacted us with their selections, we will post the writers’ names so that all may see that selections have been made. It is very important for all winning writers to note that your Helium account will not be credited with you winnings until Helium has received payment in full from the publisher. This means that it may take several weeks to see your account credited for your winning article.

What happens if more than one writer is selected for the same article?
If a publisher selects more than one “winning writer,” we currently have the ability to post only one selected writer’s name. It is a software limitation in our current design. We are working on ways to complement the Marketplace and finding a place to announce ALL winners is on our list.

How and when do I get paid?
After your article is selected, and we have informed you of that and received any required response, then we invoice the publisher. Publishers take between a few days to a few weeks to pay for the articles they have selected. As soon as we receive payment, we credit your Helium account with your writer share.

What will stop publishers from reprinting Helium Marketplace articles without paying for them?
When Helium enters into partnership with our Marketplace publishers, they sign a Memorandum of Agreement that has been drafted by our legal staff. The document addresses issues regarding selections, licensing, payment and terms. We work with our publishers to make sure that these guidelines are adhered to.

Policy & Copyright

Will people steal my work? Isn’t there a risk of thumbing through a cheap magazine at the dentist’s office, only to find my article plagiarized in some form or another by a hack who wanted to make a quick 50 bucks?
No way. You are protected through the DMCA as well as the copyright laws as much on Helium as a writer writing for such sites as NYtimes.com and BBC.com, etc. If you were to find your article plagiarized on another site or a magazine, you own the copyright and you can make claims against the site or magazine that publishes it. If the writers on NYtimes.com and other sites feel comfortable enough to write there, you should feel the same way about writing on Helium.

What does Helium do with the addresses I enter when I send invites?
Helium uses invitation email addresses only to send invitations on behalf of the inviter. These email addresses are not sold or provided to any third party.

Technical Issues

What’s that weird looking code box with funky letters?
It’s called a three-character verification code. You will find this when you go through the “Join” process. Just type the letters you see in the field provided. This feature is in place to ensure that you’re a human and not a robot. Sometimes you will see this feature when you are writing articles. If you make a mistake typing the correct letters (don’t laugh, it happens), you will be prompted with an error message: “The three-character verification code is incorrect.” You can reenter the code and submit again.

My friends haven’t received my invitation to write on Helium. Why?
Some of the reasons why this may occur include:

Your invitee’s email address no longer exists.
Your invitee’s email account is over quota or temporarily unavailable.
Your invitee is using an email filter that blocks emails from unknown senders. Ask your invitee to be sure to allow emails from helium.com.

Many email systems both at home and at work have filters that block email from sources not on the trusted sender list. Please ask your invitees to be sure to allow email from Helium to not be blocked in their email system.

My real name is associated with my article. How can I use a pen name?
In the “Join” process, we ask you to provide us with your first and last names as well as a username. Your username is never seen by others on the site — it’s used only for your Helium login. In turn, your real name (first and last) is your default “pen name” on the site.

To change your pen name:

Click “My Helium” in the red horizontal navigation bar. From there, navigate to “Account Settings” in the left-hand navigation.
Click on the “Pen Name” tab.
Enter your alias.
Feel like somebody . . . else. Pen names are displayed at the top and bottom of every article. Helium encourages all members to use your real name or a real-sounding name because it’s more professional.

What do my pending and expired invitations mean?
If you send an invite to another writer, it goes into a “Pending” state right off the bat. It will be displayed in that state for two weeks. After two weeks, it displays as “Expired” — unless you resend the invitation (this resets the two-week expiration timer).

The expired state affects only generic registrations. So if your invited friends register on the site outside of the invitation process, and they do so with the email address you used to invite them, you still get recognition for the registration. Basically, this process helps to give you credit if your friends can’t follow directions.

Can I use HTML in my articles?
The Helium Write process does not support HTML in the body of articles. This means that special characters and font formatting, such as bold, accented characters and italics, are not allowed. If HTML is included in the text, it will be automatically scraped from the article when it is submitted, which typically results in strange displays in the final display of your article.

Flags and flagging reports

What are flags and flagging reports?
Flags are memos from other Helium members about an article. Content flags (for spelling or grammar or formatting, for instance) come in to Helium and we forward them directly on to you via email. These are called flagging reports.

Content flags? What are those?
Content flags provide an opportunity for members to comment on your articles by leaving helpful suggestions. Content flags don’t affect your ratings or besmirch your good name in any way. Each content flag category is listed on the flagging report.

What kinds of articles should I flag?
Our very informative flagging instructions are waiting to be read by you if you’re flagging during the rating process or if you find an article on the website with some serious problems. Read more about flagging in our How to rate articles section.

Why did I receive a flagging report?
A member read your article and wanted to help you improve it.

What should I do if I receive a flagging report?
If you agree with the member’s assessment of your article, you can revise your article following the directions in the flagging report. If you don’t agree with the member’s assessment, please feel free to ignore the flag. Flags are just suggestions!

How do I contact the member who flagged my article?
You can contact members who flag you by clicking on their pen name on the flagging report you received. You will be brought to the member’s “About Me” page. If the member has the “Contact this writer” feature enabled, you can contact the member there. Please make sure you keep comments constructive and respectful – this isn’t the time to start a flame war in your inbox over a missing comma. For more information, see the section about Contact this writer.

I don’t want to receive flagging reports. What can I do?
From your “My Helium” page, navigate to “Account Settings.” At the “Name/Email tab,” click the “Manage Email Preferences” link. You will be prompted to enter the email address you have registered with Helium. At the following screen, uncheck the box next to “Activity Reports” and hit “Submit.” Once you have set this preference, flagging reports will not darken your inbox again.