User Guide

How to earn money at Helium

We pay our writing members because it’s the right thing to do. Think of Helium as a co-op — we’re all stakeholders. We provide the publishing platform and the marketing investment to attract writers, readers and advertisers, while the community — that’s you — writes, rates and moderates the site. For all your efforts, you share in a percentage of Helium’s revenue.

1. Article quality: The best-written and highest-ranked articles earn the most money. Why? Because quality matters. Those ranked at the top will be read more often and are considered more valuable to Helium members, readers and advertisers.
2. Traffic: How many readers are interested in the article’s topic? Some subjects draw more total viewers than others. Topics and articles with more page views earn more money.
3. Advertiser interest: Some topics have higher-paying advertisers or more buzz than others. Each topic attracts a unique set of advertisers with varying budgets. For example, subjects in the area of personal finance will generally draw a higher ad rate than subjects like chess.

There is opportunity to earn more than pocket change on Helium; on the other hand . . . don’t quit your day job.

Stock Content – The Newest Helium Publishing Opportunity

Wouldn’t it be great if businesses in need of content could browse your archive of articles and choose ones they want to use? You wouldn’t have to write query letters or track down opportunities. The publisher would come right to you. What’s more, payment would simply appear in your account!

Dream no more. Helium introduces “Stock Content” and it works like this: Publishers of everything from niche newsletters to newspaper advertising sections need specific content for specific needs. They’re attracted to Helium’s range of content and are looking at your work on Helium. When they find something that suits their needs, they contact us to complete a licensing arrangement. We send you a letter telling you which article was licensed and the amount credited to your earnings. Now, that’s easy!

This is a golden opportunity to expand earnings and exposure for our writers. What’s more, because the publisher is not purchasing exclusive rights, your article remains on Helium to attract other publishers.

You still own the copyright to your article. But because you share rights to it with Helium, we’re able to facilitate publishers getting the content they need – and your earning on your work. And you get your byline with the article (as long as it’s an acceptably real-sounding name).

So, sit back, relax and let your work work for you. Oh, we didn’t say relax, did we? How about another article, just in case there’s a publisher looking right now…

Ways to earn on Helium by writing

You can earn through writing articles and contributing to Debates. But there are more ways. You can also enter:

• Contests: Helium loves to hold writing contests. And they help you earn some extra cash! They can be seasonal, topical or run indefinitely. They are a fun way for Helium members to increase their writing skills by writing to selected channels and topics. If you win, earnings show up in your account immediately.

When contests are being held, the main Contests page explains how the contest works and what’s expected of you. Typically we’ll also display running contest statistics. Of course, there you’ll find a link to more in-depth rules.

If you’re looking to earn some relatively big money, bring your A-game. Check out the latest Helium contests today.

• Marketplace: Get hired by publishers — write to Marketplace titles today.

Marketplace provides access to big-name publishers looking for freelancers. Currently, earnings range from $16 to $200 per article! Marketplace article titles are specific in their needs, which are described by each publisher. If the publisher chooses your article, you get paid as soon as possible.

How to increase your earnings while sitting on the couch eating chocolate chip ice cream

• Invite-a-writer ™: Let your smart friends do the work for you. “Invite-a-writer” is a way for you to spread the word about the great communal writing spirit at Helium, to help the site grow and to earn more money. For every person you invite who registers and writes, you earn a 5% bonus based on his or her article earnings. The more successful invites you have, the greater your Invite-a-Writer earnings.

• Link in: Let the World (Wide Web) do the work for you. Cast a wide net throughout the Internet to spread the word about your Helium articles. Place Helium links on your website, blog, MySpace and Facebook accounts — anywhere on the web. These links will draw people and revenue directly to your articles.

• Improve your “About Me” page: Let your persona do the work for you. Keep readers on your “About Me” page. When people are on this page, they read your listed articles and bring more traffic to those pages. This helps your potential earnings. Besides, blank space sets off the boring alarm. Show off and watch your earnings rise.

Things you can do to get more traffic to your articles

Of the top 50 writers on our site in the last three months (measured by how many people found their articles through search engines), HALF of them had their pages’ PageRanks on their About Me pages of 2 or more.

So what does this mean and what can you do to improve your PageRank?

As you might know, having a high PageRank in Google has a huge effect on whether search traffic finds its way to your web pages. On a web site, each and every page has its own PageRank. To examine your own pages’ PageRanks, you can download the Google Toolbar, go to your own About Me page and check your PageRank. Browse around to some of your articles and look at their PageRank.

The best writers on Helium have obtained PageRanks for their About Me pages of 3 and 4, although even a 2 is good for an About Me page.

How can you improve your pages’ PageRank? Here is a list of techniques that will help.

Things you can do while at Helium:

1. Write articles that rank in the top 3 of the title. Because of how the intrasite linking works for highly rated articles, you will get more PageRank by being in the top-rated articles under a title.
2. Be in the top-ranked articles of titles that have more than 10 articles. Being #1 of 1 doesn’t get you any PageRank benefit. But there is a point of diminishing returns, so adding one more article to a title that has 100 isn’t going to help you.
3. Win contests. The links that come to your About Me page from the contest leaderboards tend to help a lot in PageRank.
4. Write a lot of articles. How your articles automatically link to your About Me page and vice versa has a positive effect on your pages’ PageRank. Two hundred great articles are more than twice as good as 100 great articles.
5. Participate in the discussion boards. Again, there is a point of diminishing returns, but adding a few useful posts helps all around, although this is the least useful of the techniques mentioned here.

1. Get more “high-value” links from other sites to any of your articles or your About Me page—with the emphasis on “high value.” Adding links to your articles from your own blog (where the blog has no PageRank) isn’t going to help you much. Adding links to the navigational bar of your blog helps less than you think. When it comes down to it, not all links are created equal.
2. The best high-value links are ones you don’t create but come from respected members of the community who read your articles and link to them. So don’t be shy about telling other people about your work!

Here’s a recent interesting article that talks about social link building. Please read it for more ideas.

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080205-112755