Helium is a directory of user generated articles. Anyone can submit an article to any of 24 different categories (arts, autos, politics, etc.). Articles can be submitted directly to channels, entered into contests, or as part of a debate. Since Helium’s launch last October the site has gotten over 69,000 writers and accumulated over 400,000 articles on 60,000 topics.
Over the past couple of months they’ve been running a pilot program for new “Marketplace” service that connects authors and publishers. Today, they’re officially launching the service. Using “Marketplace”, publishers can list bounties for articles they want written. Authors then submit their stories following the publisher’s writing guidelines and compete for the bounty. Publishers can select any of the articles as the winner, although Helium’s peer review ratings help rank the list. Payments per article range from $20 to over $100, with 20% transaction fee going to Helium.
For the pilot they have 14 publishers listing about 10 bounties a piece. In September they expect to have over 1000 publishers on the system.
2 /5. Boring. No comments
I think it’s pretty interesting myself. Does Helium get to sell articles that don’t win bounties, or do they have some way of making money on them already? It seems like a pretty solid idea.
If you don’t win the bounty, you don’t get money.
Nick – You first linked directly to Helium, then went back and changed it to crunchbase link. Did you get in trouble for the direct link? How come inviteshare gets a direct link?
Before anyone gets involved, they should read the user agreement. There are some potentially scary phrases in there.
Can you say SEO magnet? If they keep the losing articles as links off of the winner, they could increase SEO and customer satisfaction. Money going to the winner fuels the feedback system to keep the quality up.
I bet they could make more on ads after SEO over the lifetime of the content — rather than the 2% at content creation.
About.com is the top of the curve and they will be the long-tail.
Nick bores me. …
I’m sticking with Duncan.
If you are good enough to make money with sites like this then go and write for yourself.
This is an yet another scam engineered to exploit the naive and stupid.
I wish you guys [commentors] would elaborate. Bryan: Why not tell us more about About.com? What’s their value proposition for freelance writers/how’s it relate to Helium’s?
Vincent: Why is Helium a scam? Have you used it? Did you get burned?
Seems like a pretty good idea, though I’m not sure the incentive will be large enough originally to attract high quality articles.
A bit like Suite 101 http://www.suite101.com/about/
Helium? Are you kidding? The action is at thisiby.us
SEO? They’ve been kicked out of the Google index at least twice. 2 weeks ago they had 2 pages in Google. Looks like they are pushing the envelope.
The main (non SE) traffic in Helium is writers reviewing other writers’ stuff to hopefully push their own articles to the the top of the heap.
This is a bad scene…stay away.
Chris, where did you get this Google index info about Helium getting kicked out in the past?
Sounds like what http://www.cons...ant-content.com is already doing. Not to mention Helium is littered with plagiarism and poor writing. I know Constant Content checks articles for plagiarism and quality, Helium will need to do the same or they will run into many issues.
Looking at the site I see another issue… They index the articles once they are written for a client? Who wants an article that has been published already (duplicate content)? Why would I pay money for an article that is already index by google on another site? They really did not think this through from a buyers perspective. Constant Content is much better, or just hire the writer yourself.
John:
Articles in our Marketplace product are not indexed with Google, and I’d be surprised if you can find much plagiarism on our site. Our members are doing an outstanding job of moderating our site for quality and plagiarism.
ah, another company trying to “crowdsource” content and provide a micropayment for some…but, I’d take Mark Hamilton’s advice and read their terms of serivice. Many of these new publishing schemes (general sense of word “scheme”) want user-generated content (which is really how they think of stuff written or photos made by whom they consider non-professionals), pay either nothing or a very low flat rate and then hold all rights in perpetuity.
In some ways, it’s like small presses used to be–where you got paid in copies….and lost your stuff…
I’d also take Thomas Crown’s advice–if you’re good enough, or believe yourself good enough, go out and pitch and publish for real, where you’ll get paid a decent rate, usually retain some control over your content (First North American Serial Rights) and then be able to join a writer’s union of some kind (usually after 3 published articles in one year.) Yeah, it’s a real blow to the old ego to keep getting rejections, but who said being a freelancer would be easy?
Tish:
Helium’s members retain all copyright for their work.
Helium’s Marketplace product is connecting writers with publishers. Helium is providing a level playing field for writers to compete for the job, instead of just getting rejection letters in the mail.
Check Mark Hamilton’s post He’s distilled out the particulars of Helium’s sub-license.
Hey, if people want to give away their content, that’s up to them–but it should be clear what they’re giving up, why, and what will happen to it.
That’s a lot to give up for $20-$100 per article.
All the other sites mentioned before really don’t hold a candle to Associated Content. AC has over 76,000 Content Producers, has a huge library of content including video, and they just got a new CEO from ESPN and $10 mil in funding. So while Helium and Constant Content are playing catch up AC is blowing them all out of the water.
Sorry Mark:
http://www.goog...G=Google+Search
There are being indexed you can find many examples of this. You also can’t count on “members” to handle plagiarism for your clients.
Hi Sam,
We have publishers with many different needs and work to accommodate all those different needs. Some publishers don’t mind if the article they license appears on Heliums site. Others want to ensure that the content is crawled on their site first. We meet all their needs.
Also, if an article written for the Marketplace isn’t selected by a publisher, but is still a great article, it appears on Helium and can earn ad revenue over the long term. We really believe that we are creating a unique win-win-win.
Mark Ranalli’s (Helium CEO) comment above was just a bold faced lie. Way to call them on it Sam.
Sorry learn how your system works… they are all being index:
http://www.goog...amp;btnG=Search
randy.com
At least Hellium are trying to give something back unlike many of their competitors
Now, we all know that writing for helium isn’t exactly lucrative. Or is it? I have my own pet theory about why writing articles for helium is very smart in the long run.
I call it an investment: If an article takes you 20 minutes to write and you normally price yourself at $30 an hour (for example), that means you put $10 of your time into Helium. If your article makes 1c per day in advertising revenue, that’s a $3.65 return on your investment, or 36.5% per annum.
I wrote about the pros and cons of this at my post at
http://writenon...riting-for.html
i don’t have a credit card to pay for anything,and plus i would like to try the item to see if it would actually work first before entering check number’s or credit card number’s.may i try your system for free first
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Last month I critiqued Helium Marketplace based in part on what I read here as well as elsewhere. I also spent some time on their site reading what they had to offer and I tried to familiarize myself with what HM is all about.
I received a reply from Helium regarding my critique and their representative corrected some of the TechCrunch comments as well as some others I made. You can click on my name to read their rebuttal as well as to find a link to my critique.
Great site; I’ve made a little more at some other sites, but I’ve made a few hundred dollars off of Helium in about 18 months and have been earning more due to increasing traffic to my articles. Rating system works decently, feedback is prompt, and marketplace is good about 90% of the time. I’ve always been paid when promised, never seen my earnings ‘decrease’ like some idiots claim, and have a good number of articles in the top 2.
Helium is kinda cool. I’ve seen a smaller site called http://www.RantBlogger.com and I guess they pay people through PayPal to submit “rants” to complain about their world… sounds like an awesome idea.
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Freelance writers can try http://www.savvylance.com, I think this is good market place and professional website. you must try once.
freelance programmers
I’ve been a member of Helium for a short while; and can’t say I have many complaints. My work is being promoted, I keep my copyright (unless I am mistaken), I get paid (no set fee, the longer my articles are up, the more money I am earning) I also get some pretty good critique.
You probably won’t make millions on Helium- but it is a good start for those breaking into the “do’s” and “don’t’s” of writing.
I think the main problem people have with Helium is they are looking for fast money and Helium doesn’t offer that.
If you post a lot of (please make them decent) articles- then you stand the chance of being “found” as well as of earning money through “clicks”.
Like I’ve said before, people promote the writers they like, they share links to articles with their friends- they even do those annoying chain emails; forwarding things to their address list.
You can even post your link when you comment on blogs, make blogs even on YouTube.
There are a lot of people that are too scared and lack the confidence to actually submit their work to Publishers; Helium can help instill a bit of self worth and confidence in these individuals.
Not to mention, the Helium site is pretty new, they are bound to figure out what works and what doesn’t; and then hopefully fix the things that don’t.
Just my .2 cents!
Isadora Pandora,
http://www.heli...om/users/463672
What I find weird is that one of my articles was sold through Marketplace, but it never made the top ten. I was paid 45.00 or something like that, but now it’s been deleted (about a year later); however, the “top ten” articles are still up. This doesn’t make any sense. I won the money but my article is deleted? Huh??? I am totally serious, Helium.com is just really weird. And it’s true that all the same winners are Helium stewards, which should be illegal. And during contests, people spam their writing at the last moment so they can get the highest ratings.
Hello everyone. I am a writer and a skilled poet. I am very new to this but want to earn money. Any suggestions on where to begin? I need to make money quickly and can start out making small amounts just to get my foot in the door but I am not sure who to go with first or where to go. Thank you in advance for your input. Please email me at Dsoli93991@aol.com
Helium works best for Helium. Imagine that. The writer’s get the short end of the stick. I agree with the writers above who suggested carefully reading the TOS before writing anything for Helium (by the way they have changed the terms in their favor a few times in the past few years) In addition, though some will tell you they are making a bunch of money, most people are not. In fact, it can take years and 100 articles to make the $25.00 for a payout.
I have some bad news, fellow netaholics.
You’re supposed to read the TOS or EULA before you use any product or service. Such a text advises you of rights, responsibilities and expectations on the part of both you and the entity providing the product or service.
Read it thoroughly and use that brain of yours to find out if it’s going to work out in your favour or not.
Then try the system. If you get scammed, post the details somewhere and make it known.
Whining and incessant bitching are going to get you nowhere except locked up in some victim role, and deserving of no sympathy.
(”You” is used generically and is not applied to any particular individual(s) in this response.)
I’ve been researching this online money-making stuff for the past 2 hours (in addition to a 5 hour session last week) to find out what services will give me what I need, or at least which ones will do it the most effectively for me.
If you get burned for not actively learning about this, the fire’s set your own shoulders and no one else’s.
Thank you for the interesting comments. I have a couple of other sites to check out, but I think Helium would be an interesting project amongst the other online money-making opportunities I am exploring.
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One of the best ways for beginners to start making money by writing is to use Hubpages. It’s an excellent place to start because it doesn’t require any setup or a hosting plan which makes it a good choice for those who don’t have a ton of technical know how and who don’t want to spend any money to get up and running. They let you insert your own Google Adsense, eBay, and Amazon account trackers and you can start earning money right away. It also allows writers to take advantage of the benefits of an established domain name which is great for generating search engine traffic to your articles. The only drawback is that they do not allow you to post purely personal ramblings, you actually have to choose a topic that would be of interest to the general public. All in all though, a very good way to get started.
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Techonorati is quite good as well.
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Good luck guys,
Mark