The bomb-shelter mentality among startups is now so severe that even companies raising money are announcing layoffs in response to diminished economic prospects. Boston-based Helium just closed a $17 million series A financing about ten days ago, and then cut 30 percent of the organization (18 people) last week. CEO Mark Ranalli tells me:
We expect a deterioration of overall ad rates, and a slowing of the economy in general. Our approach was to take a third of every group across engineering, customer service, and sales.
Ranalli has been raising the $17 million piecemeal over the past year from hedge funds, family trusts, and wealthy individuals. The last $2 million came in two weeks ago. Combined with the current cuts, Ranalli believes he has enough to make it to profitability.
Helium is a reference site filled with general-information and how-to articles. It competes with About.com, but instead of hiring professional writers, Helium’s articles are written by members of its community. The best articles are voted to the top by the community, but in a way that makes it difficult to game the system. Instead of being able to vote up your own articles or those written by your friends, readers are given a random sample of articles and asked to compare them in pairs. This A-B approach filters the best articles to the homepage. (Helium spinoff OurStage applies this same system to finding the best raw musical talent.)
Since it launched two years ago, Helium has attracted 130,000 writers who have contributed 1.2 million articles. Most of those people only write once or twice and then go away, but Helium has managed to cultivate a core of about 10,000 active writers. And it has pared down that 1.2 million articles to 800,000. About a quarter of the submissions are just not even worth keeping. The writers get a split of ad revenues on their pages, which isn’t a lot given that the site gets on average $2 for every thousand pageviews. Ranalli plans on rewarding top-rated writers a little bit more by paying star-rated writers a token amount up front (50 cents to $2.50 per article), in addition to the revenue split.
According to comScore, Helium attracts only 859,000 unique visitors per month in the U.S. (Ranalli says the internal number is closer to three million a month). Traffic flattened for a few months when Ranalli decided to let the site grow organically instead of pumping up the numbers with marketing dollars. Now, he says, October looks like it is going to be Helium’ strongest month ever.
But advertising is not the only way Helium makes money. It also hosts a marketplace for freelance writers where publishers, newsletters, and even offline newspapers and magazines can bid for talent. Helium members can go there and offer their writing services and typically get anywhere from $30 to $300 per article, with Helium collecting a 20 percent fee. Says Ranalli:
It is only about six months old, and it just eclipsed our ad revenue.
These days, every penny counts.
The layoff was first mentioned here;
http://www.fuck...om-huge-layoff/
Sounds interesting, actually – I mean, Helium’s business model, not the layoff. This is the first time I’ve heard of Helium & I’m interested in trying out its service – but only if they don’t charge registration fees to the writers like Blogit.com
I’m a long time writer for Helium. I’ve had great experiences with it… there are no registration fees. I have about 300 articles published on the site and earn about $50/month. However, I’m a highly rated writer in well paying areas… so not everyone will see that income. Good luck!
I have to wonder if the RIF was demanded by the funders.
Helium in many ways is a good service but it didn’t let me save my half finished articles. Maybe I am missing this but often I would like to write something but don’t have the time to write, edited it and then publish it at the same time. A save for later option would be money. Furthermore the profit sharing sucks. You could wirte 10 articles and paid nothing for it. They should go 80/20 for the user which would increase the incentive for people to put the effort in.
If you are a good writer you might as well just blog where you get all the ad dollars.
I’m looking for writers…anyone interested?
Can you name any really successful websites that use a black background with off white text? Seriously it is hard on the eyes. Looks cool for a second but not very functional for reading.
I know what you mean and that’s why I’m in a process of re-design it it. Thanks for the feedback.
Just my 2 cents, but I prefer off-white text on black or dark grey backgrounds. I have some of my oft-visited sites set up that way: wikipedia, google etc. I find the darker backgrounds easier on my eyes compared to white backgrounds.
Helium had 110 employees?! This is a fabrication spun by management to attempt damage control in the press. (After all, they let their PR person go too.) I was one of those let go. They had 40 employees, on a “good” day. More like 35. They let 18 people go. Do the math. 18 out of 35-40, is more like 50-51% laid off. Helium has several dedicated community members who (virtually) volunteer their time to help the site run, but they cannot be considered employees – after all – no overhead, no benefits, no salary!!! I suspect including these helpful community members/site stewards is how they came up with the other 80+ employees to give that bogus number. Spin spin spin… (shaking head)
they make about 8M page views/mo
@ $2CPM that’s about $16k/mo revenue – so they only need to fire 95% more of the remaining staff
Makes sense though. Investors nowadays want to make sure the company they’re putting their cash into is a lean organization.
I wrote over 200 articles for Helium before I realised how poor the earnings were. I now write on HubPages instead, where the earnings are significantly more and you keep control of your articles (unlike Helium, where you can never delete them).
The site does rely very heavily on volunteer stewards who virtually run the forums, and manage and mentor the writers. I’m surprised they had as many as 40 staff!
Helium Darrell Miller
200 Brickstone Square P.O. BOX 986
Andover, MA 01810 Beaver Dam, AZ 86432
September 20, 2009
Helim Staff:
When Helium cut me off and claimed the copyright to my 150 articles so they could continue to use them for advertising-space revenue without reimbursing me as they had promised, it did not overly concern me as the freeing truth in said articles was still being made available to those who needed it.
The articles documented “The Elite’s” developing programs to achieve the Georgia Guidstone objectives to reduce the world population to 500 million controlled by an international court.
My articles revealed “The Elite’s” developing and implementing human-implant tracking-and super computer monitoring of thoughts and emotions contrary to Elite objectives and their ability to locate, redirect, cause suffering and/or eliminate those not serving THEIR “greater good”.
My articles revealed “The Elite’s” so called free trade program that uses food-price control to starve and oppress third-world populations with corporate control of resources resulting in loss of resources to pay for world-banker false debts of bank credit created from nothing as a means of payment.
My articles revealed how the banker-owned federal reserve has created bank-credit “debt” (that cannot be proved as a money debt), enabling college students, families, and small businesses to free themselves from the false debt of credit cards and bank-credit loans such as home mortgages;
My articles fully explained how the economic crisis was orchestarated and caused by the intentional selling of uncollectible subprime loans, threatening secondary markets with bankruptcy, and “justifying” taxpayer gifts of billions of dollars to banks and secondary markets. Wells Fargo (who received 25 Billion of taxpayer money) was targeted by my articles to expose banker’s deceptive practices. An employee of Wells Fargo quit when she realized Wells Fargo had organized a subprime division to sell mortagages with a high probability of failure so they could collect a few payments and sell them to secondary markets for increased profit. This was exposed in a TV interview of the employee!
My articles also clarify true Christian-gospel principles that frees truth-seekers from the enforced doctrine, moral law and ritual of antichrist priests and pastors in false churches. Islamic jihad threats are also discussed along with “The Elite” orchestrated, U.S. seceret government enabled, false-flag attack, murdering thousands in the twin towers, ‘justifying’ a “war on terror” as an excuse to strip citizens of constitutional freedoms and invade Iraq with lost lives that increased the national debt so the banker-owned Federal Reserve could make more profit and corporations could gain control of Iraq’s resources.
My articles also revealed the U.S. legislative plan to control world food sources and medical procedures, outlawing those disapproved by newly established government authority, as well as the rapidly decreasing capacity of world food production that is leading to fast-approaching world famine in economies where money will be worthless as there will no longer be resources to buy.
So why did Helium give up all that lucrative advertising space that the ever-growing popularity of my 150 articles were providing? Why did Helium choose to abandon the truth to serve the lies of “The Elite”? Why did Helium abandon all of its high-sounding “where knowledge dwells” for “where knowledge is oppressed” with the book-burning mentality of a gutless, depraved leadership, controlled by fear of “The Elite”.
I have warned the spirits who control and empower humans of the Helium staff to restore my articles or be cast into outer darkness. They had three days to do so, which ended Sept 23rd 2009. Now the Helium staff is on their own (uninspired and unempowered). Will they choose to receive empowerment and protection from God, The Father, by asking for it in the name of God, The Son, (Jesus of Nazareth) or will their spirits follow their cast-out, false spirit guides into outer darkness at their impending demise?
The Messenger
About me I have searched for my truth and found it. The truth has given me a heart full of peace, love and joy as well as led me to my soul mate (twin flame). I am free to serve the balance of existence by helping others attain the truth-level they choose. Individual differences are necessary to create balance between light (pure heart love) and darkness (logical order control). I am a Seer and can reveal origins, purposes and powers of those who have come to assist the heavens establish freedom of choice and balance. To most I am a nut case, but not to those who feel my energy and possess the gift to discern the truth of what I reveal. I subscribe to no church doctrine or moral law of priests, claiming the priesthood right to be intermediaries between God and his children, who assume they have authority from God to question, accuse, judge and punish. They are antichrists. I teach correct principles so each can govern themselves with freedom to choose without submitting to the judgment of any man. I know that life is a series of learning experiences which each can use to enlighten their spirit or darken their spirit. They are free to serve light or darkness at any period or level of existence. Belief in right and wrong, good and evil, correct or incorrect requires one judge on the basis of rules or laws that indoctrinate and stop spiritual growth with a barrier to further truth. Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled the law, freeing all from judgment under the law and from sin, which is the transgression of the law.