• Incentive Payments
  • Incentive Payments FAQ
• Stock Content
• Contests and Content Source
• Other ways to earn
• Getting traffic to your articles
• Looking for more earnings and search optimization tips?

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 get a share of Helium’s revenue.

Helium pays members based on the value of each article, which is based on a combination of three market factors:

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. Articles with more page views earn more money, at a specified rate per channel.
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 money on Helium; on the other hand . . . don’t quit your day job.

Incentive Payments

All titles eligible for incentive payments are in the assignment system, located in My Helium. By having incentive payments go through the assignment system, writers can easily identify titles that will earn monetary incentives in addition to ad revenue share. Earnings are concentrated in areas Helium believes will be the most beneficial for writers, while building content in areas that will add the greatest value to readers.

Selection process: One article will be selected to earn the incentive payment displayed for each title. The selected article will be determined by a combination of editor grading and member rating. Other articles will either be accepted or rejected (deleted). The selected article and articles that are accepted will all transition to Helium.com along with the title.

Rights: As of Friday, March 25, 2011, members who submitted an article to Helium's assignment system and/or published an article on Helium.com agreed to give Helium exclusive online rights to that article for one year. Helium will not hold exclusive rights to articles submitted to titles in Creative Writing channels.

Earnings: Incentive payments will differ for each title, depending on factors such as the complexity of topic, SEO value and amount of research expected. Additionally, all articles on Helium.com will continue to accrue earnings based on the ad revenue share system.

Credits: When a title transitions to Helium.com, a credit for the article selected to receive the full incentive payment will be awarded to the writer’s account.

Incentive Payments FAQ

Frequently asked questions about Helium's incentive payments are provided below.

Exclusive Rights:

Do I have to give Helium exclusive rights to my articles?

Helium requires exclusive online rights to articles, excluding the Creative Writing channel, for one year. After one year, the rights of the content return to the member.

If Helium holds exclusive rights to my article, will I still earn ad revenue share on it?

Yes. All articles are eligible to earn ad revenue share.

If I give Helium exclusive rights to my article for one year, can I promote it elsewhere?

By giving Helium exclusive rights to an article, members agree not to publish the article in its entirety elsewhere. Members can promote their articles through fair use, which allows for teasing the article with a small amount of text and linking back to the published article on Helium.com.

What is the value to me in giving Helium exclusive rights?

With Helium holding exclusive rights to your article, it should not be published anywhere else on the web, so anyone who reads your article will be reading it from one source. This gives your article much higher SEO value and should increase your potential ad revenue share. Additionally, exclusivity will make an article more valuable for stock content purchases.

If I submit my article to a title and it is deleted, who has rights to the article?

Articles that are not accepted are deleted and are not published, so Helium will not hold rights to those articles. Deleted articles can be reworked and resubmitted.

In order to earn an incentive payment, do I have to give Helium exclusive rights to my article?

Yes; Helium will hold exclusive rights to all articles on Helium except for those included in the Creative Writing channel.

Selection Process:

Who will receive the incentive payment?

One article per title will be selected and awarded the incentive payment.

Who is responsible for selecting and accepting articles for publication?

Articles are selected and accepted through a combination of editor grading and member rating.

Earnings:

Will there be any empty title bonus payments?

Empty titles will be available to write to on Helium.com but there will not be any bonus payments made for writing to an empty title.

How can I tell how much the incentive payment is for each title?

Each title in the assignment system will have a clearly labeled incentive payment value.

Will all articles be eligible for ad revenue share?

Yes, all published articles will be eligible to earn ad revenue share. Most are revenue share (RS) only.

How many members will earn an incentive payment per title?

For each title, one member’s article will be selected to earn an incentive payment.

Other:

Are titles available to all members regardless of their Writing Stars?

Some titles will be available to all members, regardless of their Writing Stars. Other titles will be restricted to Marketplace Approved Writers, Marketplace Premier Writers and specialized credentialed groups. Some titles will be available exclusively to one member.

Stock Content

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 operates “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 an email 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 you're earning on your work. And if your pen name is your real name or an acceptably real-sounding name, you might get a byline.

If a publisher has licensed your content, you’ll be sent an email from Helium that tells you which title/article, the article's URL and the publisher who purchased your article. You can view and verify this information and the amount paid in your Earnings & Payments page by clicking on “Other earnings” – that page will list the price and “Stock_Content_Title” with a name of the title next to it. That number is your article ID number. To find the article, copy the number and paste it at the end of this URL: http://www.helium.com/items/[number goes here].

So, sit back, relax and let your writing 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…

Contests and Content Source

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 or topical.  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 by the end of the week.

The main Contests page explains how the contest works and what’s expected of you. Typically we’ll also display running contest statistics on a leaderboard for each contest`. The page also has links to the contest rules and Helium’s writing standards.

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

• Helium Content Source: Get hired by publishers — write to Content Source titles in the assignment system today.

Helium Content Source provides access to big-name publishers looking for freelancers. Currently, earnings range from $10 to $200 per article! Helium Content Source 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. To find our partner publishers, look for titles with the CS icon in your Assignments dashboard.

Looking for additional opportunities? Check out the Editorial Freelance Assignments page.

Other ways to earn on Helium

• Earn by rating! Because rating is critical to the community and the success of Helium, we want to reward our star raters. If you have 5 rating stars on the last day of the month, you will be paid a $3 Rating Bonus.

• 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, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Google + and Facebook accounts — anywhere on the web. These links will draw people and revenue directly to your articles.

Here is a list of the top Internet places you want to try to LINK FROM, the best being at the top:

1. Nonprofit and academic websites ending in .edu, .org or .gov
2. Popular sites, such as newspapers, magazines, and online journals and newsletters
3. Corporate and private websites
4. Personal websites (yours, your friends, your family, etc.)
5. Blogs

Here is a list of places in Helium you want to LINK TO, the best being at the top:

1. An article (yours or someone else’s you like)
2. An article list, such as pages that list all the articles to a particular title
3. A debate list, such as pages that list debate articles supporting one side or the other (not debate side-by-side pages)
4. Your About Me page
5. A specific subchannel of interest, such as Internet Trends or Beading & Jewelry Making

Websites that are NOT optimal to link from:

1. Wikipedia
2. Websites that require logins

• 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

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.

Things you can do at other places:

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!

Looking for more earnings and search optimization tips?

Be sure to check out our section on Increasing your traffic and earnings in the Writers’ Resources area. There are some great articles on writing titles for the ‘Net, making links work for you, writing quality Web articles and other search engine optimization techniques.