Helium is a site designed and directed to freelance writers and you get paid to write articles. In many ways Helium is a lot like Associated Content, but in many ways there are vast differences. So is www.helium.com really worth your time?
Before you can make a judgement, you need to know the basics on how Helium works. First you sign up and then you are allowed to submit answers to questions on the site. The site wants to users to generate different points of views on the same question. Once you submit an answer to a question, it is immediately ranked. Then you are taken to a page where you can rank other articles about the same topic that you wrote about. The system is unique, innovative and very user friendly.
The rating system is also quite unique. Instead of just the usual rating out of 10, or out of 5, Helium articles are rated by a different method. When you want to rate articles, you don’t have any choice which article you want to rate. You are given to random articles about the same topic, and can either vote Article A is much better, Article A is slightly better, they are the same and vice versa. Although it is a fair system, you will be spending a lot of time reading and you are not given much freedom which articles you really want to rate.
The Helium site displays AdSense Google ads, and via the money it generates from these ads, it gives back some to it’s writers, a bit like Associated Content. For every page view your article receives, you generate some revenue, usually only about 1 or 2 cents per page click. And as your article stays on Helium forever, you continuously generate money over time without having to do any extra work.
It sounds glorious doesn’t it, but is it really worth your time?
Well the answer would have to be yes and no. Helium is worth your time if you like writing and enjoy sharing your knowledge to other people around the world. Your work is immediately published and is automatically ranked. The money would be an extra bonus, but Helium is for you only if you have a real passion for writing.
If you are intrigued about the monkey making opportunities that Helium offers and only write for those features, then no, sadly Helium is not worth your time. Unless you write thousands and thousands of articles, or you have some exotic way to advertise and attract people to read your articles, you will be making a poor sum. It could take months and months just to reach the $25 payout minimum, which by the way pays by Paypal.
I myself was in it for the money, and wrote over 10 articles, with most of them ranked in the top 5 of their categories. Yet over a week, I only made $0.02 cents. That is not a typo. Just 2 cents. As you can see, the money making opportunities Helium provides aren’t really there unless you are an absolutely dedicated writer.
Also when you submit an answer to a question in Helium, and your work is automatically ranked, well no one knows how that system actually works. They give no clue on how the automatic ranking system works on their site, therefore not giving you the opportunity to write articles that will receive better rankings. I did a few experiments on Helium; one of them was based on keyword density. I wrote an article about geothermal energy and copied geothermal energy 15 times so the article reaches the 30 word minimum. This is a 100% keyword density, yet the article only was ranked 4 out of 7. So it could be a safe bet to say that 50% of the automatic ranking system is based on keyword density.
So overall, unless you are a really dedicated write, don’t care about the money features and have a lot of time, then no, Helium is not worth your time. A better alternative is Associate Content, which has a $3 minimum for each article you write, and has no payout minimum. You can sign up here if you’re interested.
