Does anyone here write for Helium?

I actually enjoy Helium. I'm not very fond of the rating system, however, because your articles get placed in the rotation to an equivilent of how many articles you, yourself, have rated. So, to get your articles anywhere, if they're actually *good*, you have to rate quite a bit of articles. But it's still a place to make some change. I've been there for about two weeks and have made seventy cents, so I guess it's better than nothing. I just don't know if I'll ever reach minimum payout is all.

I write on Helium but found that every time I wrote an article, even though it would start off near the top end of the list for a day or so, it would then drop right down. This especially happened in contests, and it frustrates me to think that particular groups of people do rate low for people they don't know.

I like writing for Helium, but I have noticed that there are problems with the latest contests. Unfortunately, if you post your articles very early in the contest week, you will almost always end up at the bottom of the rankings by the end of the week. But if you wait too long to post, you won't get enough ratings to be near the top. I really preferred the previous contest system that they had, which was not so tied to the ratings.

For the contests, a limit would be much better. As much as I would like $75 or even $5, I do have a job and a granddaughter I have overnight once a week and a boyfriend, pretty much a life. I do like writing for the debates.

another helium fan. I love it. It certainly is not much of a money maker. I do think it is a great way to improve one's writing skills. There is nothing more rewarding than to have an article that began on the bottom improve to be in the top five.

I write for Helium. The contests frustrate me because they have chosen article topics that would require hours of work. That's fine, but the payout is only worth it if you win and just barely. Most people do Helium as a past time. To write on many articles per topic, I'd have to work at it 40 hours a week. So I haven't writen for the contests yet. I have written for Market Place. Limiting a writer to a certain number of articles, I'm not in favor of. They limit a person to one article per topic and to one side or the other of a debate. They have enough limits now. I'd like to argue both sides and have two articles-sometimes. There are a couple of topics I can see both sides and not all the opinions of each side are presented at the time I view the articles. Any time, I didn't understand the rating of my articles, I explained why the rating didn't make sense at the Community Board and sooner or later, my ratings became more consistant with common sense. Like when 2 new people wrote and my article nosedived down 5. I could see it going down, 1,2, or 3, but not five. A funny thing happened. It went back up 2 in a short period of time. The best place to address problems at Helium is the Community Boards.

Since I don't write there, I'm not sure how the contest works. Do the points from all of their articles get combined, or are the points from each article added up separately. I agree that I don't like to see anyone win a contest every week. It discourages others from even trying.

My biggest complaint about Helium is that they removed the subchannel that I wrote the most to (occult) and my existing articles on that subject have went from being my best earners to being my worst. I do a lot on Golden Dawn for instance, and now it is stuck in with Wicca and Witchcraft--no one looking for Golden Dawn stuff would look there for them. I understood their problem with occult being a catch-all catergory; but based on my earnings, people actually were looking there for the type of stuff that I prefer to write.