Are we misunderstanding the major income of Helium?

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Until last week, I thought Helium makes their money mainly from the advertisement, like most of the other pay to write sites do. After the changes Helium made to their upfront payment system, I start to doubt. In the past, I have also doubted why Helium are paying more than other paid to write sites. After all, Helium's article looks really dull - we cannot even bold the words in Helium! How can Helium earn even more than other sites like Triond or Squidoo, where you can even add photos and videos into an article? Just because Helium have greater control on the title, so they are performing better in search engines? Just because Helium is willing to share a greater profit with us? Then, after the changes and Helium starts to insist on accepting only articles written in third person, while Helium administrator explains "publisher like articles written in third person more", it rings the bell - maybe Helium is mainly earning from selling our articles? If that's the case, that's explain why Helium is not willing to shows the page view of our article - as the earning is not counted in this way! What's more, the reason behind the recent change is not only for cutting force, but really trying to sell more articles and make more money. (and I hope they are sharing this to the writers) This may also explains why Helium is putting more focus on who hold the copyright compared to other paid to write sites?