Helium's latest way to keep from paying writers
By mainman195
@mainman195 (186)
United States
December 15, 2010 2:05pm CST
For a long time, I believed that Helium changed their way of computing revenue sharing for writers to keep putting more of it back in their own pockets. Then, they started upfront payments. Their amount was much less than some other sites. About the time it became evident that you could make some good income writing on the site, they changed the upfront payments.
At that time, you could only get upfront payments for writing to titles with less than 5 articles already written to it. Now, they have put all of their upfront payments attached to marketplace articles where you have to compete to get paid. Only the top article gets a payment, and it can be as small as $2. For $2, they expect to get exclusive rights to the article so that you cannot post it any place else.
They have succeeded in pushing me away for the most part. I have written for Helium for 4 years. They began as my top earning web site. After about a year or so, they dropped to number 2. Now, they have dropped to number 4 and will soon be number 5 although I have more articles there than on any other site. They used to be a leader that would attact more and better writers than other sites. Now, they stumble in somewhere down in the pack. When are they going to wake up?
2 people like this
7 responses
@mrtimharry (1180)
•
16 Dec 10
the changes haven't been as bad as I thought they would be, and have gone through the marketplace a few times this month.
I was though writing for them when there was no upfronts, I wrote for them when there was upfronts and I will write now with limited upfronts
2 people like this
@mandywilks (191)
•
17 Dec 10
I would certainly give it a try. I have had my first article purchased today for MArket Place so I'm very pleased.
2 people like this
@Sandra1952 (6047)
• Spain
21 Dec 10
Tim, I had a bad start, with my first 3 articles for MP deleted. That was down to the rigid 3rd person thing, which they soon reversed. Everything I've written since has been either purchased or transitioned, and although I'm a little down on a normal month, it's not as much as I feared. I'm going to stick with Helium - they're still the best por payment and how they treat their writers, even with the changes.
@Reed201084 (347)
• United States
17 Dec 10
I had this same problem with Helium. 2 years ago i went to Triond, and never looked back. I have gotten paid every month very promptly on the tenth of the month to my paypal. I have never recieved any money from Helium.
1 person likes this
@jane239 (521)
•
15 Dec 10
I've recently got involved with Helium again. I don't like the changes to the marketplace and I don't see how they can justify paying $2 for exclusive rights given the amount of work that can go into one article. I'd love to know where they stand legally with that but I suppose if someone is employed by thm then minimum wage doesn't apply.
I'm going to give writing some more articles a try and see how it goes.
1 person likes this
@sn_2818184 (328)
• Hong Kong
17 Dec 10
Up to this moment, Helium is still paying me most. I am really interested if there is any site that can be paying more than Helium?
1 person likes this
@divalounger (6117)
• United States
23 Dec 10
I started writing for Helium about a year ago and have a number of articles in the #1 spot, but not a lot of articles on the site--maybe 20 or so. I am not happy about the idea of losing all my rights to republish for a small or non-existent payment. So I am wondering where to go now. I had started publishing my poetry on Triond as I felt it was a more poetry friendly site. Where are you turning to now?
@mainman195 (186)
• United States
3 Jan 11
I would head over to associated content--now that they are part of yahoo, the page views have increased about 20%. They pay you upfront and you can still keep your rights. As far as Helium, make a note of the marketplace article titles that you are interested in. Write the article and submit it to a couple of other sites. Then when Helium releases the title for general use, submit your article and keep your rights.
@RebeccaScarlett (2532)
• Canada
20 Dec 10
I was a little worried about the changes too, but I have submitted 4 articles to the new marketplace and all four were accepted and given the highest payment, for $12 total.
I make $15 an article writing for demand studios. The reason I prefer Helium is because it takes me an hour (or more) to research and write an article to demand's requirements, and it takes me a ton of time to even find a suitable title in the first place, because they are horribly miscategorized and many of them make no sense.
At Helium, they do not require any research whatsoever. So I only write to titles I am very familliar with, and can write off the top of my head. I can write a 400 word Helium article in about ten minutes. I feel that $2-5 for ten, or maybe fifteen, minutes of work is fine. I also find that I earn more residuals from Helium than from Triond, Wikinut, or Factoidz.
What I don't think is fair, is that if you write to the Marketplace you have to give up the rights even if you aren't paid. In my mind that is complete BS, because if they don't want to buy it, you should be able to sell it elsewhere.
@AliceWonderly (70)
• United States
31 Dec 10
Hi RebeccaScarlett! I agree with you, Demand Studios is much too demanding! Though I certainly cannot write a Helium article in 15 minutes like you do, writing one is much faster than one for DS. Then there's the whole clunky editing process at Demand Studios too! Leapfrog is quicker and easier. And we still get share at Helium. It's not as good as it was for some people, but it's still better than elsewhere.
@mandywilks (191)
•
16 Dec 10
I am goinmg to carry on with them as I have been paid quite well in the past so I'm going to see how it pans out with these changes - I have been paid twice now this month already because of the changes - so that's for the better.
