Helium.com changes

The Helium website has caused a huge commotion amongst its writers. They have just introduced an outline of the new rules which they are bringing out. Their message board is going crazy with screams of YAY's and NAY's...mostly nays and lots of questions. The new rules go into effect on Dec. 6th 2010 and will definitely bring about a HUGE change.
Here is a post as it appears on Helium's Blog:
"As you may have seen on our board post, Helium.com will be switching to a new upfront program, effective Monday, Dec. 6.  While the existing program has performed well and accomplished many of the goals we had set for it here at Helium, we believe there is always room for improvement, which the new program promises to address.

Our previous program encouraged our members to write articles in areas in which they were knowledgeable, giving us an extensive breadth of content; however, we recognized that we were missing content in some very important areas. We call these content gaps. By analyzing the current content on our site along with the content we are striving to provide, we are able to create quality titles that fill our content gaps making Helium a stronger and more encompassing information website.

Behind the scenes we focused on obtaining information about the areas of content that are highly searched on the Internet. We used this valuable information to craft titles from an SEO standpoint that we are confident will perform well for our writers. The new payment system allows members to earn more each month by offering higher payments for selected articles.

Another benefit of the new program is that we can now offer upfront payments for articles in any channel, which we were unable to do in the previous program.

Overall, these upfront changes will help guide our writers to write to titles that will earn more over the long-term and help the site prosper, making all stakeholders (that’s you!) more successful.

If you’re interested in finding out the details of our upfront change, please visit ourlatest post in the boards on Helium.com."

What are your thoughts on the changes? If you are a Helium writer will you keep writing? Potential new writers is this good or does it put you off?

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How to get a rating star on Helium.com

Apart from writing, the rating system is one of the most important components of Helium. Not only does your rating and writing percentage depend on it, along with your ability to gain earnings, but you also carry the responsibility of rating honestly and being fair towards the other members.
Having one rating star allows you to earn money through various options which Helium has to offer. Acquiring fiver rating stars means that you earn an extra $3.00 at the end of the month. You either want to shoot for one rating star or five, there isn't much point bothering with anything in between, unless you enjoy rating articles, then by all means go for it!
How to gain rating stars:
- First of all, you will need to have written at least one article before you can rate other members work.
- To gain one rating star all you will need to do is rate 10-29 articles in a 30 day period and maintain a 75% rating score.
- To get up to five rating stars, and receive that bonus at the end of the month, you will need to put in a lot more work than that. You need to rate 500 articles in a 30 day period. This means you will need to rate about seventeen articles each day.
- Do not randomly click on the choices you are provided with, you are being checked for quality after all! Take the time (3 minutes or so per article) that is needed for a quality rate.
How to rate articles:
- In the upper right hand side corner of the Helium website there is a "Rate" button, click on the link.
- Once you are on the page, you will be presented with the article A and the article B, essentially you will need to choose which one of the articles is the better one.
- While this is the time when your personal opinion comes into play there are some universal guidelines which you should follow when rating these articles.
What to take into consideration when rating an article:
- Relevancy of the article
+First and foremost you should pay attention to how relevant the article is to the title it is under. Sometimes the author rambles on and goes completely of topic, other times the article could be submitted into the wrong category, or there might be spam and advertising.
- Grammar
+ This of course is a given, read through the articles and take not of any grammatical errors.
- Message
+ Which article puts across a better message in relation to the topic it is written on?
- Length
+ Length by no means determines whether one article is better than the other but it often is a factor.
- Prohibited content
+ There are certain things that are forbidden on Helium, make sure the articles do not contain any of these.
After everything has been factored in it is up to you to determine which article you feel is the better of the two, and then click! All in all, the main thing that you want to remember is to keep your number of rates high and your quality higher.

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Using Twitter and RSS to gain hits for your Helium articles

So you are working your butt off writing articles for Helium and are getting upfront payments for them but you are not sure how to promote them? There are many ways to do this, and one is through the very popular website called Twitter. While you could take the time out to log into twitter and post a new "tweet" each time you submit an article to Helium linking to it, there is an easier way to do this. First of all you will need (obviously) a Helium account, then you should make a twitter account. On top of that you need to go to Twitterfeed and make an account there as well. If you have a Google or Yahoo account you can use those to log into TwitterFeed without creating a new user name and password. It might all seem like a lot of mess and much work but trust me, it is just a one time thing and once you set it up all of the work will be done for you.
How to set up your Helium RSS feed to Twitter:
- Create a Twitter account and write down your user name and password.
- Create a TwitterFeed account.
- Click the "Create New Feed" button in the TwitterFeed Dashboard.
- Now you will need to go to Helium and find out the URL to your About Me page.
- Log out of your Helium account and go to your About Me page while still being logged out.
- Click on the icon just to the left of the address bar (between the address bar and the Home icon) and a small window will pop up.
- Click the More Information button and another window will open in which you will see different tabs.
- Click on the tab with theRSS logo on it. You should now see a link there, this is the RSS feed URL for your About Me page.
- Go back to the tab with your TwitterFeed, in which you had started to create a new feed.
- You can type in "Helium" into the Feed Name field and into the RSS Feed URL field enter the URL link which you just found for your About Me page.
- You are now done!
What this does is, each time you submit an article to Helium the TwitterFeed will post a new Twitter message with a link to the article for you. Easy enough, isn't it?
Please note, while this will create posts to your Twitter account it does not mean that you will automatically receive hits. Go to your Twitter account and start following some people so you get followed in return. The point is to have as many people as possible to see your posts so they would read your articles.

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5 Star writers: How to earn more on Helium.com

Congratulations to all those of you who have earned that fifth and final star with Helium. It has taken a lot of work and effort, but what does it all mean in terms of how much you can earn with Helium now? Well it means that with a little bit of planning and some time set aside each day that you could come up with a nice little income for yourself. Surely it wont be like a full time job but nonetheless it will be a significant amount. So how can I earn you ask? I assume that you are already familiar with the ins and outs of Helium and its rules if you have come this far (if not read up on: How to increase your earnings at Helium, Earning rating stars on Helium as well as the Helium Help Guide) so I will jump right into it. To make the most of the stars which you have you need to make a plan, and in order not to overwhelm yourself you should divide your writing plan into daily tasks. The following is a formula I have come up with, for my personal writing goals, to earn you at least $630 a month from Helium. It calls for you to write a 180 articles a month, sounds insane doesn't it? Well that is why we are going to be breaking it all down on a day to day basis.
First of all you need to remember that you need at least ten percent of your articles to be competitive. I will make the calculation as if we are starting of clean since I don't know what your articles look like at the moment. So out of the 180 articles you write, 18 will need to be competitive and the rest will be empty.
What you will do each day is (and I have added in the calculation to make it easier to understand how you will earn the money):
- Write 6 articles per day.
-After each article is submitted rate 3 articles. What this will do is it will painlessly build up your number of rates so that you can get the 5 rating stars and 500 rates which in turn bring you a $3.00 bonus.
- As I said above, 18 of your articles need to be competitive and the other 162 empty. It doesn't matter which order you do this in.
The following equation will help understand how you are getting the $630.00 a month:
Empty: 162x3.5=567.00
Competitive: 18x2.5=45.00
Five Star Bonus: 3.00
Per click revenue: 15.00
Total= 630.00
Now the fifteen dollars from the per click revenue is an assumption, but it should not be a problem to receive. For more tips on how to get more views for your articles feel free to read: Using Twitter and RSS to gain hits for your Helium articles. While $630.00 might not pay all your bills it is not something to be thrown away either, and at the effort it is good money.

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How to get the most out of Helium.com contests

They are loved, hated and leave many of our fellow writers just frustrated! As puzzled as we might get by the secret inner workings of the Helium contests they are still going to be around, constantly, so why not make them work for you when you can? Many writers raise their hands from these competitions because they don't understand the random and dramatic rises and falls of the same article during its lifetime in the contest, as well shortly after the contest ends. If you adapt to the next few ideas you should be able to benefit from the Helium Contests whether you win or lose.
Stop thinking of it as a contest. Instead of embracing all of the stresses of a competition simply imagine that you just got an idea for a bunch of great articles all under on theme, and that the titles have already been suggested for you. Convenient, isn't it?
Get familiar with when the contests start and end. A batch will usually close on a Tuesday and a new group will pop up on a Wednesday. It helps to know when you can check for new writing opportunities, as well as to know your deadlines. Each contest runs for two weeks, and is then on a one week hold for rating, so check each contest for its specific deadlines.
Participate in the areas which you know. Choose the contests with the most article titles which you have knowledge on, or ones you are confident you will be able to adequately research and write on. You should write, if not in every single title then, in as many titles in the contest as possible. Twenty articles at two points each are better than two articles at five points each, and points are what you are collecting after all.
Do not wait around. Start writing articles as soon as possible after spotting a contest of your choice. There are a couple of reasons for this, the deadline being one of them of course. And once that worry is eliminated you will want to get the most money possible out of your work. Helium Contest titles fill up fast and since Helium pays for only the first five articles in a title you will need to hurry. You will also want to be the first to write in as many articles as possible for the extra $1.00 bonus. If you make sure you write in each title before it reaches the cut off for payment, and have as many of those be Empty Title Bonus qualified you will ensure that you are paid for every article you write so that even if you don't win, or come up in the top three, the whole thing wont be a big loss after all. If you do win you could double your money. Either way you come out of it with a gain, hey you even up your competitive percentage score!

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Get the most from your Helium.com earnings

Many aspiring writers, or just souls in need of a little cash, out there put in a lot of work into writing these online articles but then they don't know how to make the most of it. They submit them to a website, sometimes not just for (literally) pennies but for a chance to earn pennies. And that chance to grab a penny or two all depends on the exposure and the rank of your article. Some earn nothing, maybe a cent or two over months, while others more lucky and skilled ones earn a hundred or more from one article alone in a month. To get the most out of what Helium has to offer, money wise, you will, of course, first need to reach the five star status. Not to say that all the time spent building up to that is wasted and fruitless. Take that time to earn a few bucks on the side but most importantly take it to learn the ropes of Helium, of promoting your articles and online writing in general. Get into a habit of writing a certain set of quality pieces a day, create a sort of a regime. To read more on how to efficiently earn the five stars please read: "How to increase your earnings at Helium", it will help you reach that goal quicker.
Once you have your five stars go through the following list and do as many things as you are able to. Most all of them are doable, however not everyone will be able to do each one. Also if you keep your rating star status up at five each month you will get a little three dollar bonus. If you need help with the rating stars please read: " Earning rating stars on Helium".
What to do to get more out of your articles:
- Make sure you write to empty titles, this will give you an extra dollar per each article. So instead of earning $2.50 you will earn $3.50.
    + Keep in mind, while writing to empty titles is ok you need to make sure that your competitive article percentage does not fall under 10 percent.
    + By writing in empty titles which have potential to become popular topics you might kill two birds with one stone. Get your empty title bonus, as well as have that article turn into a competitive one down the road.
- If you don't already have the usual social networking accounts open up following: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Triond, AdSense.
    + Hook up your Helium account to Twitter and set up RSS, to find out how to do this please read: "Using Twitter and RSS to gain hits to your Helium articles".
    + Opening accounts such as Triond and Bukisa will earn you money each time someone views the articles. They also allow you to connect your Twitter, Facebook, GoogleAdsense and other accounts.
    + So in essence you would do something along the lines of: Submit to Helium> Submit to Bukisa> Link to Twitter.
- You should also find sites that buy articles for more money. They are usually harder to get your articles into as they pay anywhere from $5 to over a $100 so each article is submitted for review and approval before being accepted, unlike at Helium.
    + Once you have found some sites like this which fit your writing area you should write some high quality articles and submit them there before submitting to Helium. In case they buy the article they might not want it re-posted, and if they don't...well no harm done you can still submit it to Helium.
We do online social networking like crazy, so you should make it work for your articles as well. Figure out who pays the most per click and link your articles there. Post the links to your written works on your Facebook accounts, Myspace, Friendster, whatever, the more people get an opportunity to see it the better. It might seem tedious but it will pay off in the long run.

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