Helium.com–It’s A Lot of Hot Air

The last two days, I have been exploring Helium.com. Have you never seen it? I ran across it on MySpace. There was an advertisement that said something to the effect of: earn money for your writing at Helium.com. Hey, I’m writing every day, so I thought it might be worth a shot. I was wrong. At the risk of sounding like I’m all about “sour grapes,” here is my experience.

The premise is that you can write on a topic that is already on the site or you can write a new article. Your article is “rated” by the writers on the site. Each writer is given sets of two articles to compare and pick the better article. Supposedly, if your article is better it rises to the top (just like helium rises—get it?). Every time your article is viewed (except during the rating process) you earn a fraction of a penny.

Initially, I was excited and decided to give it a shot. Just browsing through the articles, I found one about the card game “Footsie.” The woman called it “the hand and foot card game,” and her description was very confusing. I had already posted on this site about Footsie, so I just submitted my article. Zing! It went right to the top. It was #1 of two articles. That was too easy.

There was a topic titled “Why we need breakfast.” There were 19 answers. The top answer, and I quote, said:

Having a wonderful breakfast every morning can make sure you are energetic the whole day, besides, the most important thing is it can help you lose weight gradually. The feeling of full in the morning can prevent you from eating too much during lunch time.

I couldn’t stand it, I wrote an article and submitted it. Granted, it wasn’t my most exciting writing, but I knew it was better than that one. When you write an article, Helium puts yours in the middle and it gets to sink or float, supposedly on its own merit. Mine went from # 11 to # 6 in the next 30 minutes. I wasn’t surprised. But, it didn’t move any farther! Hmmm.

Some investigation showed that if you want your article to be “rated,” you have to do some article rating yourself. I started rating. I was given two articles to compare and pick the better one. Oh My Lord, people! I’ve never seen such excruciating grammar, such atrocious spelling, or such tripe. It was a painful process, but I rated about thirty sets of articles.

My article didn’t float any higher. It has stayed at # 6. Go look at it for yourself. Please! If three people look at it, I’ll make a penny. That’s right, one cent. I started reading in the “community” and discovered that top writers (with 300 articles or more) were making all of $10 a month. The problem is, you don’t have to be good to earn money! All it takes is someone reading your article. Junk articles earn just the way that well written ones do—one reader at a time.

To be fair, there are a few writers on the site who know what they are doing. To be honest, I don’t know why they are wasting their time at Helium. The “community” is probably the only good thing about the site. There are a lot of people willing to share their experiences (and a lot of people who share do have some). But, there are also a lot of people who don’t know diddly. Don’t bother to try to access it. As a reader, you don’t get to go there. You have to join. Don’t bother to join.

If you are looking for a place to make money writing, Helium is not it. The writers in the community justify their time by saying you get “experience.” I’ve been told that “experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” Other people are writing for “exposure.” Exposure can kill you. I’m afraid if you write on this site, it might kill your writing career.

Helium’s motto is “Where Knowledge Rules.” Most of the articles are subjective. Helium is NOT a resource. “Helium rises,” but so does a boil.

I spent two days to find that out. That’s 48 hours I’ll never get back.

Other posts you might enjoy:

1. The Writing Doldrums
2. Huh?
3. I Am A Closet Hoarder
4. How Do YOU Dispose of Old Medication?
5. Gentle Rebellion–Finding Balance–A Group Writing Project

Tagged as: STORYTELLING & SCRIBBLING, Words