In my six months of association with this web-site with a contribution of about 14 articles, I have been seeing my pennies growing slowly day by day to a current level of about 45$! I hope, if I progress at the same pace, I can withdraw my first 100$ in about 8 more months. Not bad!
You can always promote your articles through any means (by sending links with your e-mails, by linking them to your social networking web-sites etc). You can always ask your friends and well wishers to visit your articles (not necessarily to read them!) and click a few ads appearing at the sides!
Helium
Helium’s punch line says : Helium — where knowledge rules.
It is one unique subject and content hungry web-site that welcomes multiple writers to write on same topic under thousands and thousands of available topics.
Do you want to know how to speed up your PC? You will find about 50 articles dishing you advice on the same subject at Helium. Funny still, Helium will have near-about titles – How to make your PC faster, How to accelerate your PC, How to solve the problem of a slow running computer and there will be 30 to 50 articles in each written by so many dubious experts!
Helium’s aim is to lure any search engine query to end up in their site so that the seeker gets something to read on the subject. And they thrive by the revenue from numerous topical ads (including Google Adsense).
Helium boasts of near about a tenth of a million of writers contributing to it and several millions of articles in its kitty. Helium has a unique peer rating of articles. As multiple articles are accepted under each title, Helium members are obligated to rate the articles one against another and select as to what extent one is better than the other. After going thro’ a complex statistical algorithm across adequate number of rating cycles, the articles get ranked. Top 5 articles are normally presented more prominently together so that the reader can select them to read. Naturally, top ranking articles have a better share of readership. But the real quality of the articles sitting at top slots is a matter of contention even among many Helium members!
I have my stock of about 108 articles in Helium, created in 6 months. One major advantage of Helium is that they accept articles on non-exclusive basis (i.e. you own the copy-rights and you are free to publish your articles anywhere else too).
Helium offers several opportunities for making money. One is by sharing their Ad revenue in a pitifully miserly way to the authors, which is linked to the readership of their articles. This way, the pennies add up frustratingly and painfully slowly. I have accumulated a ridiculous amount of about 9$ out of these hundred and odd articles in 6 months. But there are a few members owning several hundreds of articles, who boast about a dollar per day earnings through viewer-ship. But they are too few in numbers. The minimum payout amount in Helium, fortunately, is 25$
What was more attractive at Helium was one of their one-time-promotion that concluded recently. They offered 1 to 3 dollars per article across a 100-day period to the writers subject to certain quality criteria that the members have to maintain in writing and rating of articles. I got about 140$ through this reward program, which was paid instantly through Paypal. There were a couple of Helium members who made more than 1000$ through this program.
Helium offers a marketplace for potential buyers of articles from them. Magazines and web-sites who want articles on specific titles within certain word limits pay 16$ to 80$ (to the author) per article and buy them from Helium. The advantage is that for every title, the buyer gets several articles written by Helium members, out of which he can select the best one and pay for it. The rest go to Helium’s kitty of articles. At any point of time, there are 20 to 30 article titles available for writing in the Market place. Plenty of Helium members are making money out of the Marketplace. I have so far been quite unlucky there.
Another Helium special is the Weekly Channel Champion Contests. Helium has several major subject channels(like Autos, Finance, Religion, Business, Computer etc) and every week about 5 channels offer 25 titles each for writers to write. Writers can participate in these contests and write as many articles as they can. The articles get rated as usual by peers and based on the ranks, winners are announced. Under each channel 4 prizes are offered (75$ maximum and 5$ minimum). I once made 5$ in one such contests.
