I’m feeling a little frustrated with Helium. They’ve recently introduced some great incentives:
- additional daily revenue share
- up-front payments for articles submitted each month, and
- kill fees for articles not selected by publishers in their marketplace, and therefore automatically transferred to the site.
All you have to do to qualify, they say in their announcement about this, is maintain at least a one star rating, which is supposed to be easy. Elsewhere they say you have to have it on the last day of the month when they’ll work out who gets what. Five star holders will also get a $3 dollar monthly bonus.
To get your stars, your ratings have to average in the top quarter of the ratings. If you introduce a new title and noone follows suit, there will be nothing to rate it against, so it won’t count. The number of stars relates to the total number of articles you have submitted. I’m still a newbie, and I got my one star right away, then I lost it, then I got it back, now it’s disappeared again because my rating score is 74%.
Some of the ratings do seem a bit unfair. My article about home energy audits went up to number 2 of 6 and then back down to 6. In the meantime I received a message from another member who was kind enough to take the trouble to tell me that she found that particular piece very well written and helpful.
A writer pal told me that he doesn’t like Helium because people will vote for their friends so it’s not fair. That can only be true part of the time because articles for rating are all anonymous and are issued randomly. I guess you just might recognise something you’ve seen before, but the chance of this seems quite remote.
The same person said he thought it was slanted to the US. That could be something that contributed to my down-rating because I wrote about the home energy audit in relation to the UK law on the new Energy Performance Certificate.
- additional daily revenue share
- up-front payments for articles submitted each month, and
- kill fees for articles not selected by publishers in their marketplace, and therefore automatically transferred to the site.
All you have to do to qualify, they say in their announcement about this, is maintain at least a one star rating, which is supposed to be easy. Elsewhere they say you have to have it on the last day of the month when they’ll work out who gets what. Five star holders will also get a $3 dollar monthly bonus.
To get your stars, your ratings have to average in the top quarter of the ratings. If you introduce a new title and noone follows suit, there will be nothing to rate it against, so it won’t count. The number of stars relates to the total number of articles you have submitted. I’m still a newbie, and I got my one star right away, then I lost it, then I got it back, now it’s disappeared again because my rating score is 74%.
Some of the ratings do seem a bit unfair. My article about home energy audits went up to number 2 of 6 and then back down to 6. In the meantime I received a message from another member who was kind enough to take the trouble to tell me that she found that particular piece very well written and helpful.
A writer pal told me that he doesn’t like Helium because people will vote for their friends so it’s not fair. That can only be true part of the time because articles for rating are all anonymous and are issued randomly. I guess you just might recognise something you’ve seen before, but the chance of this seems quite remote.
The same person said he thought it was slanted to the US. That could be something that contributed to my down-rating because I wrote about the home energy audit in relation to the UK law on the new Energy Performance Certificate.
Ah well, I’ll just have to try to submit some more articles and hope they get rated high before the end o November. If lots of writers do that each month, the Helium stock is going to grow and grow. More pages to attract the advertisers I suppose.
Original Articles. Constant-Content.
5 comments:
Haaaa.... that dog is cute!
I'm on Helium as well, and usually go for the money.
It's a good option to have, and fun to compete to try to get your article chosen in The Market.
I'm always pissed when I don't get it, though! ;D
Cheers FD. I'm waiting for results on 4 marketplace articles. The first one is really going on too long. Don't know if they can't make up their mind, or if Helium is dragging its heels in notifying writers.
Hello Jean,
You're right about the stars, I lost my two stars too, but well, I'm still writing again for the contests. I'm ranked 3 Again! he he he..and might lose it ..again! in the final ranking...That happened to me several times..but well, half of the fun is the excitement. But of course winning is wonderful! Sometimes I get discouraged and decide not to join, but I'm success comes only to those who persevere so ... Keep writing and let's hope for the best..
I wish I could make it too to the marketplace. Good luck with it.
Jena. I don't know why you feel you can't make it to the marketplace. It's even more worthwhile now that they've introduced kill fees.
Good luck with the contests. I have only entered once, writing three articles. I suspect you need to write at least six to have any chance of winning a prize, so I'll wait till I have more time before trying again.
I'm still getting used to being restricted by their titles, but am getting quite adept at adapting some of the work I already have available.
Hello Jean,
You can submit your title for approval. Just click on submit a title at the left side bar after clicking "my helium". Happy blogging.
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