Helium has a great appeal to freelance writers who are just starting out their writing career longing to publish their work. It promises instant readership, supportive writing community, and big earnings. It is all the new writer longs for; after all, it is legitimate writing site. There are some things, however, that Helium will not let you know about until you join that I decided to share with you from my two years of experience with them.
Even Well Written Articles Can Be Rated Low
Just that the article is rated low by fellow members does not mean it is written poorly. In theory, the articles should be rated for quality and not writer's message, but in practice, it might be different at times. I had some articles that were rather poorly written in the very beginning of my writing career and they were rated higher than the ones of much better quality I wrote later on.
Earning Writing Stars Is Not As Easy As They Say
There is a star reward system on Helium. You get stars for writing and for rating articles. I was happy when I found out that I am a three star writer, but my joy didn't last long; they all disappeared just before Helium was about to pay extra to the writers who have more than two writing stars.
According to the rules, you have to have four to twenty nine articles rated in the top quarter in order to qualify for one writing star. I had much more, so what happened to my stars?
I went on community forum to find out. Many disillusioned souls were wandering the same thing. Then we were told that the articles rated low hurt our writing score and take away our stars based on some sinister Helium calculations that they never told us upfront. Many were outraged and their angry messages removed from the forum.
Some of Your Articles Might be Deleted
Helium writing standards change and they will delete all articles that do not meet new standards. When I joined, the articles could be as long or as short as you wished, later they gave minimum word count and just removed all the articles that were shorter than that. You have no rights to your content after you submit, so you cannot delete anything yourself to improve your writing score; you can only edit it by using leapfrog, and this doesn't give you any assurance that your content will be rated any higher.
About The Pay
You can only earn something more if you have writing stars and manage to sell some articles on Helium Marketplace, which is not very easy. It will cost you many hours of hard work. I have written 198 articles, after I lost about 10 or more and earned less than fifty dollars for them, even though more than half of them are rated in the first quarter and I have no writing stars. Dear fellow writer, decide yourself if Helium is for you.
