Both Triond and Helium are the market place for online writing. Both reward the writer based on number of unique pageviews for their articles. Users can write whatever they like to write under certain restrictions.
Helium
At
Helium
one can write articles for any topic that is already listed and others have written something on them. Or one can start one's own topic but it will take a while before it is approved by the system and appears online. These generate revenue as long as the article is there and gets visitors. There is no need to worry about ideas as the topics are already there and you can just start writing your own content on them.
Triond
At
Triond
there is no restriction on topic. You can write whatever you want to write while satisfying terms and conditions. Here you get a lot of flexibility in creating topics. It need not be debate or question and answer kind of thing unlike at helium. But sometimes it appears as though you do not get any ideas and unable to write. But over time you will learn how to create content as you write more and more articles for Triond.
The big difference
Many writers know that at helium there is something called peer review. Other writers review your article and rate it as they wish against another writer's content for the same topic. This may seem good for the reader because the reader will simply need to open the first few articles and those writers will get rewards. This may seem simple at first and we like it. But the other writer's last in the list will not get any rewards even if the topic is good and getting lot of visitors. What this means is that the administrator always makes money. But the writers there get a kind of inequality with respect to rewards.
This is not the case at Triond. There is no rating here with respect to others but only a rating notable from no. of liked it or comments. But this is not something that creates competition among writers which is the case at Helium.
Imagine you write a lot of articles at Helium and if you get poor rating either because of poor writing or lack of subject or any reason, you will not get much rewards. Because the expectations will be too high and we end up thinking we got less. This definitely makes you lose interest in the long run. The competition and contest are better only for the administrators and a few winners while every other person feels like lost. It is not a win-win situation. At Triond, there is a win-win strategy. So you get your rewards from only your writing and not others' competition or pressure. Even they help you with newsletters on how to increase earnings.
This means that at Helium there is a pressure on writers because of competition and contest which is not there at Triond. Remember whenever there is competition and contest among only few who get rewarded will continue to do better while others degrade. If everyone is given equal reward then everyone will do their best. This appears in the long run.
By this I do not rule out the fact that rating does help writers improve their writing, but Helium not only one place for that. You can write articles at Triond, digg them or submit to stumbleupon etc. You can know how many readers liked them or commented. Also at Helium the readers are usually writers only unlike at Triond where lot of traffic comes due to pagerank, search engines and links from other sites. So at Helium you end up most of the time reading others material than writing something. At Triond you end up writing more as you read others' material. Over time many writers shift from Helium to Triond.
Conclusion
Competition is not a good thing among people working for an organization. This may help few succeed but many feel like lost. Thus writers at Triond feel well at Triond over long time than at Helium. Remember Helium not the only place for improving your writing but is the only place for losing motivation to write with their contests and competition.
