"Will work for Helium?"
A few weeks ago I declared that I would experiment with Helium.com as a freelance writing income model, under my hypothesis that content aggregators like Helium are not viable income sources for writers—and might encourage the demise of journalism’s integrity.
When I first joined the debate over Helium last month, I found a muddled mess of speculation, PR whitewashing and marketing, unfounded haterism toward both sides of the debate (not to be confused with the ultra snarky gossip site Haterism.com). Basically, I found excessive conversation and very little action.
Since I’m a big fan of the scientific method and bobblehead-inspiring Elvis Presley songs, I decided to sign up with Helium.com, give it a go, and toss my slightly-biased-but-nonetheless-empirical findings into the Blog Salad for your quasi-culinary delight.
Within 48 hours of declaring my intentions, however, the brilliant-but-self-described-cranky Erik Sherman looked at Helium’s reported numbers and did some mathematical calculations. What did he find? The average Helium article earns $0.80.
"That'll be four articles on Helium.com plus tax. Would you like hot sauce?"
That’s right, an article on Helium.com—regardless of the length, quality or validity of its content—won’t buy you a single crunchy taco from that fast food joint with the Chihuahua spokesdog.
Along the same lines, Demand Studios informed a fellow writer that the average article on their site, again regardless of length or level of research, earns roughly $72 over five years.
So, with convincing evidence against them, I haven’t been in a big rush to become Helium’s next gullible sweatshop employee. Plus, I’ve been busy with my mother’s recent passing and with real work: I did some web design work for a fabulous blog that helps Long Island brides learn the difference between fondant and fondue. And I’ve received three writing assignments with well-respected, legitimate publications that are willing to pay more per word than I might (the imperative word here) receive per article on Helium.
So, whaddya think? Should I even bother continuing with the experiment? Or is the experiment already complete?
I’m in favor of just looking under the couch cushions and in the car cupholder for taco money as opposed to giving this company and its ilk any more publicity by continuing with your experiment.
It’s slightly more fun, plus you get a cleaner house/car out of the deal. You might even find enough to spring for the steak taco! That’s living high on the hog, my friend
Mmmm… steak taco… so MSG-zy… You’re making a convincing argument there, Cynthia.
While you WOULD get some interesting blog material from the experiment — and I would surely enjoy reading it — I vote you hang it up. You’re a Dad with 2 girls, a husband and a man whose mother just passed away. And you have real editors with real, decent-paying work coming your way. Why put your time and effort into something you already know won’t pay?
Unless, of course, you’re planning to write a book about your experience. That changes everything.
No one plans to write a book, do they?
Continue the experiment with Helium? No way.
With other services with different business models? LIke Examiner, or, say, Mahalo? Maybe.
I’m fairly familiar with Mahalo and its “Answers” product, which has a very novel business model based off of “tips.”
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/
The nice thing about Answers is it assigns a specific cash value to the work you do, and you select what you want to do. The questions people ask tend to be answered in short amounts of time, however as an answerer you are competing with other answerers for the best answer.
Well, he must have been looking over my shoulder. I’ve earned about $250 from 191 articles in nearly 3 years. You do the math! I’m only sorry I spent so much time there.
I now write on HubPages. I’ve earned about $600 from 75 articles over 2 years. Not a huge income, I know, but earnings for all articles are improving as they age. I’m also now using my HubPages articles to promote my other websites, so they have a value there, too.
I wrote a review of Helium on HP, here:
http://hubpages.com/_Marisa/hub/Heliumcom—Writing-Fun-or-Money
It goes to show that I don’t always pay attention to everything, when I commented on your previous article, I did not realize these posts were written in June.
I was not following your blog at that time. Had I been doing so, I would not have signed up at Triond in July.
In the 3 months since I’ve been writing on Triond, I’ve earned a whopping $.68 on 11 pieces. Triond is a site similar to Helium.
Granted, these were relatively short pieces. Not all of them were written with thourough care and research.
I will say you were well advised not to waste your time on the Helium experiment.
I am very sorry for your loss. I lost my mother 9 years ago this month. While no one can know what you are going through, I can say I have an idea. My best wishes to you Ron.