You may recall a previous post in which I mentioned that I had just joined up with a site called Helium. Helium allows you to write articles and submit them for review. Once your article makes it up the ranks, Helium shares the ad revenues that it gets from the page(s) that your article appears on.
My challenge was to determine if someone could really make any decent money by writing articles on Helium. To test this I wrote an article and submitted it for review. I also asked my wife to join and she wrote a few articles. My wife is very good at writing and she managed to get into the #1 spot on more than one of her articles. Alas, my own submitted article only really got to about #5 on the list.
What is puzzling, however, is that my article made a whopping $.05 (yes, you read that correctly, 5 cents!). Yet, despite a couple of my wife’s articles making it into the top spot, she has only made $.06. So how do people really make any money with Helium?
Well, as I have become more familiar with Helium I have discovered that there is a way to make some very good money there. However you really need to be a near-expert on some very diverse subjects in order to do so. They have a section called the marketplace where you can search through a list of topics that publishers are requesting to have written. Many of these requests have decent payouts on them. Most articles appear to start at around $16. Some are higher. I have even seen a few for $100 or more but you’ll really have to put work in to get that.
The problem I have with the Marketplace is that some of the topics are just too niche for just anyone to go in and make a decent monthly income just by writing articles for Helium every day. However it is a good way to get some extra cash now and then when you need it if you’re willing to put in the time for a marketplace article. As far as the ad-sharing portion of Helium is concerned, I just do not see how this could be a steady income stream. Even if you write an article and get to #1 every time I still don’t see how you can make much money. I will admit, however, that this could vary greatly by the popularity of the topic you are writing about so maybe there is potential - but again, I don’t see how you could always count on this as an income source.
If you disagree with some of the findings I have here because you have had a successful track record with them, please comment and let us know. We’d love to hear it!
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