Some suggestions for new writers in Helium

@scheng1 (24650)
Singapore
April 24, 2010 11:52pm CST
This is part of the message I sent to a new writer in Helium. The suggestions are part of the writing strategy to secure the 4th writing star, and to earn as many empty title bonus as possible: 1. Dont submit to creative writing in Helium, you hardly get anything from Helium. Creative writing does better in Associated Content. (I had eight creative writings in Helium. The combined earnings for more than a year hardly reached ten cents). 2. Dont submit any article during the last week of the month, use it to leapfrog. New articles always bring the writing score now. The only exception is to write to empty title. (New article submitted to competitive titles always has a writing score of 50%). 3. Write a few articles to competitive titles. Even if you do not get upfront for submitting to titles with more than a hundred articles, your writing score improves if your article reaches the top 5. Eg, a ranking of 5/100 means a writing score of 96% for that article. It will push the average writing score up. 4. After the first 4 articles in competitive titles, aim to write 90% of your articles in empty title. The easiest is to write book reviews. You can get $1 empty title bonus, and upfront payment. In term of passive income, book reviews in the business and finance topics pay higher.
3 people like this
8 responses
@Canellita (12029)
• United States
5 May 10
This is pretty good advice. My score has been dipping into the low 80s recently and I am once again looking for competitive titles with more than 50-100 articles to bring it back up to 85 or higher. I don't really worry about the score so much since I have 4 writing stars but I am working toward number 5 and I would like to get there sooner than later. I have been tempted to try creative writing for page views and now I know it will probably not go well after reading your tips. I have finally started writing book reviews. I also redid some movie reviews just to get closer to the goal of 300 articles. No upfronts there but a trickle has started in performance payment. I have found it better for my average to do a new competitive article than to leapfrog existing ones.
1 person likes this
@scheng1 (24650)
• Singapore
6 May 10
Hi Canellita, why not you focus on book reviews instead? You can earn the empty title bonus as well as the upfront. Since Helium allows up to 90% on non-competitive titles, you might as well write book reviews. Hardly anyone will compete with you, and pull the writing score down. Creative writings never do well in Helium. There is one writer in Hubpages who is good in creative writings. Her series of stories has more than 30 chapters already. I enjoy her pictures as much as the story. If you check out Hubpages, you can look for katyzzz.
1 person likes this
@Canellita (12029)
• United States
6 May 10
I will definitely do more book reviews. I saw earnings from the first one right away though I do not know how much the earnings will soar compared to other articles. My only concern in occasionally finding a competitive title with more than 100 articles is that I have noticed that when you have articles in titles that have even one additional post it does affect the ranking of your articles. My writing score immediately changes when new articles are posted to the titles I have written to regardless if I am still number one. I know it no longer matters with 4 stars but it still annoys me as I am trying to earn the bonus star. I definitely plan to do more book reviews though and I will start posting profiles on musicians I know as I have time just because I want to and I can get page views. I am trying to search Blogger for your blogs but I can not find how to do it.
1 person likes this
@Canellita (12029)
• United States
6 May 10
I should have said where to do it.
1 person likes this
@Sandra1952 (6047)
• Spain
3 Jun 10
Hello, Scheng. This is good advice, which I gleaned from you and others such as Canellita, Trensue, AnythingArt, Judith Wilson and Katerina Nikolas. I can vouch for it, as I now have 5 stars! It took me over two years to get one, and just 3 months to get to 5, so these strategies work. Too many writers - and I was one of them - write away and think that if their stuff is good enough, it will pick up the ratings and earn money. On Helium, strategy is everything. Now I'm earning really good money every month, and it's not because my writing has improved that much - although now I'm being more experimental with what I write, I'm sure my techniques are improving.
@scheng1 (24650)
• Singapore
3 Jun 10
Hi Sandra, glad to hear from you! Now that you are a 5-stars writer, you must have wisdom dripping from your mouth! Why not share your experience here? I think if you start a new thread sharing your experience, it will benefit a lot of new and old writers. I am glad to work out the rating system in the first few months. I think having a good grade in Maths help a lot. In term of writing skills and command of English, I am way behind all the writers in Helium. Fortunately, I learn the importance of having great first paragraph, that's why I can survive in Helium. I guess Helium made the right move to secure the writing stars for 4 and 5 stars writers. Those with less than 4 writing stars have more motivation to improve the writing score.
2 people like this
@Canellita (12029)
• United States
8 Jun 10
You don't always have to read an entire article to see which is better. Sometimes you can read both twice and still not be able to choose. A great first paragraph is essential to any article online or off. It will determine if a person keeps reading.
2 people like this
• Spain
3 Jun 10
Hello again. I have done a couple of threads passing on stuff, and they were well responded to. As you say, the first paragraph is important. I'm sure lots of raters don't even read past that! I agree with you that tenuring the stars is a great incentive, and I enjoy your articles - you're too hard on yourself!
1 person likes this
@Shellyann36 (11385)
• United States
29 Apr 10
Thank you for this post. I just recently signed up for Helium but have not submitted anything yet. I am still going over the instuctions.
1 person likes this
@scheng1 (24650)
• Singapore
29 Apr 10
Hi Shellyann, the only difficulty in Helium is to maintain your writing stars in order to get payout. The most disappointing thing is to see the stars dropping off on the last day of the month. The volatilty of the writing score scares many new writers. Even with my bulk of content in Helium, the writing score can drop from 75% to 70% within a day. Fortunately I'm already a 4 stars writer, so the writing score does not affect much. I hope you can understand the writing score computation and keep the writing stars.
1 person likes this
@opsharma (318)
• India
10 Jun 10
Thanks for suggestion. I am also a writer and was writing also in helium but I have not got much more from here.
1 person likes this
@scheng1 (24650)
• Singapore
10 Jun 10
Hi Opsharma, everyone earns a few dollars when we are new. You need to keep adding content in order to earn more from Helium. Another thing is pay attention to the strategy of writing for Helium. Keep your writing stars, and maintain all the five rating stars.
@ImIrish (55)
• Ireland
4 May 10
This is helpful for me. I am hoping to join Helium today or tomorrow and I will be sure to follow this guide to improve my rating. Thanks scheng1
1 person likes this
@scheng1 (24650)
• Singapore
7 May 10
Hi ImIrish, Helium has a very good guide for new writers. Plus there are many articles to help new writers, such as tips for writing, tips for rating articles etc. There are even tips for writing profile, to increase the chance of publishers buying your article. That is known as stock content sale. Hope you enjoy the writing, and the earnings.
1 person likes this
• Philippines
25 Apr 10
Wow, your post was really helpful. Thanks a lot! I'm quite new to how the star system in Helium works, and I'm still trying to figure out how to go about picking and writing articles. You're really great! I still can't log in to my Helium account (I find that logging in successfully can be really erratic for non-US users), but I'll check my messages there when I can :)
1 person likes this
@scheng1 (24650)
• Singapore
25 Apr 10
Hi Justdroppingby, actually that message was meant for you. I dont have problem login to Helium account. I did a few rates in Helium just now, plus sending the message to you. I find that writing articles and generating writing ideas are not hard. The problem with Helium is that you need to write to existing title or to wait for approval of new title. The computation of writing score is quite simple: If there are five articles in a title, the first article always command 100% in writing score, the second (2/5) is 80%, 3/5 is 60%, 4/5 is 40%, 5/5 is 20%. If there are ten articles in a title, the first article is still 100%, the second is 90%, 3/5 is 80% and so on. That is why writing to a very competitive title, meaning those with more than 100 articles is part of the strategy to bring the writing score high. As long as you can get within the top 10, your writing score is secured.
1 person likes this
@scheng1 (24650)
• Singapore
25 Apr 10
Hi Justdroppingby, have you checked the system requirement? Probably you are using too advanced or outdated system to access Helium. I have no problem with Helium at all. Hope you can learn from rating the articles. I notice that many writers in Helium rate articles according to how they feel about the first two paragraphs. That is why most of my articles in competitive titles started with soul-searching questions, eg "Are you desperate with the lack of success? Do you feel the world is working against you?" This type of opening paragraphs usually help to push the article to the top few positions. Anyway, aim for four writing stars, once you get the fourth writing star, you can relax and write whatever you want.
1 person likes this
• Philippines
25 Apr 10
Yeah, I've been having trouble logging in to my Helium account. I can still access the site, but on most attempts to log in I get the "...we regret we are not currently set up to provide an optimal experience for writers in every message" page. Checking in after a few hours sometimes does the trick. I'm not really sure what it means, though :/ Thanks for the advice about the writing scores. Just realized there are a lot articles already posted on Helium about the topic, I never just got around to reading them all :p I still find your advice the best, though, as it is short, straight to the point, and comes from a seasoned writer as you. I'm glad I found you here on MyLot, thanks again! :)
1 person likes this
@AnythngArt (3302)
• United States
25 Apr 10
All very good points, Scheng. Now that I am finally at 4 stars, I can definitely enjoy things more. Before reaching the 4th star, I was always so stressed out, now I can just enjoy writing to Helium. I have also started to work as a site steward although I am only doing the travel section for Italy. But that also gives me ideas of new articles to write, and I submit a number of empty Italy articles each month. I continue to make the most income from Helium, although I have branched out and am trying a couple of new sites now. Not everything works out, but at least all my eggs are not in one basket, and payments come at different times of the month, etc. Glad to hear your blogs are doing well. Are you on Facebook? I just joined there, but haven't figured it out yet.
@Canellita (12029)
• United States
5 May 10
Scheng you must do a list of these sites for getting links back to your blogs that also allow you to earn, what was that other one, Redgate? I have been a member of hubpages for years but never really did anything there. Now that I have enough content to actually promote I will have to start posting there.
1 person likes this
@Canellita (12029)
• United States
7 May 10
I am going to work on this over the weekend. I tried to post to hubpages this morning but the site would not let me!
1 person likes this
• United States
10 Jun 10
Oh, I should have known you would take a look at that. I really need to work on my blog. It is the forgotten child. I just use it as a storage site for my book reviews instead of a dynamic site, trying to earn money. I don't post there regularly. Well, sometimes I do, but not recently. I have been concentrating my efforts at Gather. I am guilty of all the things you accuse me of. Sometimes I get so despondent about the blog, I just want to begin again with a new one (my travel blog idea). I will have to work on improving this blog and then let you know when I've done that. I do put labels for each review when I am posting it. What do those labels do? So you are saying, I shouldn't have labels for topics of the book, just the name of author, title, and genre? Thanks for your help!
• United States
3 Aug 10
Thank you for the tips. I am relatively new to Helium and all advice is appreciated. The advice about the end of the month is very helpful, I will keep that in mind and just submit other articles before then. I'm doing rather well on Helium but I'm trying to improve my star rating. Hopefully, this will work in my favor.
@scheng1 (24650)
• Singapore
4 Aug 10
Hi Reviewmemedia, glad to hear that you are doing well in Helium. The writing score is very frustrating to a new writer, especially at the end of the month when you need the two writing stars to earn the upfront payment. Once you get to the fourth writing star, you are unlikely to lose the writing stars even if your writing score is low. Keep up with the writing. Many 5 stars writers are here to help you.