Helium Responds To My Critique Of Their Service
Last month, I blogged about the Helium Marketplace a resource for writers who are interested in making money by writing for various companies who are looking for people to author specific articles. If their article is chosen, the writer could make a competitive rate for their effort.
When I wrote, “The Helium Marketplace: Don’t Make This Terrible Mistake!, ” I warned everyone that what they were about to read was a negative review of this service. I wanted to establish the tone in advance to prepare people for what I was about to say.
You can read what I wrote to understand my position. However, I will say that a representative from Helium contacted me to say that some of the information was wrong and/or misleading. Elizabeth Streeter, who is a Business Development Associate with Helium, contacted me to personally to rebut some of what I wrote. In the interest of giving Helium a chance to have their viewpoint known, I am republishing the bulk of Ms. Streeter’s response here. You can pick it up after the line break.
I read your review (thumbs down) on the Helium Marketplace:http://thearticlewriter.com/blog/2007/08/23/the-helium-marketplace-dont-make-this-terrible-mistake/
I tried to create a Netscape account so that I could comment on the story, but the comments feature doesn�t seem to be working. I thought it best to reach out to you directly. There is some misinformation in your review and I�m hoping that you will consider revising it or doing a follow-up.
First off, you write: �On August 22, 2007, I took a look at the Helium Marketplace to see their list of publishers. According to TechCrunch, the initial 14 publishers will mushroom to over 1000 sometime in September.� This was not a good day at work for me; I read that article and my stomach sunk. TechCrunch misreported or mistyped; we are aiming for 1000 TITLES not publishers sometime in September. As you can clearly see (and pointed out to your audience) we are not even remotely close to 1000 publishers. The day that article came out, I panicked a little and then hoped that it wouldn�t have any large ripple effects. We are getting quite a bit of press, at Helium, and I hoped that their typo would prove minor in the long run. Truthfully, I expect we�ll have close to 700 titles by September�s end. There are deals in the pipeline that may give us the 1000 we are aiming for, but it may have to become October�s goal. The point being, this was an error on TechCrunch�s part.
Secondly, you write: ��The publisher will select the article they like best. Only the selected articles will earn revenue for the writer.� This means that if a writer spends 2 to 3 hours (or more) crafting a well researched and expertly written article, they have no guarantee of getting paid. In other words, all the work you have done has been wasted � many topics are too specific to sell elsewhere � and you are left uncompensated.� I believe you may have been misinformed or have not clearly understood Helium�s User Agreement. While it is true that the publishers� select which articles (if any) they wish to purchase for the advertised fee, all remaining articles do hold the potential to earn the writer revenue at Helium. Helium�s business model is that we share a portion of the advertising revenue generated on our site with our writers. Thousands of dollars have been paid out to Helium writers (not including Marketplace competitions) and we are looking to push that number above $1 million. Here is a brief description of how writers earn revenue on Helium:
Helium offers a fair and trusted marketplace for its members and pays for articles based on the value of their contribution. The value of each article is determined by three market drivers:
* How good is the article? Quality matters! Higher-ranked articles will earn more money than lower-ranked articles.
* How many readers are interested in the article�s topic? Some subjects will draw more total views than others.
* How much will advertisers pay to advertise on the subject? Each subject attracts a different set of advertisers who pay a different amount to be associated with a subject. For example, subjects in the area of personal finance will draw a higher ad rate than subjects like chess.
These three factors are combined to calculate the earnings to each member for each of their articles.
Articles ranked higher by members earn more than lower-ranked articles. Quality counts. Articles ranked in the top five out of 50 articles are read more often than articles ranked lower. They are deemed more valuable to Helium members.
http://corp.helium.com/help/benefits_earning
So, you see, the remaining articles that are not outright purchased by our Marketplace publishers go into the various writers� portfolios and continue to earn them cash indefinitely. Another thing that happens that can earn a writer cash is that we offer the sale of non-exclusive licenses to pre-existing articles off of our main site. Every time a license to publish is purchased, the Helium writer is paid 80% of that licensing fee. Marketplace articles, if sold to the Marketplace �publisher�, are only sold once. If the article a writer composed for Marketplace is not purchased by the sponsoring publisher, their article now has the chance to be licensed repeatedly through Helium; earning them cash every time!
Regarding the expired articles, we leave them up there for a period of time for two reasons:
1. So the publisher has time to review all of the returns
2. So we may showcase the selected (winning) writers to our community, once chosen
Lastly, you also write:
�Mark Hamilton, a journalism instructor from Vancouver, noted on his Notes from a Teacher blog that writers for Helium give them complete and perpetual rights for contributed content. In other words, if you submit your articles to Helium�s marketplace you don�t own them.� Matt, this statement could not be further from the truth. What Helium �sells� publishers is a �license�. It is stated very clearly in our Helium User�s Agreement that our writers keep their copyright. If a writer sells an article through our Helium Marketplace, they are agreeing to give Helium an exclusive license to the article, but they still maintain copyright and so, technically, the writers still �own� their articles.
Marketplace is young, only having just come out of a pilot program a few weeks ago. Helium is going to be a year old in a few weeks. I apologize for the length of this email, but I truly believe that a lot of the information in your article is misleading or untrue and we would greatly appreciate the opportunity to help you educate you viewers and readers. If you have any questions about the Marketplace service I am more than happy to speak with you directly. Please feel free to phone me at [number removed].
The Helium Marketplace truly IS a great place for writers! New writers, seasoned writers, professional freelancers, ALL writers. I hope that you will come back and give it another look and consider revising or following up on your story.
I’ll reserve my comments until after I have a chance to look at Ms. Streeter’s claims. Feel free to include your comments about the Helium Marketplace or Helium in general.
[...] Helium Respond’s To My Critique Of Their Service Last month, I blogged about the Helium Marketplace a resource for writers who are interested in making money by writing for various companies who are looking for people to author specific articles. If their article is chosen, the writer could make a competitive rate for their effort. When I wrote, &… [...]
[...] Helium Respond’s To My Critique Of Their Service Last month, I blogged about the Helium Marketplace a resource for writers who are interested in making money by writing for various companies who are looking for people to author specific articles. If their article is chosen, the writer could make a competitive rate for their effort. When I wrote, &… [...]
[...] Writer has actually looked more closely at Helium than I have, and as a result of his investigation received a reply from Elizabeth Streeter, who is a Business Development Associate with [...]
Matt, I’m still not convinced! Glad to read their reply and I don’t doubt their good intentions, but it strikes me as a real pig in a poke… and, in general, not worth the effort.
Anne Wayman
http://www.thegoldenpencil.com
Anne, thank you for your comments and what you posted to your blog today.
Although I haven’t re-examined everything that Elizabeth mentioned, I know that the Helium Marketplace isn’t something I would be interested in using.
Personally, I do much better when working for clients directly. Although their fee isn’t huge, I would rather establish a relationship with a client then go through another party. Plus, I then know for sure that my work will be accepted.
Even if an article is rejected, I know writers can still post it to Helium and earn some money that way. Personally, I would rather make what is due me up front instead of relying upon residuals. There isn’t any guarantee that you will get paid forever and a day.
Hmm…interesting response. Like Anne, I don’t know how I much I buy into the responses you were given or even more so if I would ever be interested in utilizing a service like this. I am highly protective of my rights to anything I write and that section still seems a little fuzzy to me.
Those are my thoughts too, Dana. At best, you may still make money through Helium, but nothing approaching what you could make with the Helium Marketplace if your article was accepted and the pay out decent.
I’ll spend a bit more time reading everything to come to a clearer determination. If I change my opinion, I’ll post same here.
If you want to sit around dreaming up articles and pestering sources with no indication the stories will ever see print, go ahead. Helium gets ad money off your work–goody for them. I see Craigs spam and think, “Oh, please don’t be Helium.” I have even written that in a note–and get an autorespond back–yup, Helium.
From Helium’s user agreement:
“Grant of license: By submitting your content to Helium, you grant Helium (and any Helium successors-in-interest, subsidiaries, or parent companies), a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, non-exclusive, sub-licensable right and license to, in whole or in part, with or without attribution to you, use, copy, modify, edit, adapt, publish, publicly display/perform, translate, display, create derivative works from and/or license (or sell with your authorization) and/or distribute content posted to the Site.”
But we still own it because we have the copyright. Whoop-di-friggin’-ding.
I’m an unaccomplished writer so far, and even I know to give this one a pass.
Matt, it is one of the worst written licensing policies I have found. I believe Helium will say that they only are receiving a non-exclusive, sub-licensable right to the work, but you have to read the paragraph several times in order to understand that.
It is small comfort to “own” an article which is controlled exclusively by someone else, in my opinion.
Star: I think ad revenue is the biggest money generator for all types of article sites and directories, don’t you agree?
With tens of thousands (or more) articles online, it doesn’t take long to generate a nice cash flow. Authors may get a trickle through the regular Helium service, but I doubt that the amount comes anywhere close to what they can get if they sell their work directly.
I just found this post, and wanted to say that I actually do have some good experience with Helium, and the Marketplace. I’ve now sold over 20 articles in the Marketplace, and I’ve made fairly good money there.
Jenn, thank you for your comment. The Helium Marketplace could work out okay for some writers, but you still must compete with others and hope that someone accepts your work.
I imagine that your writing abilities are strong, thus your success with selling articles.
There is nothing real favorable about Helium. They owe many writers money. Earnings go down rather than up. Also, I have been published in the Marketplace and they still have not paid yet. I found out that the Marketplace is all pseudo names because Helium actually owns some of the publishers. The Pulitzer Prize thing that they have going now is not the real Pulitzer Prize and has nothing to do with the real Pulitzer. It is a scam and a gimmick. Use Helium at your own peril.
Michelle, that is news to me — the Pulitzer connection. When I visited the site, it seems that they are looking for Pulitzer style reporting, but don’t look to be eligible for the Pulitzer Prize as that doesn’t seem to be what they are touting.
I have earned a total of 7 cents so far on Helium for half a dozen articles. (I can’t collect it until I reach $25, though.) I probably spent about 5 hours total on them. One of my articles is ranked number one out of thirty-two and it earned me 4 cents.
I have spent a few hours rating, too. There is no way, that I can see, to find out how many articles a person has actually rated so they can earn their little star for rating during Helium’s current promotion. Can anyone point me to a way to find out? Also, there is nothing that prevents a rater from just clicking in, without reading and comparing the two articles. If I were a dishonest person, I could just be “phoning it in” on the whole rating scheme.
I would also like to know if Helium has any stats on articles actually purchased in the marketplace. I would like to know what percentage get purchased overall, plus how they treat buyers who choose not to purchase any from those articles posted by writers.
I feel like this is a huge opportunity for theft of ideas, if not plagiarism. It would be one thing if Helium would shell out a buck or two to the authors, whether the articles sell in the marketplace or not. But the non-sellers revert back to the person’s Helium list of articles. Thus far, I don’t see them in the rating pool, and so have not earned any rank, money, or stars for the promotion for having spent time writing them.
Frankly, as a writer, I have had better luck (and made substantial money)on other sites. Helium, to me, is for the young and idealistic who want to spew their opinions, or for people with too much time on their hands. The rest of us have to earn a living.
Helium is useful if you want to play around with writing. However, anyone trying to make money will be disappointed, unless you are happy with a few dollars per day (on average) at the most, and only if you are “rated” one of the better writers. It appears to be most useful for college students, perhaps to make a nickel or dime on term papers.
The only significant benefit might be the possibility of attracting notice, although the potential is quite low considering the background static from tens of thousands of contributors.
The method of rating is not good. It is all to easy for slackers to simply perform “coin-toss” rating to jack up their rating stars. It is also very easty to subvert the rating process, which is supposed to be fair because you can not see who the writers are. However, you can easily find out who each writer is (and how each article is rated already) by typing the title into the search box.
More importantly, the quality of many articles (including some rated as number one) is abysmal. Yet, everyone has an equal vote in the rating system. Therefore, the quality of the ratings are greatly diluted.
The guidelines posted for awarding the blue and gold stars (for writing and rating) are obviously not being used. I can attest to this from my own experience. Essentially, Helium is “inflating” the grades (big time).
As for the ownership rights issue; I do not believe Helium could enforce their convoluted “policy”. Their description of licensing is not consistent with the rights of a copyright owner. Therefore, either the licensing agreement is not valid or the writer does not really own the copyright. Even so, at worst, all a writer would have to do is modify the article to use it elsewhere.
However, any major effort should not be submitted to Helium since you are not going to be paid a fair amount.
John, thank you for your very detailed response. You underscore the many flawed points about Helium, something only a regular user like you can articulate.
I agree, the contributors are probably not people who rely on Helium as their primary source of income. Likely, college students and hobbyists use Helium and for them that is all that they need.