FAQs

Writing

How do I improve my articles?

Review the Helium Writing Standards.
Scour Helium’s training forums. Find writing tips, peer critiques and writing advice. Go to the Writer’s Workshop forum on our discussion boards to unlock your writing potential.
Check out the Open Members’ Feedback forum, where members can post links to their Helium articles to receive real opinions from other Helium writers.
Get your very own mentor. Helium members are available via private email to help you further develop your articles. If you would like to be paired with a mentor, please forward the article you would like help with to our Mentor program. Write “Looking for a mentor” in the subject line. Or maybe you’d like to mentor someone? Write to our Mentor program with “I want to be a mentor!” in the subject line.
Write a better version of your article, use Helium’s Leapfrog feature.

How do I edit or delete my articles?
You can’t, directly. The only way you can edit an article is to submit a new version by using the Leapfrog feature. If you have only a few typos, use our Typo Fix system as explained at the bottom of the How to edit your articles using Leapfrog page. As for deletion of an article, once published, you cannot remove your article. If you feel there are special circumstances, please email the Content & Community Team.

How long should my article be?
Articles are not allowed on the site if they are shorter than 400 words in length. We also strongly encourage 1,500 words at maximum. Overly long pieces tend not to do well in rating.

What is a Leapfrog and how does it work?
Good question. Look in the “How to edit your articles; Using Leapfrog” section of Help.

Why was my article title changed?
Helium reserves the right to change new article titles or reassign articles to existing titles as part of our article submission process. We revise titles for clarity and search engine optimization. Sometimes, however, we make mistakes. We’re human, too. In this case, email the Content & Community Team and explain why you feel we messed up. We’re always happy to work with you to find a title that is both searchable and appropriate for your article.

Does Helium have creative writing? Where is it?
Yes, find Creative Writing on the left-hand channel navigation bar. To learn more about writing poems, short stories, novel excerpts and more, read the “Creative writing submissions” section under How to write for Helium in Help.

Is it better to use the "Suggest Title" tool on Helium or email titles to Helium?
Please submit your title using the "Suggest a Title" tool. Initiate a new title only if you can’t find another title that matches the topic you want to write about.

Can I publish an article on Helium that I have already published on other websites?

Helium allows you to publish other non-exclusively held content here, and you are welcome to publish your Helium articles on other non-exclusive sites and publications. You cannot grant exclusive rights to any of your Helium pieces, though.

Notable exception: Marketplace. If you submit to Marketplace every speck of those articles must be fresh, new, never before published.

If you write under another writing name elsewhere, do tell the community this on your About Me page. You do not want to be accused of plagiarism for work you've written elsewhere.

Rating and Ranking

Raters tips: What not to do in your articles on Helium
The following are the pet peeves identified by Helium raters. This list was compiled from a thread in the Content Questions section of the Helium Community boards.

If you’re new, these are tips to be aware of. If you’ve been around Helium a while, these are polite reminders.

Here’s what not to do!

In nuts-and-bolts writing, do not:

Use hackneyed and uncreative phrases in the first line of the article (e.g., “So, you decided to [subject]” or “Aahh, [subject]” or “In this article I’m going to explain [subject]”).
Start articles with four or five questions before getting to the point.
Repeat the title on the first line. (Suggestion: Write the first paragraph so that your article would be clear and complete even without a title.)
Use hackneyed and uncreative phrases in the article body (e.g., “no brainer” or “daunting task”).
Write an article that is a solid block of text.
Repeat words, phrases or ideas.
Ramble. (Suggestion: Re-read the article title to help stay focused on the subject. Corollary: For the most part, anything over three pages is too long for the web.)
Fail to organize your work. (Suggestion: Proofread your work to make sure it follows a natural, smooth progression, and does not jump from detail to detail.)
Fill an entire paragraph with rhetorical questions. (Suggestion: Build suspense with one or two questions, but answer them by the end of the article.)
Use lower-case letter “i” for “I”. Ever.
Use ALL CAPS for emphasis.
Capitalize unnecessarily.

Overall suggestion: Use spell-checker and grammar-checker in your own word processor, proofread yourself, ask someone to proofread, then use the Preview display before posting.

Regarding personal beliefs and details, do not:

Espouse the concept of leaving things in the hands of God. (Suggestion: Leave religion out of most knowledge articles except in the Religion Channel.)
Tell how old you are.
Use anecdotes and incidents in place of facts.
Pretend to know your facts when you really don’t (e.g., “As you probably know…” or “We all know…”).
Answer questions negatively. (Suggestion: Offer a solution!)
End articles with “Good Luck!”

For poetry, do not:

Write poetry that is self-involved (usually about pain or love).
Write poetry with just rhymes. (Suggestion: Use meter and enjambment.)
Let the phrase “Write your article here” slip in. Use Preview.
Repeat a short article to reach the word count.

In rating, how do I skip topics I don’t know anything about?
Use the “Skip” feature! On the rating page you’ll find the “Skip” link above the “Submit” button. You get 10 skips per session. Read more about rating and the "Skip" feature.

How can I get high rankings?
Write interesting, high-quality articles.

How do I find out how many times my articles have been read and rated?
Rely on your earnings and rankings to know whether your articles have been read or rated or not and how often. There’s no way to tell either of those things numerically, though.

Why is my article ranked immediately after I submit it?
Your articles are automatically placed at the 50th percentile to start out. If you think about it, it wouldn’t be fair to place your new article either at the top or the bottom of the list, but it has to start somewhere. This way, once it is rated, it will rise or fall according to its quality level.

I am rating hundreds of articles, yet my rating stars are decreasing, what is going on?
It is important to remember that the quality, not only the quantity, of your ratings is important to your overall rating stars. If you are rating 300 articles per day, but they are not considered quality rates, then your rating stars will decrease. It is often better to rate a smaller number of articles but spend more time evaluating each article. It is recommended that you rate 10 articles per day. Rating more articles than this can make for a tired and unfocused rater, which can lower the quality of the rating.

Community

How many posts does it take to get more stars in the community forums?
When you join Helium and begin posting in the community forums, you’ll see stars under the label “Board status,” which represent how many posts you have on Helium. When you start posting, you’ll have one star. It takes 50 posts to get two stars; 100 for three stars; 400 for four stars; 1,000 for five stars. The fancy colored stars mark Helium staff, forum administrators and forum moderators.

Remember, the stars for “Board status” represent the number of posts you have in the forums. There are separate stars for your writing and rating prowess on Helium.

How do I direct people to my article for feedback?
Go to the Open Members’ Feedback Forum on our Community boards. Take a look at some of the other postings. Then click on “New topic” up in the gray bar on the right. Paste the link to your article in there and ask for feedback. You’ll get plenty of encouragement!

I’m new here, and I still don’t understand something. What should I do?
Before you post your question, check if others have asked the same thing in Helium’s Community forums. If you can’t find anything, by all means, post your question in a thread on the “Ask Questions, Share Ideas, Express Concerns” forums at Helium. Please be clear and concise, post the question or relevant subject in the thread title. Also, if you look around a little, you may find your question is answered in Help.

How do I leave comments for other writers? How do I send private messages on the forums?
Use the “Contact this writer” link on a writer’s “About Me” page or article page. To use this feature, you must be a logged-in member of Helium.

Money & Earnings

Do you earn more from initiating a new title than from adding an article to an existing title?
No.

How much do I get paid, and when?
This is an important question. That’s why we’ve addressed it in the How to earn money at Helium section of Help.

How do I increase my earnings while sitting on my couch eating chocolate chip ice cream?
Easy. Here’s the scoop. Read “How to increase your earnings while sitting on the couch eating chocolate chip ice cream” in the How to earn money at Helium section of Help.

Why don’t my article earnings add up to the total?
It has to do with rounding. Accounting is done in very small increments and individual article earnings are stored as fractions of a penny but displayed as whole cents. So you may have three articles that have each earned 3.8 cents, so they are displayed as having four cents each. However, the total is 11.4 cents, which gets rounded to 11 cents, so it looks like it doesn’t add up properly.

Can I earn money by referring writers to Helium?
Yes! You can earn extra money with the Invite a writer™ program.

What if I see my article published on another website and I have not received compensation or credit for writing it?

You have several options in this situation.

1. Contact the webmaster and request that only the first few paragraphs of the article be included on their website. The paragraphs should be followed by a link to your article on Helium. This way you will not only get credit where it is due, but you will also earn money as a result of the increase in traffic to your article.

2. Contact the webmaster and inform them that you would like the article to be taken off of their website, unless they are willing to compensate for your work.

This really comes down to a matter of personal preference. Some Helium writers welcome any opportunity to increase page views, whereas others only want the publicity if there is compensation provided. Your decision!

Marketplace

How do I find Helium Marketplace articles?
You can get to the Marketplace page in two ways. Click on the “Marketplace” link in the top navigation bar at the top of every page on Helium, or click on the “Write” tab in the top navigation bar, then the “Go to Marketplace” button in the Marketplace box on the “Write” page.

How do I write for a Helium Marketplace article?
Click on any title in the Helium Marketplace for which you wish to write, and then click on the “Write Now” link. If you are not logged in, you will be prompted to do so. Then you may write your article. Be sure to address the description provided by the publisher for article length, focus and style.

What happens if I am selected?
When a publisher selects your article, we will notify you via email to the email address we have on record. We will either let you know that your article has been selected; or we may ask for confirmation that the article has not yet be published elsewhere and that you will not sell it for publication to any other publisher. We will indicate what response we need from you, if any.

How and when do I get paid?
After your article is selected, and we have informed you of that and received any required response, then we invoice the publisher. Publishers take between a few days to a few weeks to pay for the articles they have selected. As soon as we receive payment, we credit your Helium account with your writer share.

What will stop publishers from reprinting Helium Marketplace articles without paying for them?
When Helium enters into partnership with our Marketplace publishers, they sign a Memorandum of Agreement that has been drafted by our legal staff. The document addresses issues regarding selections, licensing, payment and terms. We work with our publishers to make sure that these guidelines are adhered to.

Policy & Copyright

Will people steal my work? Isn’t there a risk of thumbing through a cheap magazine at the dentist’s office, only to find my article plagiarized in some form or another by a hack who wanted to make a quick 50 bucks?
No way. You are protected through the DMCA as well as the copyright laws as much on Helium as a writer writing for such sites as NYtimes.com and BBC.com, etc. If you were to find your article plagiarized on another site or a magazine, you own the copyright and you can make claims against the site or magazine that publishes it. If the writers on NYtimes.com and other sites feel comfortable enough to write there, you should feel the same way about writing on Helium.

What does Helium do with the addresses I enter when I send invites?
Helium uses invitation email addresses only to send invitations on behalf of the inviter. These email addresses are not sold or provided to any third party.

Technical Issues

What’s that weird looking code box with funky letters?
It’s called a three-character verification code. You will find this when you go through the “Join” process. Just type the letters you see in the field provided. This feature is in place to ensure that you’re a human and not a robot. Sometimes you will see this feature when you are writing articles. If you make a mistake typing the correct letters (don’t laugh, it happens), you will be prompted with an error message: “The three-character verification code is incorrect.” You can reenter the code and submit again.

My friends haven’t received my invitation to write on Helium. Why?
Some of the reasons why this may occur include:

Your invitee’s email address no longer exists.
Your invitee’s email account is over quota or temporarily unavailable.
Your invitee is using an email filter that blocks emails from unknown senders. Ask your invitee to be sure to allow emails from helium.com.

Many email systems both at home and at work have filters that block email from sources not on the trusted sender list. Please ask your invitees to be sure to allow email from Helium to not be blocked in their email system.

My real name is associated with my article. How can I use a pen name?
In the “Join” process, we ask you to provide us with your first and last names as well as a username. Your username is never seen by others on the site — it’s used only for your Helium login. In turn, your real name (first and last) is your default “pen name” on the site.

To change your pen name:

Click “My Helium” in the red horizontal navigation bar. From there, navigate to “Account Settings” in the left-hand navigation.
Click on the “Pen Name” tab.
Enter your alias.
Feel like somebody . . . else. Pen names are displayed at the top and bottom of every article. Helium encourages all members to use your real name or a real-sounding name because it’s more professional.

What do my pending and expired invitations mean?
If you send an invite to another writer, it goes into a “Pending” state right off the bat. It will be displayed in that state for two weeks. After two weeks, it displays as “Expired” — unless you resend the invitation (this resets the two-week expiration timer).

The expired state affects only generic registrations. So if your invited friends register on the site outside of the invitation process, and they do so with the email address you used to invite them, you still get recognition for the registration. Basically, this process helps to give you credit if your friends can’t follow directions.

Can I use HTML in my articles?
The Helium Write process does not support HTML in the body of articles. This means that special characters and font formatting, such as bold, accented characters and italics, are not allowed. If HTML is included in the text, it will be automatically scraped from the article when it is submitted, which typically results in strange displays in the final display of your article.

What web browsers does Helium support?
Due to their popularity and Helium’s desire to accommodate as many users as possible, we officially support the following web browsers:

Firefox 3.5
Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 8

Helium Help