Publishing an article on Helium is easy. With new tools to improve quality and increase traffic to and from your article, your earnings will soar and your writing stars will start piling up!

We have a handful of places to write and earn money on Helium. Whether you're looking to get a byline with a Marketplace publisher, make some quick cash in our writing contests, share your expert opinion in a debate or put on your reporter's hat by writing to our citizen journalism contests, there's a place for you on our site. Or maybe you just want to write to a regular Helium article too. This is the page to learn how.

One thing first: Read our Writing Standards. Then write away!

Click a link below to learn how to:

• Write a Helium article
  • Write or paste your article
  • Spell Check your article
  • Embed links in your article
  • Preview your article
  • Check your word count
• Special instructions for Creative Writing submissions

Write a Helium article

The most important thing to do when writing to Helium is to locate the appropriate title for your article.

To find the most suitable title for your article, begin by clicking the "Write" button in the top horizontal navigation bar of the site:

On this page, you will see "Title Finder," a search feature specifically aimed at locating titles based on keywords, exact phrases, or some of the words in an entry.

There are several options on this page that will help refine the search.

• The relevancy offers options that relate to popularity and age of the title.
• You can choose all titles or Debates only, as well as Marketplace or empty titles.
• You can refine your search to an individual channel as well.

Once you find the title that is most appropriate, click on the title in the search results and then use the "Write now" icon.

Wherever you see this icon, it will be associated to a specific title. Use the "Write now" icon to begin the writing process to that specific title.

To add an article using the"Write now" icon:

1. Click the icon to land on the "Write" page.

2. Write or paste your article.

We don't want you to lose your article or the formatting, so we strongly advise you to write your article in Word or another word-processing program and save it on your computer. Then use the "Paste from Word" icon found in the "Write Article" screen. (The "Paste from Word" function will work with any word processing program.)

Copy the content from your original document, click the Paste From Word icon, then use CTRL+V on your keyboard to paste the text into the window. Then click the "Insert" button and your article will be automatically placed into the "Write article" field.

Special Characters

Helium supports a number of special characters within the article write-flow. To use special characters, highlight the character you want to replace, then click on the Omega icon in the article tool bar to bring up the special character selector. Choose a special character, which will replace what you highlighted.

Helium allows these special characters and accent marks:

3. Spell Check your article

Click on the spell check icon whenever you want to check spelling. You'll find the spell check tool right above the"Write your article here" text box when writing your article.

You can toggle in and out of spell check mode by clicking on the spell check icon. If spell check is toggled on, the icon will be highlighted in blue.

Spell check does not check your spelling in"real time" meaning it doesn't check spelling as you type along. So, if you've added more text to your article since your last spell check, you'll want to check it again before you submit your article (just in case).

While in spell check mode, misspelled words will appear with a red saw tooth line beneath them. Left-clicking on a misspelled word will bring up a drop down list of suggested spellings for the word. If you click on one of these suggestions, it will replace the misspelled word. If spell check doesn't have any suggested spellings, "No Suggestions" will appear in this drop down list.

You can choose "Ignore Word" from this drop down list to ignore the suggested spelling for a particular word and remain in spell check mode. Choosing "Ignore All" from this list will ignore all spelling suggestions and toggle you out of spell check mode.

Spell check will toggle off automatically if there are no misspellings in your article – a dialog box will pop up with "Finished spell check" in this case. It will also toggle off automatically if you use a suggestion on the last misspelled word in your article.

Remember, you can spell check as many times as you want while writing an article, so spell check often (and then once more for good measure) before clicking "Publish." Your readers will thank you.

4. Embed links in your article.

If you want to link to other articles, you can find the tools to create embedded links right above the "Write your article here" text box when writing your article.

To create an embedded link in your article, highlight the word or phrase in your article where you want to embed a link. You will only be able to embed a link in a whole word or a multi-word phrase, not a partial word.

Once you have highlighted the word or phrase, the "create hyperlink" (linked chain) icon will become active.

Click on the highlighted "create hyperlink" icon to embed your link. Enter the URL in the window that pops up, then click "Insert." If you enter a URL without the "http://" prefix, the tool will add it automatically.

While you are writing your article, links will be displayed in blue with the linked word or phrase underlined. Links will not be clickable, or live, until your article is active on Helium.

To edit or remove an embedded link while writing an article, highlight the entire linked text. Both the "create hyperlink" (linked chain) and "unlink" (broken chain) icons will become active.

Click on the highlighted "create hyperlink" icon to edit your link. If you want to remove the embedded link, click on the highlighted "unlink" icon.

Once your article is active on Helium, you can edit embedded URLs by using our Leapfrog feature. For more information about Leapfrog, please see the "How to edit your articles using Leapfrog" section of Help.

5. Preview your article.

Now you can take a sneak peak at what your article will look like before it's published on Helium. If you're not happy with what you see, you can go back to the text box to make your edits.

Click on this icon to preview your article.

A preview pane will appear, showing you how your article will look.

When you are finished previewing your article, click the close button at the top right of the preview pane.

6. Check your word count.

You can now check your word count and character count. This will come in especially handy for those writers who are submitting articles to Helium Marketplace, Citizen Journalism contests or articles that call for specific word counts.

The minimum word count for Helium articles is 400 words. The suggested maximum is 1,500. Poetry, songs and recipes are the typical exceptions to this rule and if there are others, the site will let you know when you submit an article.

Click the word count icon to determine how long or short your article is.

A pop-up pane will appear with your estimated word count and character count.

When you are finished, click the close button at the top right of the word count pane.

7. Enter a search phrase for your article.

In the "Search phrase" field, enter a search phrase for your article. This phrase helps readers find your article. If left blank, the search phrase will be auto-generated based on the title of the article.

8. Donate your article's earnings to a charitable organization.

If you wish, you can choose a charitable organization from the drop-down menu to receive your article's earnings. Or go to your "My Articles" page to change a donation preference.

9. Confirm that your article is original.

Check the box that states that the article is your own creation and does not duplicate any other articles of yours on the site. (Plagiarism, or unauthorized copying, may result in the termination of your account.) Hit the "Submit" button.

10. Your article will be published instantly.

Be sure to read Helium's Writing Standards.

Creative Writing submissions

Writing articles and titles for the Creative Writing channel requires a different set of guidelines.

We try our best not to stifle poets and out-of-the-box thinkers. However, in order to work with the peer-ranking system at Helium, titles must be kept general. If there are too many individualized titles, article groups will not fill up, and our rating process might go on vacation.

For instance, if the title of your poem is "A letter, a dentist appointment, Windex, and a train ride to Montauk" we'd shorten it to something like "Poetry: Chaos."

There are currently ten genres for posting creative content:

• Drama: Excerpts from plays, screenplays, comedic sketches, etc.
• Essays: Academic and literary composition on a single subject, usually the author's point of view.
• Humor: An amusing, funny or clever fiction or nonfiction column or story. (Jokes, puns, offensive material, tasteless humor and inappropriate language are not accepted and will be deleted.)
• Memoirs: A personal and autobiographical account of an author's experience.
• Novel excerpts: Short excerpts from a novel, book or novella of any genre. Each excerpt must be a stand-alone piece. Serial stories are not accepted.
• Poetry: Free-form poetry, sonnets, haikus, limericks, couplets, odes, sestinas, etc., of any topic. (Poetry submissions must be at least 12 words.)
• Reflections: Author's thoughts on a particular subject that is not autobiographical. It can present an author's point of view and is less academic and literary than an essay.
• Satire: A prose composition in which human, enterprise or government folly and vice is held up to scorn, derision or ridicule.
• Short stories: Short works of fiction of fewer than 1,500 words that are not autobiographical in nature. Covers all topics.
• Songs: Your original song lyrics.

Before initiating a new title for your creative piece, please search the site to make sure the title doesn't already exist. Duplicates are bad for the health of our rating process. Besides, writing to an existing title ensures that your article gets posted on the site immediately.