Why You Really Make Money Writing For Helium

I've noticed a lot of people asking "how much can you make writing articles for Helium". A lot of you probably signed up, wrote some articles and checked every fourteen seconds to see how much they had made. A few days and $0.32 later you gave up, deciding that Helium wasn't worth the money.

The thing is, you do make money writing for Helium, but you have to look at it differently. Consider it an investment of your time that turns into money.

For example, if you are a we writer and you wrote for an hour, you could probably make around $30 including fidgeting, browsing, researching etc. I know some writers make a lot more, but most of us don't.

Say your average Helium article takes you 20 minutes to write. You know what you're talking about so it shouldn't take that long. Consider that 20 minutes to be $10 worth of your time that you invested in Helium.

So write 5 or 10 articles and forget about them. Don't write in news or current events, because people stop reading these. Write well-optimized articles and Digg them, and write in "how-to" fields or "about" topics.

Most of my articles make me around 1c per day, but some don't make any money and some make a little more. If there are 365 days in a year (and there I'm informed that there are) that means $3.65 per year. Ok, so that's optimistic - say they have a few bad weeks, and it ends up at around $2.50 for the year. That's a 25% return on your investment!

Real estate doesn't normally give you that, and neither do savings accounts or bonds come even close. Stocks might, but you have a chance to lose your money whereas at Helium the worst that can happen is you don't make any money at all. If the site runs for four years you'll get 100% return on your investment in that time.

I just think this is a better way to think about it.

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Write Articles and Make Money on Helium

If you haven't heard of Helium by now, you should definitely go check it out. It's not a get rich quick scheme, and it doesn't beat writing SEO articles and web content for clients in terms of how much you can make, but damn it's just so much fun.

Here's how it works: You write articles on Helium on any topic you choose. You can write on a new topic, or one that already has articles written about it. All of the articles on one topic get lumped together, and users rate them. The higher up yours goes in its little group, the more of a share it earns from advertising revenue. Obviously the groups with 20 or so articles pay more if you get yours to the top, but this is harder to do in bigger article groups.

There are two other ways you can make money writing articles for Helium. The one is the competitions: first prize is $75, but to do this you will probably need to write 15 or so articles on various topics in the competition. This isn't really worth it money wise, but write about 5 articles and these articles will earn you money slowly anyway. You might even get a few bucks from winning!

The other way is to write articles for Helium publishers. Companies post article projects, and then anyone can have a go. The publisher picks the article they want, and pays that person. You get paid anywhere between around $20-$200 per article so if you're good, you can make BIG money writing articles for Helium.

Remember it pays to pick your topics well. Choose topics you think a lot of people will want to read about, and this way you'll make more money from your articles on Helium. The only drawback is that you can only be paid by Helium via your PayPal account - they don't offer other options.

Other Stuff About Helium (and a lot about gas)

Writing Competition - Win Free Link

My previously mentioned Free Link Writing Competition is now on! Write me an article on just about anything you like, and submit it to me via email as a .doc attachment (no other attachment types will be opened).


Writing Competition Prizes:

First Prize: A banner link for one week on WriteNonsense, thereafter converting into a permanent link AND your article featured in the post after the close of the competition AND a neat little GIF saying you won the prize!
2nd Prize: A permanent link in my "Author's Resources" box and a 2nd prize GIF
3rd Prize: A reciprocal link and a 3rd prize GIF


Article Submission Guidelines:

There is no strict guideline as to content. Write about anything you like. Tell me a story, make a point, make me believe something. If you make me laugh, that'll go a long way. There are a few rules to keep the whole thing relevant and fair. Here they are:

Rules:

• Competition closes on Sunday 19th August, midnight GMT+2 (Paris Time)
  
• Articles to be between 400-600 words.
  
• No outbound links in articles
• No self-promotion or deliberate product advertising (you can mention products though)
  
• No websites will be linked to! Only blog owners need apply.
• To qualify your blog must have at least SOME relevance to writing, freelance writing, SEO, SEO articles, blogs and blogging etc.
• The 3rd prize winner will get a link as soon as I verify that a link to WriteNonsense is active
  
• All winners will have links to their submissions on their own pages published in the post announcing the end of the competition, in addition to other prizes.
• Articles, winning and non-winning, will not be used for any purposes other than this competition, and all rights will remain with the author.
  

Tell your friends about my competition - I want to see how many entries I can get!

Writing Competitions at Technorati

Write for Money at Helium

For those of you who haven't tried writing for Helium, I would definitely suggest you give it a bash. This site is different from a lot of freelance writing sites, in that you write articles that they want to publish, and they pay you for them!

All you have to do to get started is pick your categories and subcategories, and start writing. When you article is approved your account will be credited - simple as that. It's also a place where you can read articles on just about anything, so if you want to look something up, this is the place.

It's good to see a new generation of paid article sites coming up, and I really hope this one does well. It's about time people started making good money for writing about things they care about. Forget about those sites that pay you 50c per post, the best way to make money writing articles without going out and finding clients is on Helium.

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5 SEO writing tips

I've been doing this for a while, and I've come up with a few things that makes SEO writing go a little smoother.

1. Do your research

What ever you're writing about, the best thing to do is go to the client's site and see what they are about. Read the "About Us" section, as well as anything on the products and services they offer. If no site is available, look up the relevant topics. Even if you think you know a lot about them, seeing what other people have to say can give you ideas.

2. 500 words, 5 ideas

There is no hard and fast rule in SEO writing, but I find the easiest way to start is to count off 5 distinct points about the topic, and write five 100 word paragraphs. Think how many times you need to use the keyword, and figure out a few ways to use it. Try to use none of them more than twice.

3. When in doubt, repeat yourself.

There is only so much you can say about "New Mexico Plumbing Service". The thing to remember on the web is that content is king. In SEO writing, we are usually dealing with quantity, rather than quality. While the text must all read well and be informative, nobody is going to mind if you make the same point twice from two different angles.

4. Talk about the products

SEO writing is all about selling, so tell people what they are buying! Mention an example, pretend you are a catalog, and be specific. Details can fill up word count, and still be informative.

5. Keywords at beginning and end

As far as possible, try to begin and end your article with the keyword. This is generally the preferred style, and it will show your client that you know what you are doing. Keep the keyword as close to the beginning of sentences, paragraphs and headings as you can to improve the article's keyword proximity score.

SEO writing

How To Write SEO Articles

A lot of people ask me what exactly goes into SEO articles. There are a few things you need know about how to write SEO articles:


What are SEO articles?

An SEO article is usually around 500 words, and contains a certain keyword, repeated a certain number of times. These keywords are what site owners think users will type into search engines like Google. If you are looking for a place to rent in Southern California for example, the keyword you might type in would be "rental home Southern California". This can be difficult to use in a proper sentence.

How do you keyword optimize effectively?

A general rule with SEO articles is that search engines don't like keywords that are broken by other words, but don't notice if they are broken by punctuation. So you could use the keyword above like this: "Looking for a rental home? Southern California has many..." and presto - it reads perfectly!

What is keyword density?

Keyword density is a measure of how often a keyword appears in SEO articles. If the article is 500 words long and the keyword appears 10 times, the keyword density is 2%. Depending on many different factors, I know that Google likes keyword densities around 2%, but this could go as high as 8%. Too many keywords and your article looks "funny" to Google, while too little means it could be overlooked.

What is keyword proximity?

Basically, this is how close together your keywords are - and exactly why "rental home Southern California" should not be broken by words. If it is, then a site that doesn't break this keyword up in its SEO articles will get a higher search engine ranking.

What is keyword prominence?

This is not usually a concern for people who write SEO articles. It is a measure of where in the HTML code your keywords appear, and how important these places are. The best places are in the HEAD and TITLE tags of your page - without keywords in these places most search engines won't even look at your SEO articles.

So how do you actually write SEO articles?

If you find yourself with SEO articles to write, the best thing to do is go to the client's website and look at what they actually do. Going by just the keyword can be disastrous! If you are given "Health Insurance Indiana" as a keyword, and you write about how great our health insurance is, it could be embarrassing if all the client's website does is compare quotes from health insurance companies!

I find that if you come across a point that isn't in the client's website, it's usually easier to make up something new than to research it elsewhere. If you have a 500 word article, try to come up with 5 different points about the company, relevant to the keyword. It also helps to use the keyword a few different ways, as this confuses Google's spiders into thinking that your SEO articles have a lot of information about the topic searched for. (But this is really more of my pet theory and the theory of some of my clients)

Anyway, I found a good resource for all of this kind of information. Mike Wong has a cool site about SEO marketing and such and such. He tries to sell you a lot of things, but he has piles of info for free. Check out Mike's website here.

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