How to Write an Article for Helium

One of the fastest growing citizen journalism websites is Helium, which is a very low paying but excellent way to build your freelance writing portfolio. You get to write on almost topic you want to write about and then get feedback in the form of rating. When readers rate, you get stars. these stars affect how much you are paid. You must write articles to best secure your chances of earning and keeping your stars.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Internet connection
• Keyboard
• Microsoft Word or equivalent software program
• PayPal account
• Helium account

1. You must sign up for a Helium account before you can post articles on Helium. Joining Helium is free. Make note of your username and password. You also must have a PayPal account in order to get paid.

2. Go down the extreme left hand side of Helium's web site. It will look like a list of topics with the heading "Channels". These are the twenty-five main topic headings. These in turn branch off to many sub-channels. These will give you the article titles to write for.

3. Select a title that you want to write about. Click on the pencil icon in order to open to the article submission page for that title.

4. Fire up Microsoft Word or whatever word processing program you use.

5. Write your article on the word processing software, using Helium's Writing Standards as rough guideline. You want to be sure to make the minimum word count, that you don't use your article to attack another Helium writer, or use your article to attack another article already written under the title. You also want to single space, with double spacing between paragraphs.

6. Copy your article in your word processing program.

7. Click back to Helium's article submission page. In the box marked for your article, place your cursor, right click your mouse, then click Paste.

8. Read your article, checking for errors in spelling, punctation, grammar or ideas. You can also use Helium's spell check, but it's not necessary. You can also add search terms or tags, but again, they are not necessary. Be sure you are happy with it. Once it is published, you can't take it down. (Only Helium staff can take an article down).

9. Click any boxes containing user agreements.

10. Click the "Publish" icon.

Tips & Warnings

• Sign up for Helium's email newsletter for changes in basic article formatting, word minimum requirements or contests.
• Helium staff are very approachable and tend to reply to emailed questions in less than one week.
• Poetry, Recipes and some Spirituality topics do not have a word minimum requirement for you to worry about.
• You can also check in Helium Marketplace and in the Contests section for more article topics and better chances at making money with those articles.
• If you want to rewrite your article, you can go to "My Articles" and then use the "Leapfrog" function.
• Helium constantly updates. Your top-rated article from last year can be threatened with removal this year if you don't keep up with Helium's article requirement updates.
• If you get several rating flags for the same article and do nothing to fix your article, it will be removed.
• Don't put a byline in the article. Your byline will be automatically added.
• Don't write your article directly into Helium's article submission box. It will sometimes erase the article you have just worked so hard to write.

Resources

• Helium User Guide
• Helium's Writing Standards

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