The Road Less Traveled

Helium, a writers’ community, is a new website I stumbled into recently. On the surface, I like what I see so far. Things like support, rewards, writing contests, fair pay, and multiple streams of income potential are all motivating for the novice and the expert. Helium is a writers’ community in every sense of the word-it is citizen journalism at heart. Helium is not a blog site, thus writers’ pen about any topic they have knowledge of in the spirit of the article, or journalism. The minimum word count is 400 words per article. The minimum threshold to request a payout is $25. Helium is open to the novice and seasoned writer alike; unlike some spaces, there is a minimal sign-up process before you begin writing immediately. If you need to begin immediately (Financial reasons, or passion), this is a writing community you want to add to your arsenal as soon as possible.

Pros:

You may be wondering the question, “How does Helium benefit the seasoned writer”? It does. For the novice and seasoned alike, Helium expresses itself as only attracting the best of writers. One thing that impresses me is the strength of support in place. You will find very straight guidelines of what is acceptable, and what is not. Helium also does not have any issue with deleting, or editing, an already published article. The website ‘system’ works for itself, eliminating a huge arsenal of editors on duty. There are multiple categories of publishing potential for each writer from the Market Place, Journalism Awards, Writing contests, and much more. I took a visit over to the market place and was impressed with the range of monetary reward for published articles. Market place is the sector where a writer can choose a topic and write for it; pools of articles deepen for each topic and one article is chosen from the pool of writer submissions. All the writers who lose out get a “kill fee”, so you still win in the end for writing. There is a sense of logic here. If you write only a fair article, it will likely not be chosen within the market place; therefore, the expert writers will have a better chance of shining.

One of the quickest ways to write and publish is to choose a Helium ‘title’ and begin writing content which forms to the title header. Obviously writing content, which deviates from the title meaning, will not go over well for any writing career. These are pay per post opportunities with immediate benefits like immediate cash in your Helium bank, plus immediate opportunities for other members of the community to rate your work. I personally think the rating system is terrific. There are far worse places to be under the cool critics’ eye, and Helium is not designed to offer you a scorching gaze, but a place for writers to excel and grow, and be rewarded for those moments of excellence. I certainly feel it is imperative for any writer, or artist for that matter, to be under some form of an editorial eye, and what better format than to have your peers help along with the process.

Cons:

Other possible cons (you may find the rating system a con although I do not) are in the poetry sector. I am a poet and thus I would have enjoyed this sector being included in the regular reward area but it is not. When you write poetry for Helium, it is under a very different reward system, along with the recipe channel and news channel. Helium logic is these are not areas of wide appeal in the market. I can understand this, and after discerning some of the poetry entries for quality, I can see the need to curb endless entries in this genre. I am about to add a poetic entry nonetheless, although I also feel my work would be a diamond in the rough and I am not sure how I will continue to feel about this in the future because I really believe my poetic verse is above the norm. I am hoping they add a poetry entry into their writing contest soon, in fact. I feel this would be a much more productive format for me to continue adding my creative verse to Helium.

A final thought in the cons: Helium appears to be, in a sense, a potential SEO machine. I will not state blog because Helium is not a blog site per se. However, so much gears with SEO at Helium so I wonder if the space is human enough for the creative writer (See above regarding poetry). It surely is a terrific platform to gain notice, rewards, to actually write, even to gain an income, but does it satisfy the inner writer? What soothes my inner creative child dilemma is how supportive and community based Helium is designed to be for writers, so I am giving it a chance (And myself).

Trackback URI | Comments RSS