Having seen the ads for Helium, I have to admit my first impressions were that it was a sight for wannabe writers to test their skills for minimal pay. However, just recently I found myself with a few spare hours, so I decided to check the site out. I was amazed how many different categories there were, each with an endless number of articles. I picked a few categories that I knew a little something about, and found myself rather intrigued by the different views presented. The thing that I quickly began to notice was that Helium was more of a site to post factual, yet opinionated information, as opposed to say Wikipedia which is more of any encyclopedia facts based reference.

After reading a few I decided what the heck, and dove right in and wrote my own article, it was easy, and kind of fun to see it listed. The interesting twist to Helium is that you can actually earn money if you articles rate higher than other articles in the same category. Helium pays you a percentage of the advertising money they earn, with higher earnings going to the author’s with better articles. Once you write your first article you are invited to rate two other articles side-by-side. The article author’s ID hidden to prevent foul play, which makes for a quality peer-review based system.  After writing my first article I was invited to pick between two articles on spirituality, not an expert topic for me, but an interesting exercise nonetheless.

All in all I found the site quite interesting, and for the more entrepreneurial  writers their is a marketplace where you can hookup with publishers willing to pay $16 to as much as $100 or more for original content on various topics. Plus, you can earn money by referring friends that publish articles. At the time of this writing Helium was offering 5% of the article earnings of each person you invite. If you are an opinionated person, or an expert on one or more topics Helium can be a good place to showcase your stuff, and who knows earn a few bucks. Here is a link to join Helium, for those interested. Also, don’t forget to come back and comment on your experience.