Helium has a great feature for writers wanting to compete for some extra money. It’s called their Marketplace. Outside publishers ask for specific articles, and offer specific amounts of money for each one. Anyone can write and submit their best article for each requested title. Once the deadline has passed, the publisher will review all the submissions and choose one or more of the best ones for publication on their own website, or even in print. Each selected article will earn the author the amount specified in the original Marketplace request. Most of the publishers utilizing Helium’s Marketplace to solicit articles operate under a pseudonym for various reasons.
As a recent example, a publisher recently requested 4 titles, all related to PC optimization. Each article will pay the selected author $75.00. You can see my submissions, as well as those of the other writers competing for these titles, by following these links:
- How to accelerate the speed of your PC
- How to prevent your PC from being infected with spyware
- How to find out what’s running on your PC (and why this is important)
- Computer performance: Why a paid-for registry cleaner is better than a free one
Recommended: to keep your PC running like it did when it was new, try Diskeeper 10.
On Helium, all articles of a given title are ranked by the other members. This ranking is a bit flawed, because complete novice writers with little command of vocabulary, spelling, and grammar carry as much weight in rating as do those with more season, skill, and talent. Nevertheless, your articles will always appear with the other articles of the same title, ordered by rank. Fortunately, the Marketplace publishers do not select based on rank, but rather based on the articles that came closest to meeting their requirements and specifications.
The deadline for these four titles is Friday, the 25th. It sometimes takes several weeks before the selected articles are announced, but when they are, I’ll report my success (or lack thereof).
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