Amber Hilton, a Helium writer since Sept. 2006, has been writing and editing for Helium Content Source assignments extensively and nearly exclusively for a year.
Like many of you, I started writing for Helium as a way to earn a little extra cash. I was a graphic design student looking for ways to earn extra money from home when I read a blog post about Helium and decided to give it a try. At first I wrote sporadically, and when my initial earnings weren’t very impressive, I pretty much gave up on the site. However, after a boost in passive earnings many months later, I decided to give it another shot, and since then Helium has been a steady presence in my life. Helium kept coming up with new ways to keep me coming back, including writing contests and more recently the Helium Marketplace.
About a year and half ago, I moved from Minnesota to Texas, leaving my full-time graphic design job and piles of snow behind for unemployment and palm trees. With almost four years of experience writing for Helium, I decided to give freelance writing and editing a try while I looked for graphic design work in the Lone Star state. I started competing in Marketplace in hopes of increasing my monthly earnings, and was quickly invited to participate in Helium Content Source projects, working with private publishers on ongoing assignments. To my surprise, the projects kept coming in! I got another pay-per-hour freelance writing gig to supplement my Helium income and have yet to send out a resume for a new graphic design job. I now rely on Helium Content Source assignments for the majority of my income.
My writing has improved a great deal in the four+ years that I’ve been with Helium, but the improvements over the past year have been the most significant. Working directly with editors and project managers on Content Source projects has provided me with valuable feedback that has allowed me to start to think about this as a permanent career change. I’m only 27, and I’m already living my dream of working from home in my pj’s, and I owe much of this to Helium.
Why Content Source
For me, Helium Content Source is the Helium experience. I still write articles for the site and participate in the Marketplace and How-To community occasionally, but most of my time is spent working on regular projects for Helium’s publishing partners. It’s crazy to think that a little over a year ago I didn’t even know that these projects existed, and there are still Helium writers who know nothing about this part of the site. Thanks to the hard work of Helium writers and editors, publishers are eager to work with Helium Content Source on ongoing projects.
I’ve worked on many different Content Source projects for a variety of online and print publishers. Currently, my days are mostly spent writing up short neighborhood profiles for cities across the U.S. for a real estate website. I have also written longer articles on topics that range from pet care, to beauty, to popular culture, to health. I’ve also written various “best of” titles about my city for a leading U.S. news provider. I even wrote some pet articles for a book published in print. Some of the online publishers include an author byline, which in turn has the potential to draw traffic to your Helium About Me page.
How Content Source projects work
Every publisher has different expectations and guidelines, but there are some commonalities. If you’ve excelled in the Helium Marketplace, you’re likely a good candidate for Content Source. The process is much the same, with one big difference: once you’ve been selected to work on a project, you’ll regularly be assigned projects rather than having to compete for payments with other writers like you do in Marketplace. Once you’ve been selected and agree to work on a particular project, you’ll either be assigned titles directly or given a pool of titles to choose from. You’ll know the deadlines and guidelines up front and can plan your work accordingly. Some projects have several “batches” of articles with different deadlines that go on for weeks or months, while others are a single batch with a single deadline. Oftentimes, you won’t know up front whether a project will be on-going, because the initial batch of titles is often a “test phase” that will help the publishers decide if they want to continue working with Helium.
Skills you need
The guidelines for Content Source projects are typically a bit more involved than those in the Marketplace, but the idea is the same. Publishers will give you general guidelines in regard to word count, tone, style, acceptable sources and source citing. I’ve worked on projects with guidelines that are a few paragraphs long, while other publishers might get really specific, providing several pages of guidelines and instructions. If you want to do well, it’s essential that you can follow these instructions to the letter. If anything is unclear, the project manager can address your questions. In my experience, it’s better to ask a lot of questions up front rather than to have to rewrite an article that you may have already put several hours of work into.
If you want to do well, you also need to be able to meet deadlines, even when things come up in your personal life. Although I’m fortunate enough not to have experienced this personally, the quickest way to get kicked off a project is by failing to meet deadlines. Several project managers have expressed to me that one of the reasons I continue to get work is because they know they can count on me to get my articles and revisions in on time. I may not be the best writer on the site, but I consider Helium Content Source my career and treat it with the same amount of professionalism. Some deadlines are pretty short (5-7 days), while others give you several weeks to perfect your articles (all depend on the publisher).
Once you submit an article for a Content Source project, it typically goes through a pretty rigorous fact checking, editing and review process. If at any point in this process someone has a question for you or finds an error, they will send your work back to you with a note and you’ll have the opportunity to address the issue. If you’re the type of writer who likes to be done with an article after you’ve submitted your final draft, you may struggle with this aspect of professional freelance writing (I did a bit at first), but it’s essential that you see your work through to the finish if you want to get paid and continue to get more assignments.
Payments & quality content
How strict or picky a publisher is often seems to correlate with the size of the project and the pay per article, although this isn’t always the case. For example, a lower-paying publisher that is trying to quickly populate their blog or website with a lot of content (such as the current neighborhood project), may not have the time to rigorously review every single article that comes through. Don’t get me wrong, they still expect quality content, but you are generally less likely to have to revise short articles that don’t pay more than $20 (given that you follow the guidelines carefully the first time around). However, if you’re working on a project for a health/wellness publisher that pays $100-$200 per piece, expect every single fact to be checked and double-checked. At the very minimum, everything submitted for Content Source projects should be a final draft that you have carefully checked for typos and other errors, regardless of how much the project pays.
Payments for these projects will appear under the “Adjustments” column of your “Earnings & Payments” page once your work has gone through the fact checking and editing process and has been reviewed and accepted by the publisher. Sometimes this process is rather brief, but other publishers take a while to review your work. Generally, you receive payments for your work within a month’s time, and you request payment the same way that you would any other type of Helium revenue.
If you’re looking for ways to expand your Helium experience or “move up” in the ranks, I eagerly invite you to apply for Helium Content Source work. If you can follow directions, meet deadlines and create quality, original content, this is the place to earn a substantial second income, improve your work and potentially transform a fun hobby into a well-paying career.