The Helium Marketplace: Don’t Make This Terrible Mistake!

Please be forewarned: the following is my “thumbs down” review of the Helium Marketplace, a place where aspiring writers can market their wares in hopes of obtaining paid employment. Why I am I warning you ahead of time? Mostly for one reason: so that you will lay your guard down long enough to hear me out. No, the Helium Marketplace isn’t some evil plot, but the pitfalls of this freelancing venue certainly outweigh the advantages. Care to read on?

What Is Helium?

Helium is a user generated content site where contributors can submit articles and receive payment for their writings based on article popularity. Peer review of these articles from other writers is what determines their value; the higher the article is rated the more reviews it receives and the better the payout per article. Readers can view view Helium articles for free.

A few days ago TechCrunch discussed Helium’s marketplace which is what piqued my interest. According to TechCrunch, Helium has more than 69,000 writers who have produced more than 400,000 articles since the site was launched in October 2006.

The Helium Marketplace

At first glance, the idea of having a marketplace on Helium where companies/individuals can purchase articles seems like a good idea. Guru, eLance, and some other sites provide this service, therefore with a hefty pool of writers to draw from a marketplace makes good business sense.

However, before you sign up there are some things you must know:

• Articles are purchased from $16 on up with Helium claiming that some articles will fetch $100 or more. For their part Helium takes a 20% cut.

• Writers can view each publisher�s link to see the article titles needed, publisher deadlines and their fee per article.

• Now for the rub: According to Helium, “The publisher will select the article they like best. Only the selected articles will earn revenue for the writer.” This means that if a writer spends 2 to 3 hours (or more) crafting a well researched and expertly written article, they have no guarantee of getting paid. In other words, all the work you have done has been wasted — many topics are too specific to sell elsewhere — and you are left uncompensated.

Out of Date Listings

On August 22, 2007, I took a look at the Helium Marketplace to see their list of publishers. According to TechCrunch, the initial 14 publishers will mushroom to over 1000 sometime in September. One would hope that Helium would do a better job with the 1000 publishers then what they are curently doing with those featured as many of the listed projects have long since expired (e.g., Geosign-Automotive with expiration dates of 06-29-2007 for some of their titles). I counted seven other publishers with expired dates which makes me wonder how they will handle the larger amount.

Bad Company and an Awful Users Agreement

Okay now to be blunt: if you consider yourself a serious writer, do you want to be associated with Helium? Critics have pointed out that Helium censors content and deletes accurate articles with one writer, Craig Kohler, claiming that he was stiffed some $300 from Helium and denied his contest earnings. Mark Hamilton, a journalism instructor from Vancouver, noted on his Notes from a Teacher blog that writers for Helium give them complete and perpetual rights for contributed content. In other words, if you submit your articles to Helium’s marketplace you don’t own them.

Whatever you decide to do, please read Helium’s user agreement first to familiarize yourself with their bad offer. If you don’t, then you have no one to blame but yourself if things do not go according to your expectations.