A new way to reward Helium writers

Helium is growing – thanks to your hard work. We've come a long way since even this time last year. And we've still got lots of great years together ahead!

Just as we are constantly improving the site, we are continually looking at our business to make improvements. As we've matured with 100,000+ writers on the site, we realize that not all those writers have remained active on Helium. Some writers submitted just a few articles and left the site, while others have become active, even addicted members of our community.

As we have begun to analyze the Helium Ad Revenue Share model, we have identified a long tail of articles on our site that are earning pennies, nickels and dimes that belong to writers who are no longer involved with Helium. We feel that this long tail of earnings might be better utilized if we shared it with our active members – those of you who are turning Helium into the successful, thriving site it has become.

So we're floating the idea of a new payment system. Our concept is to share our ad revenue only with members of the Helium community who maintain one rating star on the site. A single rating star is easy to obtain, and as we all know, rating is at the core of Helium's success. You can earn a rating star by doing only 40 "quality" ratings within the last 90 days – that's less than 15 ratings per week!

Why a rating star and not a writing star? As it turns out, our payment system is geared to allocating payments toward the best content on the site, so the starred writers are already being paid their fair share. Although it's true that every article on Helium participates in the ad revenue share, it turns out that the better-ranked articles get far more views, and as a result, they earn more than lower-ranked articles. That's the way it should be.

If writing is the heart of Helium, rating is its soul. The success of Helium is based on its community of writers who are sharing their insights, knowledge and creativity through submissions. And success at Helium is also driven by the judgments we provide every day through rating.

Let us know what you think. You can join a conversation about this on the Helium boards. Or drop an email to heliumnewsfeedback@helium.com.