Helium is an online writing site where you can earn income from your writing in a variety of ways, making it quite easy to earn a reasonable income your first month on the site.

It is what I refer to as a direct pay site, meaning you earn your income directly from the site itself. You earn a portion of the what the site makes in advertising. However, in the case of Helium depending on how much you write, what topics you write too, and what contests you are active and do well in you can make more than what most direct sites offer.

Here are the ways you can make money writing for Helium

Pay per view

Helium like other direct pay sites pays you for the number of views your articles receive. The more views you get, the more income you will make. While the pay per view rate is low, it does add up over time.

Up Front payments

Helium offers upfront bonuses as well as pay per view payments. The only catch is that you have to have earned at least one star and be one of the first five authors to write to any given topic. The amount of the upfront payment for article ranges from $.50 to $2.50 depending on the number of stars you have.

Empty title bonuses

If you have at least one star and are the first person to write to a title, then you receive a bonus payment of a dollar. This dollar is added to your upfront payment and you pay per view payment. Writing to empty titles is an excellent way to earn income fairly rapidly.

Contests

Every week Helium has new contests that they offer. Each contest runs two weeks with new additional contests being added weekly. Helium pays according to where you place in the contests first, second, and third. First place earns $60.00, Second $40.00 and third place earns $30.00 there are also creative writing contests that offer lower prize amounts for the first three places.

Direct buy articles

From time to time, people who are looking for articles on certain subjects will offer to buy an article you have written for Helium. These articles vary in price with the medium offer seeming to be around $10.00. Once this article is sold it is the purchasers property.

Marketplace

Marketplace is a special area of Helium where magazines and other places request articles on certain topic. You can then submit an article on that topic and if chosen receive payment for the article and rights to it. These marketplace articles range anywhere from $20.00 to $200.00. Successful writers can make a nice income from the marketplace portion of this site.
 

The only real drawback to the site is that you have to write to the titles listed. The good thing is that there are literally thousands of titles available and most are open enough titles to allow for your own artistic interpretation of the title. You can also suggest titles to the site and if accepted you can then submit an article to the new title.
 

New titles are being offered almost daily making writing to these sites simple and relatively easy.
 

As with any writing site the amount of income you make on the site depends on the amount of time and effort you put into writing for this site. I have earned between $50.00 and $200.00 each and every month since joining this site with an average income of $100.00. I am confident if I wrote a minimum of two articles a day, wrote to empty titles, and entered at least one contest a week, I could easily make $400.00 or more from this one site. As I write for several other sites, I have not focused on this site that exclusively, though I may simply for experimental reasons in the near future.
 

If you are looking for a site where your earnings will add up quickly, this may be the site for you.