Aimsterville

I’d promised my five readers that I would give some more details about the freelancing experiences I’ve had so far. So here goes:

I first dipped my toes in the water with a site called Helium, and after about a week, I found the site to be more trouble than it was worth. I don’t have the space here to go into Helium’s detailed system of stars and rankings, but after producing six articles in one week, I’d failed to garner a high enough ranking with any of my articles to earn the one rating star I needed to start earning money. And while this will sound like a case of sour grapes, after reading some of the crap that was outranking my articles, I decided that I would be better off credibility-wise taking my writing somewhere else.

Writers earn money on Helium by writing articles on the topics provided on the site; Helium users are then asked to read articles in a title against each other and decide which article they found most helpful. As articles rise within titles, writers earn writing stars and can then earn money based on their number of writing stars (again, I’m grossly oversimplifying this). The philosophy is that quality articles will rise to the top and will then be able to earn more (thanks to web traffic and advertiser interest). I don’t claim to know how their algorithm works, but I’ll relate this story: I wrote an article in a title that had two articles already (so I would have more chance of my article rising to the top, but I was still writing in what Helium considers a “competitive” category–another condition of earning stars). I wrote an article of approximately 500 words that included outside links and book research, and my article is currently the lowest-ranked article in the category. The highest-ranked article is two short paragraphs with no introduction or conclusion, and at the end of the article, the writer addresses the reader with “hope this answered your question” and a little winky emoticon. If that’s quality rising to the top, then I think I”ll take my writing somewhere else, thanks.

Helium also provides topics for writers to address (although writers can suggest them), so I found myself wasting valuable time searching the site for topics I could write about quickly with minimal research. And I found some of the topics, frankly, quite baffling. A Guide to Lollapalooza 2009? Should Britney Spears or K-Fed be awarded custody of their children? I guess these topics would still get search engine hits, but they’re not exactly fresh.

I have no doubt that some people are probably making money on Helium, but I just didn’t find it to be worth my time.

The next freelance site I turned to was Suite 101, and this is where I’ve been spending most of my time (and, yes, I just linked you to Suite 101 via my profile information. Sneaky, huh?). Suite 101 proved itself to be miles ahead of Helium in that they vet their writers through an application process and have a team of editors who flag articles that don’t meet their standards (the editors are also helpful if you’re just learning how to write search engine-optimized articles). Writers can choose what to write about and can upload articles to a variety of categories and subcategories. Patience is a virtue with Suite 101, as they pay according to a residual-based system–writers earn a percentage of the ad revenue generated when readers click on ads on their article pages. So the higher your article views, then the more likely readers are to click on the revenue-generating ads attached to your article, thus earning you money*. Suite 101 certainly isn’t a get-rich quick site–trust me, I won’t be buying Christmas gifts for anyone with what I’ve made in the last month–but as articles earn money for as long as they are accessible on the Internet, a high volume of articles combined with high traffic could generate writers some decent income over time.

I’ve also been using Xomba, which is a sort of combination article/social bookmarking site. Writers can write “xombytes,” which are 150 word-minimum articles on whatever the author chooses to write, or they can write “xomblurbs,” which are 50-word minimum summaries of websites, articles, videos, or other information found on the Internet with a link to that material. I’ve been using “xomblurbs” to link back to my Suite 101 articles, but as I’ve been focusing more on building my base of articles on Suite 101, I haven’t been concentrating much on Xomba. I do think, however, Xomba could have some earning potential (like Suite 101, writers earn revenue based on ad-clicks) as most people can write a 50-word summary and/or 150 article with little effort (and, like Helium, Xomba doesn’t vet its writers, so anyone can sign up).

I’m discovering new sites every day, but I have yet to try out any that pay per article (another reason for concentrating on Suite 101 is that I can build a portfolio of sorts when I apply to other sites). If anyone has experiences with the sites mentioned here, or if they’ve had good or bad experiences with other freelancing sites, feel free to share in the comments.

*Fair warning: clicking on ads on your article pages will get you booted from these sites, so don’t do it.