The Helium Report is Now Available
Wow.
I’ve got to say that, if I’d have known where this project would take me, I probably wouldn’t have promised to give you all The Helium Report free. What I thought would be a 10-page/2,000 word document quickly became a 30-page/5,500 word document! As I went along, I realized there was more and more great information I wanted to share with you all.
But, honestly, I’m OK with it. I’m a man of my word. You can get The Helium Report today, free as promised. If you find it useful, I’ve included a PayPal donation button on the download page. Feel free to use it 
Be sure to download your copy today. I will likely begin charging for the report no sooner than May 30, 2008.
Here is the link:
http://www.writing-journey.com/the-helium-report
Enjoy, pass it around, and let me know what you think!
Working Hard for YOU, 24 x 7
Hi folks. Happy Niebuday!
Just wanted to give you an update on the Helium Report. I’m putting the finishing touches on the report today, and will post it late tonight or, more likely, some time tomorrow. I’ve discovered that I have a lot more to say about Helium than I thought at first. The word count is over 5,000 at this point! I’m thrilled to be passing along so much good info.
While you’re waiting, make sure to check out a couple of my favorite posts from the last few days. Some are useful, some not so much. I’ll let you decide which are which:
Should You Specialize in Website Content?
Chris Brogan: est Social Media Advice From This Site
How to Get More Freelancing Work from Your Writing
I Am Not Useful. (And Why You Should Be Cool With That)
Should You Tattle On A Bad Client?
5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence
How To Stop Regretting The Past And Start Building Your Future
Are You Cut Out for Freelance Writing?
Have an awesome day, folks!
The Student Becomes The Master
I have to admit, I occasionally worry about referring folks to Helium. After all, the fact that I’ve had amazing success with it doesn’t mean that everyone will. It’s not that I think I’m that good of a writer, but I’m much better putting my word behind something that won’t change (like the Freelance Rockstar eBook I recommended earlier in the week) than something that I can’t control, like Helium.
The results of this weeks contests, however, have made it worth it, and reminded me why it is I am comfortable recommending Helium. One of my readers and my good friend Kameron won first place in one of the Helium contests this week. Good form, Kam!
For myself, I only entered one contest, and placed 3rd. This week could be especially fun, as there’s a “Writing Online” category. I’m going to try that one, and It’ll be cool going up against some of the best and brightest and Helium (and maybe some of you!)
I have to say that the one area I’m most interested in right now on Helium is the marketplace. I’m trying to score you all an interview with one of the big marketplace writers, and hope to post it next week, but we shall see.
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If you missed it earlier in the week, make sure to check out Eight Violent Truths About Freelancing - Part 1 and Eight Violent Truths About Freelancing - Part 2 over at Freelance Folder.
Enjoy your Friday evening, all!
Brain Dump - Niebu, Helium Contests, and Twitter
photo credit: neurollero
All right, I’ve got so many different things rolling around in my head this morning, and none of them are working themselves into a full post. Let me offer you, then, a potpourri of the things jumping between my synapses:
Niebu
Being an Internet writer (or any other sort of self-employed web worker) means several things. It means sometimes working long or odd hours. It means having clients and colleagues that are, mostly, people you’ll never meet in person. Add the two together, and you wind up with “Niebu.”
How exactly does that work? Simple. You take an Internet Writer like James. James wakes up one morning at 5 AM. He likes to get things done in the morning, before his kids are up. He starts the coffee pot. While he’s waiting for his “jet fuel,” he hops on Twitter to type “Morning” to greet his colleagues and followers. Only problem is, both hands are shifted one key to the left. He types “Niebu” instead.
Two or three weeks later, Niebu is an Internet phenomenon. James and his colleagues (and peers, friends and hangers-on) have their own little inside joke. I think DebNg referred to it as “Men and their made-up words.” We use Niebu to mean “Hello,” “Goodbye,” “Good Luck,” and even refer to Niebu as a sort of tribal Deity, as in “My Twitter is acting up. Quick, sacrifice a virgin to Niebu.”
In reality, Niebu means Community. Niebu is the grand community of web workers and their friends, followers, and anyone else who wants in; it’s not exclusive. Niebu means, in some ways, I get up at 5 AM to work my a$$ off all day so that I can have the afternoon to watch my kid’s Kindergarten play. It means The soul-sucking corporate environment is eating away at my soul. I need a way to escape.
Niebu to you all today, my friends.
For another take on it, check out Dave Navarro’s perspective on What Does Niebu Mean?
Helium Contests
I told you all last time how you can go about earning money on Helium by writing for contests, and I wanted to follow up by pointing you to this week’s writing contest topics. They are as follows:
- 2008 Elections
- Hawaii
- Terrorism
- Antiques
- Online Business
- Trucks & SUVs
- Arthritis
- PC Support
- Christian Teens
- Role-Playing Games
I won’t be writing in the Role-Playing Games contest this week, as I’m the “sub-channel steward” for RPGs. “What’s a channel sub-steward?” you ask? I’ll cover the steward program in more detail at another time, but the basic principle is this: Helium utilizes a community-based system of quality assurance, in a similar fashion to Wikipedia. For each content area, there are stewards. There are sub-channel stewards for the very tiny portions of each content area, and I’m it for RPGs and Wargames. I’ve just really started doing this, though, as my focus up until the last couple of weeks at Helium had been the Reward-athon.
At any rate, good luck to those of you who decide to give the contests a shot. I’m thinking of writing in “Online Business” and probably “PC Support” this week.
Good luck to everyone who gives it a shot this week!
If you’ve not jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon yet, you should really consider it. My understanding is that there is some social networking/marketing value in it, but really I think it’s just a nice little way to blow off steam for 3 to 5 minutes at a time, several times a day. It is, for me, what the water cooler was when I worked in the corporate world.
Follow me on Twitter here.
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Have a great weekend, everyone. If you get a chance to see Iron Man this weekend, you should take it. Make sure you stay through the credits, though. I promise a totally geeking-out moment for any comic-book fanboy who does. It’s great stuff.
How to Make $750 a Week Writing Part Time at Helium
I told you all the other day about how I made a bunch of money writing just a couple of hours a day over at Helium. While I’m not going to go into all of the ways I made my money writing at Helium until the free report comes out, I do want to tease you all a little bit today.
One of the ways I made money writing at Helium was in the weekly contests. Every week, Helium features contests in 10 different content areas. Contest topics range from Roleplaying Games to Visiting Canada (I’m not making this up. A contest is ending tonight on “Visiting Canada.”) Within each topic there are 25 different article titles. Helium members compete by writing to any number of these titles.
Contests run from Thursday through Wednesday.You don’t have to write to all of the titles, and you are awarded points based on how your articles are rated after the fact. First Place in each content area gets $75, Second Place gets $25, Third gets $10, and three Fourth Place winners each get $5.
I know you’ve got questions. What is the ratings system at Helium? What about plagiarism? Is there a way to cheat? Is it a level playing field? Here again, I’ll cover these questions as time goes on. Suffice it to say for today that I’m confident in the ratings system.
So, how can you make $750 in a week writing at Helium? Win every one of the contests, of course.
What’s that? You have other work to do? You can’t write 250 articles in a week and still maintain a high degree of quality? You’re not willing to risk your income on the chance that you’ll win every contest?
And you call yourself a writer.
No, it’s not likely that you’ll enter and win all 10 contests in a given week. I get that. I’ve not done it. I do believe it could be done. I’ve thought about blocking out 20 hours in a single week to devote to Helium to test the theory, and I may do it in time. Maybe one of you will beat me to it, though. If you do, just remember who pointed you in that direction.
So to get you started toward your $750 week writing part time, here’s what I’ve learned about winning the writing contests at Helium:
- It takes 7-12 articles in a category to score enough points to win. Fewer articles makes it less likely that you’ll place, as does writing more articles. If you can get your Helium rate down to 15 minutes apiece, you can write these articles in 20 hours or so.
- Bullet-point list-style articles (using asterisks because Helium doesn’t allow HTML) will almost always get rated higher than articles that don’t have bullet points.
- An interesting opening paragraph and a solid concluding one will push your ratings higher.
- There are often plagiarists in the contests. Check the top three or four writers in the contest on Tuesday. Spend 15 minutes or so googling random phrases from their articles. This doesn’t take long, and it’s almost always worth it. Don’t let that scare you off, by the way. Helium deals with these folks quickly and harshly - again, more on that later.
- Article ratings will often sit steadily until after a contest closes. You might have the lowest-rated article on Wednesday and it will be the highest on Friday when winners are announced.
- Use the leapfrog tool late in the contest for low-rated articles in topics with a large number of articles. This will often give you a boost going into the final stretch.
- Even the best and most prolific writers at Helium, who often win contests, can be beaten. I know, because I’ve done it on more than one occasion.
Now, I’ll be honest with you. There are other things I can tell you about how to win contests at Helium. Com back on May 12 to download my free report, which will contain those contest-winning tactics as well as other strategies you can use to make money writing on Helium.
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