A few years ago I decided to write a few articles for Helium Knowledge. I did not expect to make much money, but I thought that my articles might generate a nice passive income that may mount up over the years.
I used a pen-name and wrote two or three articles for them, but it was not long before I became disillusioned with the site and gave up on it. I just found the site too time consuming.
One of my articles was very highly rated, but I have never received a penny for it. A couple of years after I joined the site I logged back in and asked why I had never been paid. I received an email that informed me that I was not entitled to any revenue because I had not maintained the minimum amount of activity on their site.
I think I should have taken a closer look at their user agreement before I joined.
From Section 5:
Now that does sound pretty good, doesn’t it?
But!
As long as members remain active on the Site, their revenue share earnings continue to accrue. Members’ Accounts become “dormant” in the event that they fail to “participate” in the Site. “Participation” is defined as maintaining a minimum of 1 rating star. (A rating star requires a minimum of 40 quality rates within the last 90-day period. Please see the Helium Star Levels page for more information on rating stars.) If a member fails to maintain 1 rating star, his or her Account will become “dormant,” which means the member will cease to earn additional revenue share until such time as their Account is re-activated through participation. If an account is classified as dormant, prior earnings are not lost (other than as outlined herein), and the Account can be reactivated by the member at any time by participating as outlined herein.
And there you have it. I checked today and one of my articles at Helium is rated no.2 out of 59. That is a pretty damn respectable rating, but because I am not active I do not qualify for a penny.
I like the idea of developing passive income streams and Helium just does not offer this. Even if I had become one of their top writers, what would happen if I was hospitalized for a few months or became inactive on the site for some other reason? All that work would have been for nothing because the revenue from my articles would be stopped. This is a poor comparison to sites like HubPages or Triond.
Two years ago I wrote one hub for Hubpages and then forgot about them. I did not even log in to the site, but there were not penalties and I continued to receive revenue from the Hub. I have a lot of respect for HubPages, have recently completed two more hubs, and will probably write some more; but if I don’t at least I know that I now have three hubs that will continue to make me a passive income whether I log in again or not.
Triond are also very fair to their writers. I joined Triond in January 2009, wrote a few articles for them and submitted some photographs to their Picable site. I made my last submission on the 30th January, got distracted by other things and forgot all about them until June 2010 when they sent me a paypal payment. It was not much, admittedly, but I had been inactive for about one and a half years. I may have forgotten about Triond, but they had not forgotten about me. Much respect, Triond!
The initial payments from content mills like Triond and HubPages are not very much, but I firmly believe that if a writer perseveres with them it is possible to make a very good passive income and if what I am hearing is correct some of the top writers at such sites are doing very well indeed – no day job required.
With the magic words ‘PASSIVE INCOME’ firmly planted in my mind I intend to write more articles for sites like Triond and Hubpages.
But Helium Knowledge? I would not touch them with a ten-foot bargepole.
