Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
the reward - a - thon |
| Disadvantages: |
it's over |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
no |
Why did I feel attracted to Helium? It was the mention of Paypal in a review, as a foreigner writing on British sites I can only ever get vouchers or have my money sent to someone else's account, it would be nice for once to see real money for my efforts was what I thought.
I don't want to tell you in detail how the site is organised, good reviews have been written on the subject, I'd like to give you more my impressions and observations and tell you about the content of the articles (Helium speak for reviews), something no other review has done to my satisfaction up to now. My review will certainly not be exhaustive.
First of all, however, I have to tell you about my terrific start on the site. I'd informed an online friend of mine that I wanted to give the site a try, she decided to come with me and by chance we joined ten days before the reward-a-thon ended which was running from the beginning of the year until 14th April. According to the number of rating stars one had achieved one could earn between one and three dollars per posted article either in an already existing category or a new one which one had to suggest first.
We had both already written oodles of reviews and thus had no probs, as we posted only our best reviews we managed to get writing stars as well, I got three and my friend four (congrats) which isn't bad for the span of ten days, other members have been waiting for years. Obviously they serve as a distinction in the way ciao dots do and Heliumites need them for their reputation, you're nothing if you haven't got a number of writing stars (more than five stars can't be obtained, though). The problem is that only reviews count that are posted in so-called competitive categories, i.e., categories with several entries so that a ranking can take place, how many other entries there must be, I couldn't find out, logically two should be enough. However, a review helps you on the way to another writing star only if it moves into the first quarter; more than one third of my reviews are No 1 in their respective categories! Well, I'm not really proud of this, because this is were they belong, heehee.
What I've described here has nothing to do with the reward-a-thon, writing stars are always given this way. I also got four rating stars in these ten days (more about that later), anyways, the result was: 302 dollars in my coffers for 151 reviews, not bad, eh? If there hadn't been this comp, I'd have earned 32 cents. Yes, that's right, 32 cents for 151 reviews in ten days, more about this later, too.
As I've mentioned above, one can write in existing categories or suggest new ones, in contrast to ciao one doesn't suggest a category and wait until it appears on the site but sends the article at once which then appears as 'pending' until a stewart (Helium speak for guide) approves of it and activates it. The reasons for not accepting an article are 'adult content, hate content or profanity' according to the Helium rules. The site prides itself that members can write on every topic under the sun, but what does that mean? Is it a good thing? Is it desirable to allow people to virtually puke out (as Germans would say) every idea that comes to their minds no matter how trivial or inane it is? Does the world really have to know about:
- How to see auras
- The lifestyle choice of becoming a vampire
- Hitler and the New Age
- How to get your wife to stop complaining about the position of the toilet seat ???
Logorrhoea (www.dictionary.com: pathologically excessive (and often incoherent) talking, excessive use of words) is a disease and should be treated not encouraged, in written form it would be Graphomania. Imagine Ciao Café gone wild and you've got an impression of Helium! (from the Helium homepage) "We are a vast resource of experience-based knowledge, *wisdom* and creativity." Excuse me, but I do have problems with the wisdom exposed here; you don't get four rating stars for nothing, I know what I'm talking about!
Now I hear the uninitiated mumble, "Why does she read all the rubbish, certainly nobody forces her to do so." Ha, if only! Now I have to tell you something about the rating process. The moment you've posted an article, a page appears with two rectangles sitting side by side each containing either a very short article or an excerpt of about 230 words on a subject you're mostly not interested in in the least. According to Helium the members are presented with articles from channels (Helium speak for categories) they've posted themselves in, well, that sounds harmless, but one book review is enough and you're flooded with poems that can only be seen as an insult to the reader's intelligence. I regret the decision to post a biting article on missionary work because Helium in its unfathomable wisdom now thinks I must be interested in
- The existence of God and the second law of thermodynamics
- Putting your trust in Jesus
- Bible: Work of God or work of the devil
- Is Jesus just a myth?
- Best Buddhist quotations
- My favorite verse from the Bible
- Evolution vs. Creation
I haven't read so much about God, Jesus and religion in general since RE in school. Helium is an American site and with some exceptions the writers are US citizens, if we see it as a window allowing us a peep at what is bothering them, what they're interested in, my mind boggles, my brain shrivels, tears come to my eyes. As if this weren't enough, the articles are all so dead serious, no tongue-in-cheekness with your transatlantic cousins!
You're asked to compare two articles and decide which one is valuable 'Slightly more / More / By far', what if you consider them both utter crap? You can skip ten times, then you have to start your computer anew in order to get another ten skip options. As most articles are longer than the excerpts which can be seen, it's SSS: scroll, skim (and often skip), I'm sure I'm not the only member who doesn't read but just looks at the formatting and how the English language is used. I don't need to read much to form an opinion about that, a sentence like, "As a little girl, my dad was invincible" certainly has no chance.
Some members consider the anonymous rating system the best feature of Helium, as long as I'm told what to read and have no choice, I can't get enthusiastic about it.
So there are no good articles? Of course, there are, but I have to hunt for them. Helium has no front page with the latest incoming articles and writers' names, there is one general front page and each of the 17 channels has one, titles, the first lines of articles and the piccies of the writers are shown there in a snippety kind of way, the chosen articles are grouped according to subjects. Today, for example, you find only articles on the Holocaust on the front page. Strangely, no article on Helium has got a date with it, you don't know if you're reading an old one or a brand new one. What does it mean to appear on one of the channel front pages or the general one? Fame, honour, money? I found myself twice on a channel front page and someone saw me on the general one, I don't know about honour and fame, but I know that this exposure moved my account 1 cent forward, hooray.
So, in order to read articles on subjects I'm interested in I have to click through dozens of pages until I find something, how boring. In case I've got to know some members, I have to go to their sites to find out if they've written something new, in case I've got many friends, I can while away hours just clicking (and then maybe find nothing). What do I find when I open my own profile site now that the reward-a-thon is history and normal Helium life is back? The answer is: always the same, nothing that catches my eye. I have to click on Earnings&Payments, this is the only part of my profile where things are moving. I mentioned before that I earned 32 cents in the first ten days, things haven't gathered momentum since then, today, two and a half months into my membership, I've found 3.28 $! As one can only get out the money when 25 $ are reached, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll live long enough to see the fruits of my labour. I'm afraid my articles will still be earning money when I'm already in the know if there's life after death or not.
Do I know who has read my articles? No, I don't. Do I know which articles have been read and have earned something? Not directly, I would have to keep a list and then scroll daily through the 17 pages on which they're listed to see which article has earned another cent. I only know about the top ten, my No 1 article has already earned 20 cent! It's an essay I wrote at uni about the last chapter of Virginia Woolf's novel The Lighthouse, one of the earliest reviews I posted on an opinionating site over seven years ago and one for which I was (rightfully) ridiculed then as it was so academic. Somewhere in the depth of the North American continent there must be a high school or university which has this novel on the syllabus, and desperate students who land on the Helium site make me 'rich'.
To come to a conclusion: Helium isn't it, not for me at least.
P.S.
I've already got two emails by American Heliumites reproaching me for using too long sentences.
:-)
very helpful
very helpful
very helpful
