Helium Versus Triond: Which is Worth Your Time?

Helium and Triond are two great writing websites that continue to revolutionize online publishing. Both sites give ordinary people a chance to become paid freelance writers online, build a writing portfolio and join a community of people who enjoy flexing their writing muscles.

But when trying to establish your presence online as a writer and be paid for your efforts, which site is worth your time: Helium or Triond? Well, here are a few points to consider when making your decision:

Readership

I have found that both Triond and Helium have their positives and negatives. Article promotion, readership and placement in the top search engines are done better on Triond than at Helium. Based on my page view earnings every month, Triond seems to do a better job at promoting your content, which means you have a better chance of having your articles read on Triond than at Helium. Having your articles read more frequently determines how much you earn as an online writer.

I believe Helium's lower readership has much to do with the ranking system they use. Helium members rate articles by how valuable they are to the site. If you write an article and it is ranked at the top you will be read more times than the lower ranked articles. However, this causes a problem in the readership of lower ranked articles when you come to observe how people search the net. Web users are impatient beings and they do not sit around and sift through all the information available on the web. As a result, web users are more likely to read the top three, at most, articles on a topic, if they read that much. Therefore, if you have an article ranked 5 out of 20, with the Helium ranking system you are not likely to get a lot of monthly page views based on how web users search for information.

While on Triond, your content has a better chance of being read as each article is given its own page and is not ranked by how valuable Triond users think the article is. Consequently, I have made more on Triond from page views with just five articles than I have on Helium with 18 well-ranked articles. I made dollars with five articles on Triond whereas I made cents with those same five articles and 13 additional ones on Helium.

Additional Income

However, this is not to say that Helium is without any perks or positives. This couldn't be further from the truth. I joined Helium in August 2008 and have not been writing as consistently as I have hoped or as other writers have. And with a poor

writing consistency, but a good writing quality, I was able to earn more than $300 in the Helium Marketplace in addition to my trickles of cents from total page views.

What Helium lacks in wide readership for all its ranked members, it sure does make amends for in the Marketplace and in the weekly contests. The Helium Marketplace is where employers post articles (with guidelines) they want written for their websites or publications and where any Helium member can write to those topic. If the employer likes your article the best, you will be selected and paid the amount specified for the job. Prices range from $16 - $200 per winning article. Meanwhile Helium's weekly contests are where you can compete for a first place, second place and third place price of $60, $40 and $30 respectively by writing as many high ranked articles as you can on a given topic. There are many winners each week for every topic posted.

Website Diversity and Communal Atmosphere

Helium regularly updates their policies with their writers' best interest in mind when it comes to growing as a site. From giving tutorials on different writing styles, their writer mentorship programs, having a friendlier community, introducing upfront payments, creating market place premiere titles to giving other perks, Helium continues to outgrow Triond by leaps and bounds. Whereas Helium is about developing writers' skills, confidence and earning efforts, Triond seem rigidly determine to diversify their site technically. Triond has recently introduced technical upgrades such a Triond Toolbar for Google and personalized writer pages with color schemes and music players. All good upgrades indeed; but they are perks a struggling online writer could live without.

Payment Options and Payout Minimum

In a battle between Helium and Triond when it comes to payment options and minimum payout, Triond is the clear victor. Triond offers the payment options: by check, by Western Union and by PayPal whereas Helium only pays by PayPal. If you are not an American, Brit, Canadian etc, where PayPal pays directly into local bank accounts you will have to find an alternate way to get your income. So, Triond is more considerate of people of all nations in their flexible payment options.

I really have a problem with Helium's payout minimum: $25, especially when Triond and the writing site, Associated Content, offer a similar service for a minimum payout of 50 cents and $1.50 respectively through PayPal. NB.

Checks and Western Union payments at Triond are $50 minimum.

The answer you will always hear from Helium is that with Marketplace, the weekly contests and page view earnings writers can easily reach that minimum every month or come close. But, not everyone writes to contests or Marketplace and other writing sites have upfront payments yet still have a significantly lower payout! But with the introduction of upfront payments based on writings stars and rating stars to a lesser extent, this point of view is just now plausible: Helium's diversity is what keeps me coming back when I become frustrated.

Article Topics

Both sites allow you to create your own topics to write about; though at Helium, if the title you want to write already exists, you have to write to that title and get an article ranking. However, if you want to write to a title but that title does not yet exist on Helium you can suggest that title. Once it's accepted, Helium will send you a link to the article in your email and you can post your article to the title. You can write about any topic on both Helium and Triond.

Publishing Process and Rights

It takes about one day after you have submitted your article to Triond before they either accept or reject your article, so you don't have to wait a long time to know where you stand. Meanwhile, writing to an already existing topic on Helium allows you to be published immediately. If you have submitted a new title to helium, you will be able to post your article the next day provided your title was accepted. Getting a title accepted at Helium is a no fuss, no muss process, so you don't have to worry. Publishing an article at Triond and Helium is an easy process and they will publish your article even if it has minor errors and typos, so it's not a site where your article has to be perfect the first time around as on Constant Content. You can always edit it later.

Triond requests first publishing rights to your articles. So if you plan to write at both sites make sure you publish articles to Triond first. Once you have published the article at Triond then you can put it on Helium. You get to keep full rights on all articles published on Triond: you can delete the article anytime you want and republish it elsewhere. However, once you have published an article on Helium you cannot delete it. You still, however, have republishing rights on Helium.

So when it comes to choosing between Triond and Helium, there are many points to consider. But I would suggest that you publish articles at both websites because even though they operate differently, they can be quite beneficial to your online writing career.