Helium: Rating Star and Daily Earnings

The online writing site, Helium, is constantly tweaking their system in their efforts to keep good writers involved. Late last month, they announced a few changes to the way that they were paying writers starting November 1st.

Now, I am still a little confused; but I do believe that I understand what the changes actually were.

The biggest change, provided that I am understanding it correctly, is that in order to be able to collect your share of the pennies, you have to maintain at least one rating star. If you lose your rating star, for every day that you do not have one, no earnings for that day. (Helium calls it revenue share.)

Now, a while back when the idea was first trotted out, it was met with some opposition. Some thought tying earnings into ratings was a bad idea. Myself, I saw the writing on the wall---Helium had finally figured out how to force its writers to actually rate other people's articles.

Fortunately, it is tied into the rating star and not the writing star.

I have no luck at maintaining a writing star; I am an opinionated writer and many of my opinions have tanked. While one is not supposed to allow one's opinion of another person's opinion affect their ratings of their articles, it does happen.

It is really easy to maintain a rating star on Helium. Or at least, I find it easy to do. You have to do forty quality rates every ninety days to maintain one star. If your percentage of quality rates is 75%, then that is only 54 ratings that you need to do every ninety days.

Myself, I am a binge rater. It is something that I do when I want to work, but am too tired to actually do so. The day right after I learned of the change in policy, I had my rating star (and I started out with no ratings done at all).

There is also a good chance that by the end of next month, I will have five rating stars (a three dollar bonus at the end of every month that you have five rating stars). Though it should be noted that it is not because I am after the three dollars, but rather I am going to be really tired at the end of this month between the term papers and the NaNoWriMo.

So is it a good thing? Depends upon who you ask. If you ask the writers who just wanted to toss some articles up on Helium without ever doing any rating, then you are going to get a no. If you ask Helium, then it is a yes. And if you ask me, it makes no difference---I was using rating to keep myself considered active there anyways. A difference that makes no difference is no difference.