This depends on your level of competence as a writer. I started writing again in March this year, after a long break of thirty years. First I wrote at Helium in March this year. I put up 13 articles and managed to get half of them with ratings over 85%. As my ratings were not consistently above average, I didn’t get any writing stars and hence missed out in the reward-a-thon. I also tried writing for their marketplace and contests. None of my articles was purchased.

I was about to win one of the contests with a leading article before it got suspended, reason being the writing style was not appropriate to what the contest specified. How disappointing. When I checked last week, my total income was $0.13. The disappointment (not that the cash mattered that much) lead me to explore Triond and Associated Content (AC). However, reading the rules, I figured out Associated Content (AC) would also favored the more experienced writers and chose to leave this till later. I picked Triond and PrintNPost and started writing at these two sites four days ago. Now I have around 8 articles posted at Triond and four at PrintNPost. At Triond, my most popular article received over 500 clicks within one day (my children swore that they had nothing to do with it). My income so far? $1.19. I am expecting similar results with PrintNPost. I think the differences in results lie in the following:

1. Rating kills.

At Helium, you have to be rated against other writers. You also have to rate articles if you want to stay in their “reward-a-thon” event. Rating takes time and leads you away from your writing efforts. It’s not easy to get back to it. Rating kills again when you try hard but still can’t get a good enough rating for you to get the “stars”. Rating demoralizes you before you hang in there long enough to see the rules work for you.

2. The minimum number of words is fixed at 350 or above.

This makes life difficult for beginners like myself who may adopt a conversational approach: we basically write as if we are chatting with someone in a casual conversation. We are more used to dialogues, stopping from time to time waiting for responses, rather long speeches during which we are supposed to keep going. It is hard to stay interesting after our points are made.

For the seasoned writer, getting a good rating should not be a problem as there are always more novice writers to push your ratings up from below you. The high ratings will put your articles in the top five lists of search results and get you read much more. The rich gets richer and the poor poorer. The requirement on number of words is relatively easy to fulfill when you have been at it for some time. In fact, you may find it impossible to write articles with words so few for your AdSense key words.

Conclusion: Start with Triond and PrintNPost, the sites that put the novice on level ground with the skilled. When you have refined your skills, move on to sites that favor the experienced writers, like Helium and Associated Content, to cash in at the expense of the novice competitors.

By: Benson Yeung

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