Understanding Royalty Payments

You have written a few articles, published on Helium, or AC, or both. Now it's time to sit back and watch the cash roll in, right? WRONG!

Both Helium and AC will produce an income on articles written even if you do nothing. You may even receive an upfront payment in some cases. High quality writers can do particularly well when producing work for publishers in Helium's Marketplace or contests. But, how do you generate income from royalties on other pieces?

Royalty payments are paid on every item not sold outright and will generate an income for life. The individual payments are small but the principle has huge potential. Obviously, the more work published you have, the greater the possible income. However, it is important not to compromise quality for quantity as poorly written work will not earn well, if at all.

In order to maximise earnings it is important to understand how royalties are generated. At Associated Content, payments are based on page views at a set rate, usually at the miserly rate of $0.0015. Helium pays better but the system is more complex.

Royalties from Helium are dependant on how well an article rates within its group and how popular the group is that your article is in. Subjects such as finance tend to pay better because of the advertisers these pages draw. Creative writing items are likely to do less well for the same reason.

When an article is accessed directly, a large part of the income goes to the author and a portion shared to other writers within the group with the highest rated articles receiving the biggest slice.

So, quantity, quality and popularity all play a part. Therefore, you should aim to produce high quality work in popular topics and build a good size portfolio over time. To be really successful however, you should not just allow them to sit there. To maximise income you must promote your work yourself and drive traffic to them.

It is also important to note that with Helium, where the traffic comes from is also a significant factor. I shall go into this and how to go about driving traffic to your articles in tomorrows post.

helium, associated content, royalties, writing, publishing