Demand Studios and Helium

I'm sort of on the fence about Demand Studios. I wrote an article for Helium about the awesomeness involved in writing for Demand Studios, but I'm still on the fence. The fact that it's my highest earning article on Helium does make me very happy, though.

Writing for Demand Studios does have its pros. It also has its cons. They say that their content is super duper awesome because it has to go through so many people before it gets published. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Crap content gets churned out by the boatloads. That's not to say that there isn't some good content to be found on the site, but the good stuff is far more difficult to find.

I will continue to write for them but there is no way in H-E-double-hockey-stick I will write for them under my real name or even give out my Demand Studios pen name to even my closest of friends. The fact that I write for them is kind of a double standard, I guess, because I'm writing content that I'm not necessarily proud of. I'm writing content that is or should be common sense. However, I'm getting paid $15 a piece for common sense stretched out into 400-word articles.

While Helium is also a "content farm" of sorts, Helium is different from Demand Studios, at least for me. I don't write on Helium for the money. I write on Helium because it's fun. Writing for Helium helps me out when I'm having writer's block because there are far more titles on Helium that I would like to write to than what Demand Studios has to offer. I can't build, I don't sew, I'm not a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse, a computer whiz or a mechanic. Demand Studios titles tend to be tapered towards people with skills - the type of skills I don't have. I guess that's why I'm not a Demand Studios Super Earner. I write for them sparingly - only when I find titles I'm interested in.

Helium titles are more interesting to me even though they are far less lucrative. And as far as Helium goes, I'm not under the delusion that I'm going to make thousands of dollars a month from writing to titles I like on Helium.

If you want to make money from writing and you have a tiny portfolio of clips that so-called "real" publishers aren't interested in, write for Demand Studios. If you want to write and just have fun doing it, write for Helium. You might get lucky and win a few contests or marketplaces while you're at it. Or, like me, you could choose to do both. Any way you choose to do it, you will build up your resume and learn valuable writing skills along the way.