The End of My Work From Home Career?

I have been forced into the position of reconsidering whether it is still viable for me to work from home. I love working from home and so the thought of abandoning that dream is certainly not an easy one. It is funny that in 1985 I didn't own a computer. In 1995, I didn't know how to turn on a computer. By 2005 I was still working outside the home and though parts of it I enjoyed, I have not missed the day to day operations of climbing out of bed and going out into the freezing cold weather. I had learned enough about computers and the internet by that time to make videos of the family pictures and things like that, but hadn't quite figured out the work from home catch that I would eventually find.

2011 rolled around and my life had completely changed several times from the long ago 1985, the year that my daughter was born. I now know more about computers than the average person but not enough to call myself a total computer geek. I would consider myself about mid-range when it comes to all that stuff. I did, however, find a way to earn money from home and that was always my goal from the first computer I had.

Now that has all changed. The sites that I relied on for income have changed drastically. While that is a good thing because that means great progress is taking place, the game has changed drastically and left many people without the steady income they were able to make in the past. Writing for Helium is in no way a place that I can actually earn a living at this point. There are several conversations going on about it, but I am not sure that the options, even after the changes will work out for me. It may work out for others, but I really don't think that I will be about to live off Helium any longer. I hope that I am wrong and that any new changes will give me that option again, but that isn't the case at the moment.

I haven't given up. I may not be able to make a living off Helium any more, but that doesn't close out all of my options. I have grown as the site has grown. I have just grown in a different direction. The substance that I want to give to my writing cannot be done from that type of venue. I am not by any stretch of the imagination putting the site down and I don't want anyone to think that I am. I love Helium because had it not been for this site in particular, I could never have stayed at home and earned a living at the same time. I could never have learned what I have learned from Helium in any other place. My decision has to be based from the angle of the business. I have put off calling myself a business because it just sounds too weird. However, that is exactly what I am. I am a business that must make money.
I may keep this blog updated if any changes occur that are worthwhile to pass on to anyone who has kept up with the few blogs I have done. I think in all fairness, it is time to close out this blog because of its title. Living off Helium can't be the title any longer because I am not currently living off Helium. I am living off a variety of websites and think another blog is in order to better define me as a business. I still hope to help others who seek work from home options.

With all of that said, I don't know where all of this will take me. I hope that it will take me to much greater things. I have thoroughly enjoyed the company that I have had on the Helium website. I will continue to do my volunteer work there and attempt to leapfrog those articles even if I can't figure out how I will get to them all. I cannot complain about the site. I have over 4400 articles on the site at this time and will likely add more as time goes on. I just won't be relying on it for the main source of income. I had fun with the experiment and proved that it could be done, but that was under the older system. Time marches on and so do many of the writers who made a comfortable home at Helium for so long.

Is this the end of my work at home career? Not by a long shot. I am going to continue to work and there will always be a place for information on the internet. That is what the internet is all about, or it once was. The manipulation of titles and content to make sure it comes up high in the search engines should never have been put into practice from any site or any writer. This is one of the main problems and Google caught it.

I have heard it said that some of the writers were "gaming the system". I did not ever grasp onto the idea of writing to titles that simply didn't make sense but had the right words to come up in the search engine. I tried my best to avoid titles that were nonsense titles. I could give you examples and you would see they aren't difficult to pick up on. That has been a recent trend that nearly sickens me. A good title is taken, twisted, manipulated and comes out nothing like what the original intent of the title was. It was all intended to lead the search engines to bring them up in results, thereby giving readers an article that really had nothing to do with the real topic they were looking for. It wasn't the writers trying to game the system but the websites encouraging it and in some cases, requiring it. I am not accusing any particular website of this. I think that they all were to some extent extremely guilty of it. When the cards were all on the table, it was easy enough to blame the writer because that is whose name is on the article. However, I was perfectly happy writing to titles that made good sense. I think that it is time for the websites guilty of doing this to fess up and stop trying to blame the writers for doing what they told us to do. Does that sound bitter? I am not really bitter about it. I am more disillusioned now than I think I have ever been in the entire process. The enjoyment that I once got out of writing is now gone when I write to such sites. In light of this, it has to be time for me to change my thinking and go with better options that not only pay more, but give me a voice back. That is the beauty of working for yourself instead of other people and that is the option I am going to take.

Look out world, Here I come. You will be hearing from me. It will be my voice, not the voice of the search engines that will get my attention from here on out. That doesn't mean that I won't write articles anymore. It just means that I will be far choosier when it comes to deciding what to write to. I don't have to do it their way because it is MY business not theirs. My passion for writing has been stamped out for a while now. It's time to get back to what I loved about writing in the first place. I can't speak for anyone else, but I was never in this for page hits alone. I am not an advertiser. I will promote slightly, as I always have. But I am not going to constantly advertise to the point that I cannot do what I need to do most. That is to write. So, this blog is officially closed until further notice. If changes are made that make writing for Helium more viable as a source of income again, I will re-open it. Until then, there will be another blog about working from home in general to help those seeking information on their own ventures.