By Tim Beyers

Content aggregators are booming. Take Helium. Earlier this week, the company said that its writers have taken home more than $1 million in earnings since 2006 and $500,000 over the past six months. A deal with Hearst is in the works.

These aren’t surprising developments. Helium sells content to publishers on the super cheap as participating writers collect crumbs. Of course a deal with Hearst is in the works. I’ll be shocked if other cash-strapped publishers don’t follow suit.

As a writer, I can attest to Helium’s allure. Write whatever you want on any topic and publish instantly? No waiting for a query response? No rejections? Sign me up.

And yet this very low bar is the literary equivalent of a siren call. Here are three reasons why you shouldn’t fall for it.

1. You won’t be working with an editor. Be thankful for editors, the best of them help us to improve our writing. They also help us to understand what’s salable by rejecting what isn’t. Every story they turn down tells us a bit more about their readership and gets us closer to acceptance.

2. You won’t be under pressure to improve your work. When every article is accepted, writers have zero incentive to improve their prose. That’s dangerous. A bevy of publishing industry layoffs have flooded the freelance ranks, making what has historically been a buyer’s market even more competitive. Writers whose work isn’t battle-tested by the fires of revision and rejection face a tough test.

3. You won’t be creating clips that matter for querying elsewhere. Editors want to see that you’re capable of delivering a quality product for other editors. Certainly it’s true that editors also value talent — and Helium gives talented writers a forum — but there’s risk in working with an untested freelancer. Experience with the query-write-revise-publish process is like insurance for an editor who doesn’t know you.

Helium has its place. I’ve used it; you can still find some of my work there. One of its better uses is as a testing ground. Want to break in as a travel writer? Post two or three articles at Helium or elsewhere and collect comments. Use the best of these reader endorsements in your query to show the assigning editor that you know how to engage an audience.

But such situations are the exception. Have a story idea? Research paying markets via services such as Writer’s Market, Mediabistro.com, WordHustler or The Freelance Writer’s Helper, gather sources and query. It’s still the best way to earn your stripes as a freelancer.