you are effectively paid to provide wifi, the more your hotspot talks to hotspots in the area the more you earn. 2 hotspots talk to each other, a third witnesses that it happened. all 3 earn Helium for doing this. you earn money if someone uses your wifi. This in in the early stages but there are thousands of hotspots in US ,UK, EU and canada. people in some area make a lot of money some just get a few hundred a month (sometimes less) if depends on your area and if you choose to bring in others. for every new hotspot you get a part of that hotspots profit. a few months ago helium was $1.5 its now over $20 as the network has expanded. The have just halved how many coins are produces with resulted in a massive rise in price. this will be done every 2 years. There is also talk of the coins being made in to 100 or 1000. So if you have 1 coin it will become 100 or 1000. it will only be the same value as 1 coin but when this had been done with other ****** it saw them rise in value by X4 or more. in effect if you miner earned 1 coin a month it would then be 100 or 1000 coins a month. This increases the perceived value.