A New Model for Paid Blogging
created on Sat, 2005-05-21 17:46
Blog publishing has lowered the barrier for businesses to start their own publication. Whether you're looking to publish your own news, establish your company as a firm of experts, engage in a conversation with your customers and colleagues or raise your profile for key topics in search engines the costs are so low that it can make economic sense for many businesses.
You can do the writing yourself, but to really benefit from a blog you must publish as frequently as you can. Let's face it, how many businesspeople really need another distraction? Sometimes hiring a paid blogger to write blog copy for you can help you benefit from blog publishing without distracting you from your real job.The upside of hiring a paid blogger to write for your company is that you can (for now) pay below traditional copywriting rates. The cost per word goes down because it's on the web, the articles are shorter and there isn't editorial review.
Incentivise Paid Blogging
What's missing is real incentive for the paid blogger to drive business to clients. Sure, they can publish about things that are directly or indirectly related to your products and services, but how about a little something to make them share in your success. Who doesn't like rewards for putting in the extra effort. Some of the blog publishing houses are tying salaries to traffic, but this model adds some more qualifications that were missing.
Find Your Baseline
This method requires that you know your web site statistics. You'll need to know your average traffic per month, growth for the last 3-6 months, what links people are clicking on inside your website, where the where the traffic is coming from. Any decent web statistics program can give you this information. Your paid blogger should also know how to track these statistics.
Find your baseline monthly statistics and adjust for growth based on the last 3-6 months. Now you know what your starting point is.
Reward Results
Assign points for increases in hits to the part of the site you want to drive traffic to, signups for your services or purchases of your products and increases in inbound links. Here is my outline, adjust as you see fit:
+1 point for every extra 100 hits to the desired part of the site
+1 point for every 5 signups to a service or purchase of a product
+1 point for every 10 inbound links to the site from other sites that reference the blog
Set a base price for each post: $10 - $20 should work for most cases. For the sake of this guide, let's say the base price per post is $20.
Now set a graded monthly bonus structure like so:
Guaranteed Level - (0 points) - $20/per blog post
Basic Level (10 points) - $25/per blog post
Happy Level (20 points) - $30/per blog post
Ecstatic Level (30 points) - $35/per blog post
Adjust the base price per post and bonus increases to fit the project. But a word of caution: if there isn't the a real opportunity for the paid blogger to rise through the levels, then the exercise is moot. This model is built for paid bloggers and the clients they serve to succeed together.
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A results-based system makes
A results-based system makes a lot of sense, especially to businesses where the bottom-line matters most.
great post
hey will. cool post. i think it's good for someone to float some ideas about how best to make this work as a carreer for people.
i think your baseline numbers are low, but i'm guessing you do too.... and once you factor in the performance bonuses and targets it could be a healthy little flow.
i'm curious to see what others think. i know the "blogging will save the world" crowd are gonna be all over you for the blogging-isn't-quite-writing vibe.
good stuff man.
too easy to hack...
so, all I'd have to do is talk about NUDE CELEBRITY NIPPLES in each blog post, and be pretty much guaranteed the "ecstatic" rate?
Tying payment to traffic results in aberrations like John C. Dvorak, who only rants about Macs because it drives the Mac Faithful insane and they all flock to the site to read/comment/rant. Doesn't matter to JCD - he gets traffic, and his editors are happy...
Makes Sense
... and it's a good model, in theory. However, it's a bit complicated to implement. Unless there's a way to automate the process and to qualify it accordingly.
For example, what makes a "post" a "post"? Some people can create 5-word posts with a simple external link. And, there are those who'll create keyword-rich posts with really relevant information. The former is easier to create while the latter will take time. Do you pay the same amount for both?
I can think of other ways that can complicate this process... So, I'll stop here for now and think this over some more. In any case, thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's definitely worth mulling over.
Complex
I was starting to think it was a taboo topic. Thanks for bringing it up. There is no shortage of complications in the matter and there are no real standards yet. I hope that conversation such as this will get the ball rolling.
ISSUES; I agree with Shai about the complexity. Over time, managing the accounting in such a way could become an issue. Another issue I have is the money. Most start-up Blogs could not support such a payment model for some months at the outset. Even further, paying for traffic and posts does not synchronize well with PPC revenue dominated revenue models.
IDEAS; What if you set up “channel
How about outsourcing the blog itself?
I have come up with a business model where small and medium businesses can outsource their complete blog process to my company, Ideologic L.L.C. Blog is completely maintained by the Outsoucing Company. My blog has all the details about the process.
For a small business, blog can serve as a customer care center and a great marketing tool and since this is a B2B transaction(both B's stands for Business, and not Blogger), blogger is paid by the company that has accepted by the business of Blog outsourcing from the small business.