When Brian and I started Weblogs, Inc. the idea of paying bloggers--heck, even making money from blogging--was considered offensive to many. Blogging was, as the case was stated, a highly personal activity that should not be trivialized by the forces of commerce and greed. I don't have a complicated relationship with money or capitalism: I love them both and see them as simply as fuel and the process by which fuel is produced. Money to me means time, time means quality, and quality means success.
Quality. That single factor is what determines the winners in our business. Google's search is of higher quality than Yahoo, MSN, and even AOL's. Because of that Google wins. Engadget is of higher quality than Gizmodo and they are ranked first and second place in their space. Similarly, LifeHacker is of better quality than DownSquad today and as a result they are ranked one and two in their space. For background, my friend Nick Denton of Gawker fame owns Gizmodo and LifeHacker, and we (AOL) own Engadget and DownloadSquad. My point here is that in order for us to beat LifeHacker we need to increase our quality, and in order for Gizmodo to ever beat Engadget they need to increase their quality. The only way to do that is an investment of time. Time equals money, so they both need an investment on a cash basis.
Today we have around 200 bloggers on the Weblogs, Inc. payroll. Two years later John Battelle took the idea and extended it in a blog repping business. Om Malik has raised funding and stolen a Red Herring reporter, and even the nascent vlogging space is in full-blown talent war mode. What was foreboden three years ago is commonplace today.
Talented people's time in our society is primarily engaged with money. As a result we are doubling the staff of DownloadSquad and we've increased the rate we are paying our bloggers to $10 a post on that blog (much more for features). As a result I'm sure our traffic will double over the next three months--in fact I will guarantee that it will happen. Money does change everything.
Talent wins, and talent needs to get paid. I love paying talented people so they can sleep well at night doing what they love. That's my biggest joy in business: gettin' people paid.
Before launching the new Netscape I realized that Reddit, NewsVine, Delicious, and DIGG were all driven by a small number of highly-active users. I wrote a blog post about what drives these folks to do an hour to three hours a day of work for these sites which are not paying them for their time. In other words, they are volunteering their services. The response most of these folks gave back to me were that they enjoyed sharing the links they found and that they got satisfaction out of being an "expert" or "leader" in their communities.
Excellent... excellent (say that in a Darth Vadar/Darth Calacanis voice for extra impact).
That is exactly what bloggers told Brian and I three years ago when we started. Given that, I have an offer to the top 50 users on any of the major social news/bookmarking sites:
We will pay you $1,000 a month for your "social bookmarking" rights. Put in at least 150 stories a month and we'll give you $12,000 a year. (note: most of these folks put in 250-400 stories a month, so that 150 baseline is just that--a baseline).
Now, this offer is going to get a big response I know, so we're going to have to limit to a dozen or so folks. However, I'm absolutely convinced that the top 20 people on DIGG, Delicious, Flickr, MySpace, and Reddit are worth $1,000 a month and if we're the first folks to pay them that is fine with me--we will take the risk and the arrows from the folks who think we're corrupting the community process (is there anyone out there who thinks this any more?!).
We're gonna identify this people in our system as "Netscape Navigators," and they will work with our full-time "Netscape Anchors" to build a community. I see a day when we have the eight full-time Anchors working with two dozen Navigators to keep the site fresh and clean (hmm... I think I need a better choice of words here).
The concept of "free" content producers, which I think WIRED called crowdsourcing, is going to be a short-lived joke. A loophole in the content business that will be closed by savvy startups which identify the top 5% of the audience and buy their time.
If we're (DIGG, Delicious, Flickr, Reddit, MySpace, Netscape, etc) are going to make businesses out of this space we should share the wealth.
As we say in Brooklyn: everyone's gotta eat.*
* Note: Everything I know about business I learned in Brooklyn. I learned this one from my father while at his restaurant when I asked him why we didn't just buy our own jukebox and instead split the money with the "goodfella" who brought the machine in, changed the records every month, and split the quarters with us. "Everyone's gotta eat" he told me. It wasn't the last time I would hear that expression, and there are many variations of it that the 'fellas in the neighborhood would use. "Can I get a taste?" or "I need a taste" were two of many variations on the theme. This expression was a the humble--or demanding--way of saying you wanted a cut of the action (money).
Note 2: One of my favorite Knicks of all time, Latrell Sprewell, famously used a variation of this saying by stating that he had a family to feed when turning down a $10M+ deal from the Timberwolves. They wouldn't give him a better deal and he sat out last year--perhaps his final quality year as a basketball player. This is an important lesson for the talent out there: your first offer is usually your best offer. I'm just saying... :-)
Paying the top DIGG/REDDIT/Flickr/Newsvine users (or "$1,000 a month for doing what you're already doing.")
Reader Comments
(Page 4 of 5)63. All this stuff, but WHERE THE F' DO YOU APPLY?
Posted at 8:12AM on Jul 20th 2006 by Armin
64. I am very intrested in this, and would love to be a part of it. I would even be will to do it for a month with no pay to see how it works out. This is not something I would do for a hobby, but for pay it would be a dream job. Please contact me so I can start right away!
Posted at 9:33AM on Jul 20th 2006 by Amanda
65. The problem I clearly see here is that you would shift the user's ambitions to publish his links/stories/posts.
Let me explain what I'm up to: if a (private) blogger or "social user" does what he does - gathering content, publishing links, posting on blogs, commenting on blogs - he does so without any monetary ambition but going for his best possible quality. We don't talk about the kids stuff here, but about the serious people, of course.
So as example, when you own a blog, you'd want it to become a top source for interesting posts, thoughts, funnies, or maybe even all at once. Whatever personally matters to you. You want more comments, more readers, more "fame". Even with that you already could have a loopback-effect of not posting the quality anymore, just to have something to talk about. As talking about something means more content means more traffic from Google and thus means more users and more comments. But for the price of quality goes the stickyness and the revisiting-rates drop. Shortly said: you got traffic, but it sucks. Yeah, AdWords, great. Makes even more users go away.
To make a long story short: if you for example start paying users for posting bookmarks on their favourite social bookmarking services, and you tell 'em that they simply have to post a baseline of 150 links each month, it will shift the user's goal away from the links and up to the money. It's not as hard to publish 150 links a month as with posting 150 real good quality links each month. Another clear problem here is - and let's face it - most sites on the net are crap. Really good sites and/or content are rare. Plus, if you got 10 people posting 150 links each month you will have dupes en masse if you don't have the proper backend to sort them out. Most people in the "scene" get their links from blogs or social bookmark services or the likes nowadays - all of them spreading those links virally. So if you got 10 pros hired, just be sure everyone of them got different interests or categories to cover.
Let's take the worst case: I could code you a bot in an hour which would post 150 links daily. No work, all the money. Theoretically speaking. I could set up ten of those with ease, each for tag x or category y, covering different niches. But still you wouldn't want to pay me for that, as the quality is sure as hell going to be crap (if I don't include the proper algorithms, of course). People tend to try to find ways to make as much possible money from doing as little as possible. Which is perfect for the employee, but sucks when being the employer. If you pay people for publishing links or whatever, it would probably have the same effect: most of them would try to minimize the efforts while still getting all the money. Not all of them and not from the very beginning. You try it once, you try it twice - and if it works, hell, go for it.
So instead of paying 10 publishers, rather pay nine and hire a Quality Assurance with nothing else to do but assure quality.
Damn.. wrote too much again. ;-)
Posted at 10:38AM on Jul 20th 2006 by Erik
66. I've been blogging for a while now, and I must admit it'd be good to start seeing a return. I've been writing for AlwaysOn v1 (now known as the nefarious GoingOn Network), as well. One thing I've learned: you can write about ANYTHING, given the proper motivation. Bring it on!
Posted at 10:57AM on Jul 20th 2006 by Ryan Hornbeck
67. If you are bieng paid to blog about something then you're not blogging, you're advertising.
Posted at 11:57AM on Jul 20th 2006 by Sholom Sandalow
68. Hi, I find this intriguing. Although I do not blog on any of the sites you mention, I am a long time blogger. I have an LJ, several Blogspots and I post a lot on Tribe.net. I have given you a link to my Tribe profile, which will also give you links to my home page, http://we-live.to/learn/about/gwenny . From there, well, you can probably find out everything but my SS# from there.
Look forward to hearing from you.
69. Those that were smart and had a few bucks are the ones who run digg, etc. Content is king online. What better way to mass gobs of content, thus increasing your site traffic, then to have other people do all the writing, videos, and sending pictures.
Posted at 12:44AM on Mar 29th 2007 by Rogers Place
70. I will start now ,i like to encourage each other and to do something mentioned in the history.
Posted at 2:35PM on Apr 17th 2007 by Emad Hassan kenona
71.
I don't mind if bloggers are paid.
If quality goes down subscription goes down
and vice-versa so i don't think its a problem
Posted at 7:12AM on May 21st 2007 by Daniel travolto
72. Is this offer still active?
Digg rank #55 here............
Posted at 6:22AM on Aug 2nd 2007 by Jared Moya
73. What would be the best site to use for paying for blogging?
Posted at 4:58AM on Sep 18th 2007 by Not Web Design
80. FREE RAPIDSHARE ACCOUNTS!!!
Not only can you get a rapidshare account but you can earn cash to buy other things.
This process can get a bit tedious but its worth it in the end so give it a go
Just follow these simple steps
First of all you need Firefox for this to work.
1)Skip this step if u already own a paypal account
Go to https://www.paypal.com/ and sign up
Create a paypal premier account (this is for free)
When asked to give credit card details click on CANCEL
2)Now,
Go to
http://bux.to/?r=jedra
And register.
Please leave name jedra as your referral in your registration. By doing that you will give me points.
If you leave textbox REFERRAL empty, then after you register www.bux.to will sell your account to someone other who pays.
So basically you will either way end up as someones referral. Mine or someone else's. Therefore please leave name "jedra" as referral.
You'll be paid just to click on their ads.
The more you click the more you earn.
How You Make Money
You make money by simply visiting websites for at least 30 seconds/visit. They will pay you $0.01 for each website you visit and $0.01 for each website your referrals visit. The best part is you can have an unlimited amount of referrals! To keep Bux from getting top-heavy you will only earn money from those that you directly refer. This gives everyone who participates in the program a fair advantage to earn the most amount of money because you have the potential to earn more than your sponsor! Payments are issued via PayPal on a daily basis but you must request for a payment to be processed. Once requested, your payment will be issued within 24-48 hours (usually sooner). You must earn at least $10 to receive payment.
3)Make it automatic (basically, leave Firefox open, and you'll make money :D)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/115
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
Install those 2 Addons
(GreaseMonkey and ReloadEvery)
4)Now, go to http://bux.to/surf.php
Right Click Any where on the page > ReloadEvery > Enable
Right Click Again > ReloadEvery > Custom
Set it to 1minute and 30Seconds. (This means every 1minute and 30 seconds the page will refresh)
5)Next, Install this file (go to the following url in FireFox) http://www.gss.org.yu/bux/bux.user.js (Greasemonkey will ask you to install the file, click 'Install')
6)Now, go back to http://bux.to/surf.php, and leave the page open 24/7 and every 1minute and 30seconds the page will refresh, and if a new ad appears, you will automatically click it.
EASY MONEY :D.
7) Use the money to pay for your rapidshare accounts ;), or something else
Posted at 5:11AM on Jan 3rd 2008 by DRagan
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61. I think it is a smart marketing move. The question is how many of the 8.5M digg lurkers (not registered, do not vote, only glance a few pages once a while) will follow the top diggers. Not many lurkers pay attention to who submitted the stories. All they care is that they only have a little bit time to look at the first couple of pages to see what is going on. So the lurkers is no loyalty to the top digg users.
There is an alternative though. You can easily aggregate feeds from all sources that matter. Apply natural language processing, machine learning, categorization, infromation mining and discovery algorithms to the feeds and readers attention data (just reading will be enough, voting can help but not necessary), it can gather all the stories the users want to read, distill, categorize and summarize them, and provide visualization tools to help users navigate to the stories they care. Then the navigation and reading activities provide further data on the colletive attention of users and that helps the ranking of the stories. The algorithms can do a better job than the submitters. Take a look at http://www.wizag.com. It can personalize this for each and every user.
The bottom line is that submitters are not necessary, what are needed are readers.
Posted at 3:23AM on Jul 20th 2006 by Paul Young