Blogging for Pay

A good newspaper writer or reporter is paid a salary based usually on their years of experience, stories they’ve covered, headlines they’ve scooped, and their ability to drive newspaper readership. In most cases, it takes reporters years moving from smaller to progressively larger paychecks and papers to reach the top of the ladder.

Now take that same reporter and allow them to start a blog. Now every time someone clicks on their blog, they receive compensation. Rather than waiting years at a newspaper for “the big check”, today’s writers can be earning a substantial compensation in a few months or years. Several years ago this would have been unheard of. Blogging was originally designed as a form of individual expression. Individuals basically kept an online journal that they shared with family and friends. How quickly those times have changed. Today there are hundreds of thousands of blogs on nearly any topic you can think of, and advertisers are taking advantage of the traffic by marketing their products to blog readers.

A recent article in Advertising Age (January 14, pg. 16) explores the world of paying bloggers based on the number of click-throughs made to their blog. Why? Because the more people that click on a blog, the more likely it is that readers will see and respond to the paid advertisement on the blog. Advertisers pay companies like Blogger for the amount of time readers spend at a site as well as the number of click-throughs the site receives. Good writers who are able to draw a large audience of readers are compensated for their abilities, while poor writers receive much less.

Paying blog writers based on their ability to gather and retain an audience brings accountability to this digital media. It gives the blogging companies as well as marketing managers an analytical tool they can use to justify marketing expenditures with blog companies like Blogger or Gawker Media. This in turn will help grow blogs as an accountable advertising medium. So while many in the blogging world are upset with the idea of paid clicks and ads on blogs, I feel it is this commercialization that will lead to their continued improvement and success as a medium. Your thoughts?