I was just reading Vallyewag (a Gawker Media blog, BTW, which makes me wonder…) Gawker Media to pay bloggers based on Traffic rather than only a set fee (12 bucks) per post.
First, I know some bloggers at Gawker get much more than that for a post - in the 200-300 dollar range - but they only post a couple of times a week - I guess the rest of the content is at the 12 dollar range and the more one posts, at that range, the more is paid out (I don't know if there's a limit on the number of posts like Know More Media has).
The reason behind the change is a lack of really linkable material:
"…what's in heavy demand, and short supply, is linkworthy material, by which I mean a secret memo, a spy photo, a chart, a well-argued rant, a list, an exclusive piece of news, a well-packaged find. Gina showed on Lifehacker, with the style of feature she pioneered a couple of years ago, that it was possible to grow a site's audience without endlessly increasing the number of posts."
I sorta agree with the above, by I'll give my own opinion later on in the post. Denton also goes on to say:
"…the market for editorial talent is becoming more competitive. If a writer works like hell, or sparkles, we always run a risk: that somebody outside the organization notices before the news trickles up the management hierarchy. We need a mechanism to reward hard work, and stardom — to dispense pay increases automatically, if you will."
That's something most blog networks should do, but don't.
You can go on and read the rest of the Denton letter at Vallyewag but I think basing bonuses on traffic is somewhat unsustainable in the long run; at least, that's my experience at Know More Media. And traffic, lets face it - is mainly due to Search Engines - mostly Google, that's more and more, readjusting the PageRank and weight they give to blog posts - and doing all they can to distinguish a blog post page from a regular web page that's not from a blog.
You've noticed, as I have, that, more and more, when you write on something popular, your post (mine have) go on the bottom of the page, often based on both ranking in blogs posts (on Google Blog Search) AND how recent the post is … that decision is based on Google's decision to treat blogs as "news" like, and topical for the moment - meaning - that a news item, a "secret memo" a "scandal" that WOULD generate tons of traffic, if it were ranking as a Web Page and not a blog post, near or at the top of search results, instead, gets put at the bottom of the first page (if your lucky) and only stays there for a day or so (if that long) before it's replaced by posts that are more recent.
Under that scheme, it's almost impossible to do well enough, consistently enough, on high volume traffic items like Presidential Scandals, Sex Scandals, Celebrity news and scandals, Technical stories on iPhones or other gadgets, or the other stuff that Denton talks about - that would be link-worthy.
When we talk about audiences that come for the content and not the frequency - blogs like mine that focus on Web Analytics, for example, generate audiences that keep checking back….but still, is there a large enough audience of people who read metrics articles to generate large swaths of traffic on any kind of regular basis?
No, there's not. The community is simply not big enough - unless you mix it up a bit, as I do, but even there, even my traffic, which is near or at the top for a Web Analytics blog - can't pull in the kind of traffic that Nick Denton would reward with bonuses, or Know More Media, for that matter.
In other words, looking at traffic as a means to reward bloggers is not sustainable - in my opinion - it's a flawed system that needs more thought …. I understand where Denton is coming from - but he needs to think this one though a bit more - again, in my opinion.
