It’s always interesting to see how different blog networks pay their bloggers.
Valleywag today has a post on Gawker’s new blogger pay structure – they’re moving to a system where their bloggers are paid based upon traffic levels. It’s a smart way to go – we’ve been doing a similar system (base pay which is based upon how long you’ve been blogging with us plus traffic bonus) at b5media for a while now.
I think it’s good because it guarantees a minimum level of income that a blogger can expect to earn in a month but gives incentive to write the type of posts that get traffic.
Other systems that I’ve heard other blog networks using include:
- Payments Per Post – a flat fee per post (I’ve heard of anything from a few dollars up to hundreds of dollars per post – depending upon the blog, topic, blogger profile and post length)
- Revenue Share – where the blogger earns an agreed upon percentage of their blog’s revenue (I’ve heard anything from 20% to 80% splits)
- Revenue Share of Certain Income Streams – where the blogger takes a % of one or two income streams and the network takes other income streams (for example a blogger might take 80% of AdSense revenue and the network takes the other 20% plus any other income from the blog). Another variation on this is where the blogger is allowed to use affiliate programs and the network takes advertising revenue.
- Traffic Payments – some networks pay purely on traffic levels – a CPM model (ie blogger is paid $X per 1000 page views)
- Flat Monthly Fees – the blogger is paid a certain amount per month if they reach certain posting goals.
I’m sure there are plenty of other blogger payment models used in other networks (there are plenty of variations and combinations of the above too). I’d love to hear of others you’ve heard of or used.
