Interesting interview with Jason Calacanis over at his blog today – it gives an up to date look at the Weblogs Inc Network. Well worth the read.
‘The business is growing about 9-12 months faster then I thought it would. However, we’ve got a couple more years of really hard work ahead of us before this becomes this become what I consider a “real business” (i.e. over $10M a year in revenue).’
Looks like things are building well over at WIN!
500 USD a month to a blogger is what Calculonanis calls “Fair Compensation”?
Oh please, lets not start that nonsense again. Its not $500 a month for full time work its $500 a month for probably about 7 hours a week.
And he aims to pay better than mainstream journalists get on the NY Times and WSJ. Bet you he gets there.
With a statement like paying his bloggers better than mainstream journalists, people will be watching (especially journlalists ready to take a pot shot ;-).
I wouldn’t care if it’s $100, $200 or $500 a month – it all depends on the hours worked.
If I were to spend 1 hour a day researching/writing one post, day-in, day-out (that’s 7 hours a week) I would be happy with something like $500 a month in pay – but you’d expect it no matter what (if you’re being paid then you would not want to be worrying about advertising).
Also, you’d want to be able to do your own thing as well, as $500 a month is not a full time wage. I don’t really see where/if Jason can pay better than MSM. For a full time journalism role (and I mean full time – no side projects, the employer owns you) I’d expect at minimum $500 a week. And how much blogging can you really do to earn your keep and more importantly can even someone as big as Jason attract the advertisers to pay for it all?
As well, where does the quality end and quantity start? If I knew I HAD to write a post every day how long before you started gettting lazy and start posting just for postings sake?
And it’s not just the amount of pure dollars — we’re also looking at employee vs. contractor. A contractor gets exactly no benefits, and faces very different tax laws (remember, there’s an extra tax on the self-employed) than an employee.
Andrew’s right. I’ve been self-employed most of my working life and I’d say on purely monetary considerations you have to double a “wage” to make freelance pay as well. However, freedom is also part of the package. What price do you put on that? For me, a very high one.