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Pay for traffic: Incentive or distortion?

Started by mathewi · 8 months ago

It may be a new year, but we’re still talking (well, some of us are anyway) about an old issue: namely, the idea of paying writers based on the traffic they get. The focus of the debate right now is Gawker, where Nick Denton has apparently started paying his bloggers based ... Continue reading »

3 comments

  • Mark

    8 months ago

    In the end, it'll come down to the editors. They're the one that has final say. There are times when I want to go off on a political riff over at Mash, but if the tech angle isn't significant enough, one of the other editors will reign me in. If a Gawker blog (or any other blog that adopts this philosophy/incentive program) slips into sensational oblivion, blame the editors, not the writers.
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  • Spinchange

    8 months ago

    As a (still) avid digger and participant in social media sites like digg, my concern is the amount of spam and abuse on these social news networks and the increase of "throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks" to help bloggers increase their traffic and thusly pay.

    There already is tons of commercial content being submitted as "viral" content - some of it's OK, some of it's horrible. Sadly, The SEO/SMO crowd has infiltrated/merged with many of the site's top and/or prominent submitters.

    My concern is that this trend is going to further dampen the already poor signal-to-noise ratio in social media.

    Are we in for more "Cosmo headlines" and worse "cosmo content?"
    reply
  • JeremyB

    8 months ago

    Long-time reader, first-time commenter. I think you're taking a bit of a leap of faith in thinking that "[I]n the long run it is likely to make them more intimately involved in their blogs, and more interested in developing a relationship with their readers, and that’s a good thing.”

    Yes, there’s something to the idea of relationship-building IF the bloggers in question are sticking around for years. But is that really the universe we’re talking about? What’s the average tenure for a writer with a blog network gig? And will this mythical writer actually put more money in his pocket doing an extra-special good job then he might have churning out commodity volume-filler posts?

    Of course it’s important to have a strong relationship with one’s readers. But in the end it’s the editor’s responsibility to make sure that the blog owns that relationship. Individual voices are eminently brandable, and can become great businesses. But the biggest content businesses brand businesses, not bloggers.

    More here: http://brijit.wordpress.com/
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