Melissa Lion went on a rampage recently about the continued struggle that writers face when they try to get paid to write stuff online. “Content” remains one of my least favorite words because of a variety of connotations, but most specifically because it relegates the value of the “stuff on a web page” to mere ingredients. Just stick some complete sentences in there and you’re probably good. Incomplete ones, even. Heck, just link some stuff and say “AW YEEEAAAHH” at the bottom, that should be good…
No one is going to bang the drum louder for valuing content than the people who create it, but there’s a whole complex of reasons why writers don’t get paid magazine rates for blog posts, website copy, etc. Not to be too much of a Debbie Downer, but here (among other things) are the barriers I can come up with off the top of my head:
The expectation, however unfair, is that information is free on the web. From community-based, public service models like Wikipedia (which we should applaud) to the neverending pile of nonsense from prnewswire-style services (which we should not applaud), there’s just a lot of stuff on the web. If I want to go read about something that happened, check into the blogosphere’s opinion on X, or otherwise learn about things, I can – and odds are good I will never even be asked to subscribe. Salon.com and NYT are two information services that are making an effort at a subscription model, but you have to have an incredibly potent brand to make that work. Or be a niche (I’m looking at you, Star City Games).
There have been many debates regarding the “get what you pay for” versus “guerilla marketing writ large” aspects of free content. People who, to whatever extent, are trying to build a brand that can support an ad model/tip jar/”hire me ’cause I’m smart” are firmly on the side of content being free. So why/how are you going to pay people if the enterprise is not in the black? Particularly if you’re not charging people to read the stuff?
Magazines don’t actually make money on subscriptions either (hence the “super discount” insert card in every single magazine ever). They make money selling soap, or gadgets, or hearbreaking works of staggering genius. They want readership so they can price the ads higher, so they pretty much give the magazine away in terms of realizing a profit. In that sense, content is also (close to) free in magazines as well – at least to the extent that the sale price does not compensate the author of a given bit of content. It’s the ads.
In a magazine, ads cost a fixed amount and there are fixed number of places available to advertise. Limited real estate = much more responsive supply and demand cycle. You want Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter on a full page in People? Okey dokey – that will be a zillion dollars. On the web, ads may cost a fixed amount, but that amount is much smaller because the inventory is limitless – just slap up another page (article, blog post, camera review) et voila – ad space.
And what’s it worth? Who’s gonna see it? Is it a Person of Note writing? Will they care enough? Can you get CPM (probably not unless you’re awesome) or is there going to be some sort of conversion model? What sort of money are you getting off your RSS ads (if you’re doing that)? In short, will the advertising around a given chunk of content get you to $0.10/word or $25 total? If the answer is yes, please email me your next call for submissions.
This is a fancy way of saying that “blogging isn’t journalism” or “blogging isn’t academe.” There’s a “marketplace of ideas,” for sure, but we know more about the economies of entirely made up places than we do about the economics of “real world” online content. So the open question becomes: what’s it worth to you? Is a given post or series of posts worth as much or more, for example, than a “One Minute Manager” book? This is why webcomics have followed the old skool comic model of assembling chunks of strips into books – what once was free is now available in handy archive form. The sad truth for many blogs, however, is that no one’s going to buy the book about your blog unless you’re Wil Wheaton or summat. Which brings me to the next point:
Either you wrote a book and now have a companion web presence, or you became a superfamous webizen and now you get to write books and speak and whatnot. Both are extremely rare (at least at the traffic levels that I would describe as the “big leagues”). The long tail is a harsh mistress.
This post is an example. Over at Extreme Arts & Sciences, I get “paid” to blog only to the extent that I get paid to maintain all of the webby stuff going on. We write about stuff we care about because we care about it. It’s not really expected that we’ll find a way to riches. The syndicated routes to such riches are so gross and inauthentic and MLM-laden that I just plain cannot endorse them. At all. I’d rather write when it matters to me, pursue projects, etc.
Gosh, I sound like a Portland Creative, don’t I? Gotta stop hanging around you people…
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