Are professional bloggers getting screwed? Time to become a free agent!
Jeremy Wright today posted about the idea of whether the industry of professional blogging is paying bloggers enough. Jeremy follows that up with another article that explains his frustration and his idea that the answer is no, we are not paying bloggers enough. Jeremy asks a good question, “Does anyone pay bloggers enough.”
My response is absolutely not! I added to the comments on Jeremy’s post and I am going to reprint it here because this is a very important topic that should be discussed by anyone that is in the professional blog ranks, or companies that are paying bloggers.
Speaking not as a network owner or President, I think that my business too at One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire sometimes gets called out for our payment practices. We pay our bloggers top dollar and usually more than a network and more than they can earn with ads. With that said, our work is farther and fewer between than just the every day advertising earner through adsense or as a network blogger. I do see that we have similar problems with pay and it is a self correcting market at this point. As the need for bloggers increases, it will soon be a better paying position, but as long as we have 67 million of them to choose from and they all are doing it for free and would love to get a little bit for their effort, we will have the problems faced right now about “not paying enough”. If I can get a quality blogger and pay them $500 a month or if I can find the same blogger at $100 a month, which would I choose as a business owner? Bloggers often sell themselves short because they don’t understand the market. For us business owners in this market it makes it tough, so we have to add other value add items like management of the blog, web analytics and other things that bloggers perform as experts, but we cannot charge for these things because there are bloggers out there doing it for free. Sooner or later, as this becomes more of a mainstream position, the ones that stick it out now and offer what others are not offering will benefit from an industry correction, but until then, we have to hold on and do what we can to be profitable and hope it comes soon.
The market for professional bloggers will eventually change. Their will be your major league players and those that are warming up in the minors. Some bloggers will be more able to leverage their ability than others. Some bloggers will have a higher reputation in the industry and will be able to make themselves free agents to the highest bidder. It will be capitalism at its finest. This in turn will cause a ripple affect (or is it effect?) that will make a difference to everyone in the market. As the top players get better pay, the bottom tier bloggers can also ask for more as the market shifts. Are bloggers being paid enough? No. Is this a trend that will continue? No. Bloggers need to gain the confidence that their abilities are requiring top dollar. Companies wanting to have the best of the best will begin paying a premium for those bloggers. this will have the trickle down economics that will benefit everyone.
Tags: Jeremy Wright, Professional Bloggers, Blogger Salaries, Blog Networks, Business Blogging, Bloggers For Hire, One By One Media
