Hiring Bloggers Gaining Steam

2007 August 14
by Genuine

According to a post by Marshal Kirkpatrick, hiring bloggers is becoming more popular.  So much so, he is getting cold calls from companies looking to hire a blogger.

I’ve been getting so many inquiries lately from companies looking to hire bloggers, and so many responses to messages I send out about them over twitter, that I’m losing track.

This is not an anomaly, as Tris and I get calls regularly and emails from people wanting to hire a blogger.  They are very excited at the idea until its time to pay the bill.  They feel it’s a nothing job for nothing pay.  My response is usually the same, hire a full time employee and let me know your bottom line at the end of the month or do the daily blogging yourself and let me know the amount of time, energy and difficulty you feel the job entails.  They tend to hire a blogger right away when they have done this comparison.  Marshall is an evangelist when he writes:

I believe that top-tier bloggers that will be tied closely to your brand should be paid between $5k and $8k per month. Pay your blogger well, communicate with them clearly about expectations and if it doesn’t seem worth it after some time then fire them and find a new one.

If you are going to pay a blogger $500-$1000/month, it had better not take very much time or that blog had better be a great way for said blogger to gain visibility and move onto a better gig. That’s what AOL Weblogs Inc. paid me for a whole lot of posts, but the blog was great for my career.

I wish all of my clients have been referred by Marshall because then they may know the sticker shock coming in to the game.  Send them my way Marshall and I promise they will be put in very capable and good hands.

 

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17 Comments leave one →
2007 August 14
Marshall Kirkpatrick permalink

Well, I would respectfully submit that a company that’s interested in hiring a blogger to be their day-in/day-out public face online but isn’t paying a competitive wage for a skilled communicator is either a. not going to take advantage of emerging media in a significant way and/or b. not going to keep said skilled communicator around very long. Churning out content for SEO alone is another story – and I’m sure there’s lots of blogging gigs in between those two extremes. Good luck, you guys.

2007 August 14
rslux permalink

Hiring a blogger is not all that different from hiring a full-time marcomm staffer or a professional copywriter, IMO. They can be gotten at all salary levels, but “you get what you pay for” is still the order of the day.

2007 August 14
Jim Turner permalink

Yes Fiat, you are right on with the “what you pay for is what you get” but where do you suggest the beginning should be? There is more to being a blogger than being a copywriter or a staffer. The blogger is a blend of those positions, plus a advertising guru, and other facets. It’s a skill not mastered by many.

2007 August 14
rslux permalink

Jim — Clearly, there’s going to be a range, based on the market involved and the level of expertise and education necessary to get the job done, plus of course whether blogging is all that the person would be expected to do. I’m hesitant to put hard numbers down, but certainly the top part of the range would extend into six figures.

Frankly, I am a little surprised to hear that companies are looking for full-time blogging help. If anything, I’d expect that a bigger number of companies would want someone on their existing staff to assume the role as part of their responsibilities, perhaps augmented with some part-time outside help.

Maybe I’m just thinking too small! :)

–Lux

2007 August 14
Jim Turner permalink

Existing staff is the biggest problem. Many companies are startups and have a staff of two or three people all with specific functions and to take them away from that they suffer a little. Many are companies with large staffs, but they have a hard time putting the company blog in the hands of an intern that has a MySpace page, the only one that has any idea how to blog.

2007 August 14
HART (1-800-HART) permalink

So what about the semi-business hobbyists (like myself) who do not want to pay (or unable to pay) bloggers a fixed salary or flat fee per post?

I’d love to be able to share revenues and successes of my blogs with bloggers in six figures or close to that … but, only if they help me earn it .. Are there any bloggers out there that still believe there is opportunity to earn money long-term? Or, is everybody buying into all this crap that they have a chance to earn $3k-$8k per month salary from some businesses – because some recommendation from a blogger or other blogging company …

And if it doesn’t work out?
… Don’t worry .. if it doesn’t seem worth it after some time then fire them and find a new one.

Wow. Talk about a bad business decision that would be.

2007 August 14
Jim Turner permalink

Hart,

There are plenty of bloggers out there that share the same vision and are willing to jump in bed with another visionary, but when the rubber meets the road if they are spending their time researching, writing and spending time online, a revenue share of $3.16 for the month of march is not so rewarding.

Nobody is buying into anything about the 3-8K a month blogging, if that were the case I wouldn’t be working so hard for a company to approve a tiny portion of their ad spend or marketing budget to just give blogging a try. I talk with companies spending 2K a week on pay per click campaigns but wont even think about spending 2 K a month on blogging. Yet I can guarantee that with that kind of commitment they can capture some organic search results.

We tend to concentrate on business rather than the ad sense gurus out there. Although, I have to say we have had ad companies with clients wanting nothing more but content to drive readers to the blog space for their ad feeds. To each his own.

2007 August 14
HART (1-800-HART) permalink

I hear you on that $3.16 .. and even I subconsciously am trying to get my blogs to at least close to the $100 level before I would ask a blogger to walk in and take over one of my sites! (although, a lot of my sites are closer to the $3.16 level).

2007 August 14
Jim Turner permalink

So the big thing is, a company looking at their own site sees the $3.16. What can we do to change that. The $3.16 is what they are used to. How do we get them to see it not as the small amount but the larger payoff. That is the question.

2007 August 14
HART (1-800-HART) permalink

That is a good question. I’m hoping the answer is partly in the publicly available stats showing growth and interest and, publicly availaby earnings graphs that shows that yes, it might have been $0.10 six months ago, but it was $0.20 five months ago, $0.40 four months ago, $0.80 three months ago, $1.60 two months ago and $3.16 last month .. and in the next six months if it can continue to double it will break $100 levels per month. Then, I would have to add to the answer that I am not concentrated enough to promote the site as efficiently while managing 50 sites, and one person managing one blog can shorten that 6-month time level with good content, passion and a learning curve with the whole blogging thingie, as both a hobby and potential part-time earnings base.

It’s a hard sell though.

2007 August 15
rslux permalink

HART, your business is blogging and your revenue stream is AdSense based. You’re in a different zone than that of, say, a shrinkwrap software company who sees their blog as a way to help build visibility and sales for their flagship product.

2007 August 15
Jim Turner permalink

Hart, your businessmodel is about passion in itspurest form. Someone that is willing to write blog posts they love to write for peanuts. Is their a big payoff in the end? Probably not. Unless that blog somehow gets a break.

This is not to say that the shrinkwrap software company Lux speaks of is not passionate, but the focus is different and perhaps the message.

The most common denominator of both business models is obviously to attract readers and have those readers convert, in either click throughs or sales or some other action.

I believe yours is the most difficult model and undortunately the less rewarding for the blogger. of course not all bloggers are looking for that monetary success.

2007 August 18
Who Should Write for Your Business Blog? | LogoDesignWorks permalink

[...] Also check out the Bloggers for Hire blog, run by Jim Turner and Tris Hussey, who run One By One Media. Jim and Tris communicate with a lot of business owners and help them find suitable bloggers. Particularly read Hiring bloggers gaining steam. [...]

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2007 August 21
Tish Grier permalink

Jim…just came across your post as I was working on something myself re bloggers and compensation. From my perusal of ads looking for “content producers” or even “bloggers” for their sites, there’s lots of differences not just in pay but what’s being asked of the blogger. I’ve seen ads that ask for everything from building the back end to creating daily content and monitoring posts and doing a bit of website content on top of it all. If that’s the case, then that particular blogger is going to be worth far more than even Marshall suggests.

And that’s a good strategy to ask them to calculate the time that their own employees will have to put into the effort. I’ll have to remember that one :-)

2007 October 30
20 Reasons Why I Should Stop Blogging permalink

[...] have no money to hire famous [...]

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2007 December 23
Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) » Marketing expérientiel vs. publireportage permalink

[...] variait de $5 à plus de $500 par article. Voici un billet intéressant sur le sujet, et un autre concernant les tarifs, en passant. Mais dans l’ensemble, les sommes qu’on se proposait de me payer étaient [...]

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2007 December 29
leslie permalink

I hear this one. I’ve been pro blogging for years now, and people still have to be sold on the cost of a great blogger.

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