I was reading Felix Salmon’s article about Gawker Media and how Nick Denton is continuing the blog lord scheme of paying his bloggers based on performance.  It appears that Denton only cares about the almighty page view.  I know what Denton faces when he looks for results.  I too have that same problem as clients want to see their return on investment.  Denton sees the check the blogger gets for a salary and then matches that against the number of page views that blogger has generated.  The salary is the investment for the page view. The page view is what the advertiser is investing in as they pay Denton.

I face the same problems each month as I send out my invoices.  The client is paying a monthly contract for the blogger.  They look to me to drive traffic, raise readership of the blog and ultimately that has to turn into sales or customers.  It is not unlike the problem Denton faces.  His clients are advertisers and the return on investment is page views.  This is a very basic understanding of professional bloggers and I don’t discount the other benefits of generating quality content for companies.  This is a basic difficulty I face when dealing with the clients and their idea of our service.  I must continue to educate companies as to why  a blogger provides more than words on a page.

Bloggers are doing their jobs by providing quality content and other outreach to gather readers.  Not all blogs are easy to create large page views and create large communities of readers.  A blog that has thousands of readers a day because they talk about celebrity gossip and the latest crotch shot of Britney Spears, is not as difficult to get readers as portable toilet company that is talking about the latest breakthrough in environmentally safe chemicals and toilet paper.  The problem is that portable toilet company expects the world to be as interested in toilet paper as they are in the latest celebrity in rehab and crotch shots.

I always discuss this with companies and how they expect the blog to perform for them and their expectation of their return on investment.  They want to see thousands of people a day lining up to read what the blogger wrote.  They then equate that to some magic way of selling the reader on their service or product.  Readers equate to buyers in their mind.  This is not always the case but that is the expectation.  They figure the blogger salary into their Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).  In order to justify paying a blogger or hiring a blogger, they use this formula.  What they don’t understand is that the blogger is no different than any other employee in their arsenal.  They have to have employees that perform certain tasks.  They have not bought into the idea that a blogger is necessary.  Until companies become comfortable with that doctrine, I continue to try to justify the expense every month I send an invoice.  Blogger salaries are part of a marketing budget and not part of a budget for employee salaries.  Until that crosses over bloggers are always going to be judged by the “what have you done for me lately” idea.  They need to understand that 50 readers a day that are sold 50% of the time is better than 5,000 readers a day that purchase only 1% of the time.

[photo via UC Merced]

I have been telling lots of bloggers that they too can become professionals and be paid a wage for their blogging.  As a hobbyist blogger, what is it that you are doing to be a blogger?  Are you just putting words on a page and hoping people will show up?  Believe it or not, many companies are doing just that, putting a blog on their site and waiting to get rich off the process.  If you are a blogger and you believe in that doctrine I am the first to call you out.  There is no quick way to stardom as it relates to blogging.  Putting words on a page are a part to the overall picture but I can scrape content and call it good.  That is not the case when wanting to be successful.

Bloggers are a special breed.  They know how to be successful as a community builder and as a marketer, advertiser and PR person for their blog.  They wear all those hats and more.  They are in effect, the CEO, CFO, CTO and all other C level employees of their blogs.  This is invaluable to companies.  A person that knows social media and can implement that knowledge into a use that benefits the blog, the company and its future.  This is a skill that cannot be passed down to the communication department, the PR department, or to that intern in the mail room with a MySpace account.  A blogger or a professional blogger must wear many hats.  I call them social media managers as they wear any hats and have many functions.  What do you consider your job description as a professional blogger?

This is one of the very first questions I’m asked as a person that regularly contracts bloggers for companies seeking their talent.  My first response to them is usually along the lines of “never enough”.  It varies obviously from contract to contract and from the amount of work involved in each contract.  Many bloggers are merely word puppets putting up post after post of keyword rich posts to make the client happy that they are finally reaching page one of that search engine.  Some are full blown researchers, managers, magicians and poets, and they charge and are paid more for that talent.  I had to make this post today because of something that Mike Arrington wrote in his comment to one of his own postings about a blogger leaving his employ.

#6 – we start all of our writers out at $250k, but of course there is a bonus on top of that. plus stock, health care, 401k and a company car. each writer also gets an administrative assistant. and a cat.

Mike you had me buying into the idea of trying to get a job at TechCrunch right up to the last item.  That was the deal breaker.  Of course, if that was the real salary, I think they would have a line of people a mile long waiting for the chance.  The thing is, that is a salary professional bloggers and bloggers here at Bloggers For Hire will probably not see anytime in the near or for that matter distant future.