Tag Archives: Blog

Getting Huffy at the HuffPo

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MY tips on blogging include ASK FOR MONEY

MY tips on blogging include ASK FOR MONEY

Today we feature a Comment of the Day worthy of being stolen and reposted, again and again (attribution, please, and that means linkie!). It is, of course, my own comment, and it was sparked on Gawker by someone who writes for the Huffington Post complaining that, far from all the hype about “prestige” and “exposure,” writing for the Huffington Post  can’t even get her a temp job.

@mimigoliath: Working for the HuffPo just screams “My stuff has zero market value.” I mean for god’s sake, have some pride.

Okay, sorry. The harshness shouldn’t be directed at you, it should be directed at that protean, malevolent slavedriver who runs the place. The Guardian doesn’t pay Comment is Free contributors either.

These are not literary journals. They are blogs with ads on them, making somebody rich.

Which brings me back to a point I’m constantly repeating. Blogging is writing.
The going rate for a blog post is, thanks to amateurs and wannabes who will do anything for the almighty god “exposure,” $5. Think of them as the blogosphere equivalent of the rich magazine interns who can work for free while Daddy puts them up in his “spare” apartment in NYC, who are waiting either for the big book deal (corresponds to “make a million off Adsense”) or the MRS degree (equivalent to becoming a WP.com mommyblogger, whining about the “DH” who’s never there because he has to be out making millions to support Mommyblogger). Or perhaps they’re the homeschooling, Oprah-watching, self-improving scrap-booking memoiristes of the blogosphere.
The going rate for a professionally written blog post is about $25-50, on a par with copywriting, because that’s what it is. It’s professional writing.
I don’t need to write for the exposure anymore. On any given weekday, I can put my work in front of 17,000 engaged readers, and Quantcast can back me up on that. And I not long ago turned down someone who wanted me to write “for exposure” on her blog that gets 36 hits a day.
We’ve covered the whole concept of Pay the Writer, haven’t we?
Remember, Freelance isn’t free, and if you desperately just want to get exposure, go to any major intersection in Edmonton this time of year and pull your pants down. It’d be less painful than bleeding to death at $5 per post, and you might get a book deal out of it.

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