During my first year out of college I worked at a tutoring center, and I became well-versed in the language of academic advice for teenagers trying to get into college. One night I saw an ad online requesting articles about preparing for college. I subsequently wrote an article and received 50 dollars. “I could do this for a living,” I thought at the time. That didn’t really work out then; but maybe it can work out for everyone now.

Paid content–in this case, paying for the stuff on the internet we now essentially get for free all the time–has been a hot topic of debate, with most against. I was ‘against’ too, because I like reading stuff on the internet for free. But I also like having a job–and as I’m getting older, I’ve discovered I’m one of many (all?) that want to get paid for their work (speaking of which, tell your friends about Vernacular).

You may not get rich doing it (though there are a lot of eyes out there advertisers are eager to reach), but there are a few unique benefits to the idea worth our time:

1. It saves time. Writers can work their beat remotely and post from practically anywhere at anytime before deadline.

2. It can return $ as fast as it can publish. Publishers can easily balance revenue from ads with frequency of posts, and literally pay writers per article–as a freelancer or contract employee–or do all the writing themselves and keep the dough.

3. You can keep your day job. This may provide for little more than the beer fund (the kids’ college fund) for now, but the money the publisher is saving in your paycheck is, perhaps, proportional to the time you’re saving posting on the web (Vernacular is not an all-consuming time commitment, if you can’t tell).

4. It is niche-friendly. According to Internet Advertising Bureau, the one website that is seeing growth right now is doing so “because of its very specific business audience that will pay for extremely valuable and timely information.” You may be one of only 1,000 people in the entire country that works as, say, a city sewage director. You may also be the only one willing to write about it. Start a website, and those other 999 people can find you in less than a second.

The obvious roadblock is making the transition to paid content when plenty of people don’t have a problem keeping everything free. There’s a sound argument for quality in paid content, however, as assigning value to content by offering an actual paycheck gives publishers a bargaining chip in selecting quality writers (I can think of a few blogs that wouldn’t make the cut).  But I still have to read Chris Anderson’s new book, So who knows; I may be singing a different tune this time next month.

To learn more about, or join in support of, paid content, visit the Fair Syndication Consortium.

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Tags:   blogs · Chris · Content · freelancing · Money · publishing industry1 Comment