According to Talking Biz News, the writers-turned-bloggers at Business 2.0 magazine — who were directed to start blogs by editor Josh Quittner — have received their first paycheques based on their blogs. As part of the deal that saw everyone start blogging, Quittner said he would be paying his writers a bonus based on how much traffic their blogs got.
The Business 2.0 editor — who watched one of his writers, Om Malik, leave the magazine to start his blog empire last year — says the top blogs at the magazine, including Business 2.0 Beta, got cheques that were in the thousands of dollars. Others got cheques for hundreds of dollars, and some got less than $100. The lowest-earning, says Quittner, also got a little advice about maybe reconsidering the subject matter or approach of their blogs.
This is a fascinating experiment, as far as I’m concerned. Will the payments that the top bloggers are getting start to breed resentment within the Business 2.0 offices? Will some of the lowest-earning bloggers change their strategy to try and boost traffic? How soon until someone tries a few SEO black-hat techniques, like ghost linking to sites about mesothelioma?
