Loomio
Thu 20 Oct 2016 4:22PM

Paying for blog posts

DE Derek Eder Public Seen by 362

Right now, the Chi Hack Night blog is open for anyone to contribute posts to. This year especially, we've been able to get some really awesome pieces from a lot of new people (22 posts from 15 authors in 2016).

But writing takes a lot of time and effort. So I think we should pay people for their contributions.

Questions & ideas:

  1. How should we pay people for posts? Per post? Per word? What's a fair going rate?
  2. To encourage a variety of writers, should we offer a bonus for first time contributors?
  3. Once we figure out price, we'll have to fundraise for this. How much should we try and raise?
SV

Steven Vance Thu 20 Oct 2016 4:48PM

  1. Chicago Cityscape pays contributors $100 for an article that's longer than 800 words. Streetsblog Chicago pays $75 for 500 words, $100 for 800 words.

Chicago Magazine pays $1 per word, approximately.

  1. Bonus for first-time sounds great.

  2. I think before answering this question we should understand the benefits of blog posts in expanding the CHN audience and how it improves/doesn't improve outreach to diversifying attendees.

SL

Steven Luker Thu 20 Oct 2016 4:54PM

I agree with Steve's point #2. And it may help to explaining this (whatever the answers are) to the community at large.

KF

Karl Fogel Thu 20 Oct 2016 10:25PM

This would also be the first time (I think?) that Chi Hack Night would be in the position of potentially selecting members of its own community -- people who attend Chi Hack Night themselves -- for paid work done for Chi Hack Night. That's a complicated door to open, and would have some downsides. Let's think very carefully before opening it.

I'm also not sure how much the blog is of value to Chi Hack Night. Some value, obviously, but enough to pay for? I think of it as going in the other direction: Chi Hack Night is awesome, and so it's worth it to authors to have their post appear there.

Finally, while it's true that writing a good blog post takes time and effort, so do lots of other things that people do at Chi Hack Night: run breakout groups, write interesting apps, prepare and give presentations (some presentations are as much or more effort than a blog post), etc. We don't pay for all that productive activity and we could never afford to. Why are blog posts special?