TechWag

There you are with your freshly minted blog, and you have done some excellent work, made some headway and getting a couple of hundred people a day, life is good, and your enthused. If you have taken on the idea that blogging is a way of life, and you enjoy blogging, Marshall Kirkpatrick has some interesting news for you to follow up on. Paid blogging jobs, but there are some realities here as well.

I’ve been getting so many inquiries lately from companies looking to hire bloggers, and so many responses to messages I send out about them over twitter, that I’m losing track. I really like helping bring these two groups together. Sometimes I fantasize about starting a blogger training and placement service, but for now let’s just try to get organized! Source: Marshall Kirkpatrick

Read the whole post, then go trotting over to Problogger and look at what jobs they have open. These are real writing gigs, for real companies, and they do pay. There are a couple of questions though that any reader of this article should be asking themselves.

1. Do you really blog that well? You don’t have to be a prizewinner, but on your own how well have you done? Do you blog about things that are important to you, other than your family, friends, and people you hate. Have you already started blogging about your favorite things, technology, entertainment, soap operas, whatever it is, and do you do it well enough to gain an audience already.

The reason for asking that question is one of the first things that any company should ask is “what is your readership already”. For example, we blog at a number of blogs, and they are Streamaroo, ITToolbox, and Techwag here. While it is only three blogs, the combined readership is approximately 20,000 people per month. That statistic makes it easier to get a job blogging.

2. What does your syndication look like? Are you syndicated by anyone, and how well has that gone over, do you know what your syndication statistics are? This is also an important number, We are syndicated worldwide by WebProNews, and that means the name is out there, and something that blog employers are also going to want to know about.

The reason for asking that question is the same as knowing how many people read your blog, you might not be syndicated, and that is also ok. But if you are, that is an additional bonus, try guest blogging on other blogs, or raise the quality level of your blog to the point that people are willing to syndicate you. If someone asks, say yes if it works for you. Most syndication though that we have found does not pay the blogger, this is about brand recognition, and you are the brand. It is a lot like dumping your stories into AP or Reuters.

3. Pay is always contentious, what are other people being paid to blog about things? What is the going rate on pay per post per article? What do community blogs pay? How much per insight at the TechDirt Insight community? Knowing the numbers makes it so much easier to figure out what is the right pay. And frankly if the company is not willing to pay market rate per entry, or per month to blog there, then that is something that is good to know.

Marshall thinks that bloggers who are on the payroll, and blog about something for a living should be getting 5000 to 8000 per month. Our reality is very much so below that. Not that this is a bad thing, but do not think for a moment that the average blogger is going to get that much. All jobs require dues paying, and odds are most likely you will be working for much less. On our about us page we have a graduated series of pay scales based on popularity and raw unique IP addresses, this is the reality, as that scale was based on what we have learned about the industry. It is not uncommon to get 50 dollars per 1000 unique IP’s on an article, and it is not uncommon to get 5 to 10 dollars per entry for piecework.

In the mean time, do it, write the best you can write, read, use a social book-marking site for those entries you find interesting. Emulate the styles you find cool. Then just do it, go forth and do good things. Remember though, Techwag and Streamaroo are also looking for writers, we pay according to the scale here and if you have a blog, want to write for us or our other sites, send us a note suggest@techwag.com and we will respond.