Image by The Flooz via FlickrProphetic words from Kevin Maney as he shuts down his Conde Nast sponsored Tech Observer Blog, and starts looking for something else to do. While the economy continues to swagger down the road like a person coming off a drunken binge at the club, the very real fate of group blogs or blog networks and their writers continues to hammer individual bloggers right and left.

The downturn is influencing everything that is happening in the blogging world, and while some of this might be good, some of this might be bad; there is always a tossup when it comes to working for a blog network, and job security. If you can rake in the readers, there generally is not that much to worry about, if you are under performing as far as the company is concerned, then well you might need to go do something else. Then that also all depends on the blog network, and how that network chooses to pay you.

What is interesting is the idea of a base salary that does and does not make sense. Some blog networks pay based on the audience you can generate as part of a revenue share, and in the current economic time that we live in this might just be the best way that a company can go about paying for its bloggers. If they take in ads, then there is a reason that you can pay bloggers based on the number of page views that they generate rather than a base salary. While this is a different kind of payment scheme, at least it is tied to performance, and that is really what you want. Not saying that everyone is dead wood, but if you can write, and collect an audience, there is no reason why you cannot work on this model.

Some of the best blogs I write for use this model, and while it ends up being beer money, it all adds up at the end of the year. I am failing to understand why other companies do not do this, work out a rate, and keep the blogger on board. If they are already popular, already draw an audience, and already have the ability to write well enough to capture an audience. Then it would make sense then rather than going through a total layoff and killing off otherwise interesting blogs, that the owners do not try a different revenue model.

Good bye Tech Observer, we will miss you.

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