Biting the hand that doesn’t feed
You may have noticed my advertising content listings on the right column. So far they have generated precisely zero in income, although, as they say, hope springs eternal (except when it dies a slow death). I was intrigued to find out what listings would arrive in that column, and so far am unsurprised to learn that most of them are listings for writing-related sites. (As they should be.)
One of them, blogit.com, caught my attention. “Get paid to blog.” That sounded interesting. I wondered how much it could be, figuring that it couldn’t be much. In fact, I figured that by comparison, third-world microloans would seem like jumbo loans. Bear in mind my past experience of writing for The Comics Journal for a penny a word in the 1980’s (when they even bothered to pay and honor other commitments; they stiffed me for the Jack Davis interview they finally ran 15 years ago in #153, and couldn’t be bothered to send me a copy or even a xerox, despite my polite and then not-so-polite requests until a few years ago when I finally Gave Up).
Well, I don’t know what Blogit pays but the site’s business model leaves me thinking it would pay perhaps no more than The Comics Journal at times — zero. In fact, it’s even worse than The Journal, where at least it didn’t cost me anything other than my time and my expenses to have my invoice and my requests for copies ignored. On Blogit, one gets paid to blog by posting blogs that generate enough clickthroughs from paying subscribers to generate interest, whereupon one gets a share of that paying subscriber’s subscription fee. How to become a Blogit.com writer? By subscribing. So it’s pay to play.
I can’t imagine why one wouldn’t just set up one’s own blog and set up sponsored listings.
Moreover, here’s a sample of a blog I found on Blogit. Please read this and tell me that somewhere out there someone exists who will pay for this sort of writing:
Here we go….
Here we go. I was planning to write a daily opinions page on all things creative, but I have a history of great plans laid to waste when real life gets in the way. It may be weekly, or monthly or…. well you know how it goes. Watch this space…. While you’re waiting for my creative genious to be…
Why does it trail off in the end (and just when I’m so thoroughly captivated by her quest for something to say)? Because you have to click for the rest, and to click you have to be a paying subscriber. I wasn’t quite so enrapt that I fished out my credit card. The above post has one comment, by the way, and it reads thusly: “Welcome to Blogit!”
So who, evidently, pays for the blogs on Blogit? The people who have signed up to create them with the hopes that they can generate income. And who reads them? Probably no one.