Don’t Confuse Free With Free Exposure

I write for Mashable and use the opportunities to do two things: 1) Spread idea to a larger base than my current blog can. 2) Generate credibility in the nonprofit sector. 3) Create wider exposure for myself. I do this once a month, and blog for my own company's purposes 3-4 times a week. I would not give all of my content to a farm, but it has its purposes.

Danny - Your post mentions two types of "payment" for bloggers - pay-per-post and then those that do it for free to get traffic back to their own site or exposure for their book, business, etc.

I would add that many sites are also incentivizing their bloggers by offering a flat "pay-for-post" base and then the opportunity to earn more -- either via bonus or revenue share -- based on the amount of traffic those blogs receive. Hopefully this helps in two ways -- bloggers create good content that people want to read and share and they are encouraged to share it with their personal networks to drive traffic back to your site.

On another topic, I would agree with some of the other comments that bloggers who wrote for Huffington Post do not deserve some sort of "share" of the sale price. They agreed to a contract on what they felt their writing was worth and now need to stand behind that contract. Also, what sold AOL on Huffington post was their traffic and that came less on the backs of hard working bloggers and more on the trails of regurgitated content and flashy headlines.

Wow such a thought-provoking post. I have a guest post that's supposed to go live on Problogger next Saturday. Am I getting paid? No in dollars, yes in exposure. Social capital is worth money. It's worth time. It's worth hard, emotional labour.

If you asked the Huffington Post contributors if they were happy at the time to exchange content for exposure, they'd say yes. Otherwise, they wouldn't have done it. Just because money is exchanging hands doesn't mean they have a right to change their attitude. If Darren sells Problogger for a billion next month, I'm not going to complain.

Anybody can write content. That's relatively easy. What's not so easy is finding an audience to read that content. The person who finds the audience should be the one who gets to wipe with Franklins - in this case, Arianna.

Great post Danny, I don't know all the details but I don't see how the contributors could be too upset about this. They had to have at least considered this possibility, and if not-shame on them. The web's currency is back links, so I personally would consider them paid in full. IMO. I work in the title industry, I see many real estate professionals using Facebook as their HUB online, not really considering that this kind of scenario could and probably will occur in the future with facebook. Great post.

I haven't seen any serious discussions around writers who agreed to work for free in the last thinking they should get a cut of the purchase price. That makes no sense.

What I have seen is a continuation of the "WHY are you writing for a major site for free?"

The sale price only underscores what critics of write-for-exposure have been saying forever: she made way more off you than you did off her. Perhaps this will be a wake-up call to writers about just how much their craft is worth.

Fascinating post, Danny and comments besides. John's comment and Mark's enhancement make total sense. Those contributors have no financial stake in the action unless they literally invested in the project.

I personally, have never been a fan of hunting for other venues. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but for me, I like to keep the traffic coming to my own blog and I am not convinced people follow you back to your own when you are a regular contributor to another site.

I see your points, particularly agreeing with Esposito, but since neither HuffPo nor AOL means anything to me, I'll just wish those writer who feel slighted and walk the very best for the future.

What really strikes me is talk of how AOL is looking forward to monetizing this new audience by serving up ads. Yawn. Wake me when someone does something innovative in the digital revenue space.

The build-an-audience/monetize-via-affiliate/advertising model is trite, corporate shilling. It's a race to the bottom designed to suck money from the people.

Truly innovative business partners with sponsors to provide value to society. We accept no advertisers on Gearbox. We don't want them. We want partners who will help us help our audience.

We will help you grow your business if you help us grow ours, which requires taking an active role in improving the lives of our customers. Don't have the time to help our community? We don't have the time to tell them about you.

True success requires making everyone involved successful. :)

Writing from the perspective of someone who wrote a few dozen articles for free for HuffPo since the fall of 2008, most of which were cross-posts from other blogs I wrote, and some being original works, I don't care for any money from the AOL deal. If AOL wants to pay me, so be it; but I'm not asking for it.

I'll add an intriguing bit to this discussion and that is as recent as late-January I was able to log into my HuffPo blogger dashboard and publish an article that appeared immediately on the site. No longer. It's now sent to a team of editors who moderate all incoming content -- which in the case of something I tried to publish after the AOL deal and had a specific shelf life, was not published.

I don't think I'll be writing and adding items to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-herzog any time soon, unless or until the moderation ceases.

I understand that users who have posted on Huffington were disappointed that website was sold.
However, if I was one of those users, I would not ask for a bag of money, just an insurance that my articles and links won't disappear.
Offtopic (can you guide me how to install this checkbox to confirm that I'm a human on a blog ?)

I write for Mashable and use the opportunities to do two things: 1) Spread idea to a larger base than my current blog can. 2) Generate credibility in the nonprofit sector. 3) Create wider exposure for myself. I do this once a month, and blog for my own company's purposes 3-4 times a week. I would not give all of my content to a farm, but it has its purposes.

Danny - Your post mentions two types of "payment" for bloggers - pay-per-post and then those that do it for free to get traffic back to their own site or exposure for their book, business, etc.

I would add that many sites are also incentivizing their bloggers by offering a flat "pay-for-post" base and then the opportunity to earn more -- either via bonus or revenue share -- based on the amount of traffic those blogs receive. Hopefully this helps in two ways -- bloggers create good content that people want to read and share and they are encouraged to share it with their personal networks to drive traffic back to your site.

On another topic, I would agree with some of the other comments that bloggers who wrote for Huffington Post do not deserve some sort of "share" of the sale price. They agreed to a contract on what they felt their writing was worth and now need to stand behind that contract. Also, what sold AOL on Huffington post was their traffic and that came less on the backs of hard working bloggers and more on the trails of regurgitated content and flashy headlines.

Wow such a thought-provoking post. I have a guest post that's supposed to go live on Problogger next Saturday. Am I getting paid? No in dollars, yes in exposure. Social capital is worth money. It's worth time. It's worth hard, emotional labour.

If you asked the Huffington Post contributors if they were happy at the time to exchange content for exposure, they'd say yes. Otherwise, they wouldn't have done it. Just because money is exchanging hands doesn't mean they have a right to change their attitude. If Darren sells Problogger for a billion next month, I'm not going to complain.

Anybody can write content. That's relatively easy. What's not so easy is finding an audience to read that content. The person who finds the audience should be the one who gets to wipe with Franklins - in this case, Arianna.

I would write for Skittles.

Great post Danny, I don't know all the details but I don't see how the contributors could be too upset about this. They had to have at least considered this possibility, and if not-shame on them. The web's currency is back links, so I personally would consider them paid in full. IMO. I work in the title industry, I see many real estate professionals using Facebook as their HUB online, not really considering that this kind of scenario could and probably will occur in the future with facebook. Great post.

I haven't seen any serious discussions around writers who agreed to work for free in the last thinking they should get a cut of the purchase price. That makes no sense.

What I have seen is a continuation of the "WHY are you writing for a major site for free?"

The sale price only underscores what critics of write-for-exposure have been saying forever: she made way more off you than you did off her. Perhaps this will be a wake-up call to writers about just how much their craft is worth.

You make an excellent point here Danny, but wouldn't it be nice if they took say.... $1 million of it and spread it out over all the contributors based on the volume of "reads" their posts got. Would that be brilliant? Imagine how much good will that could have bought? The problem is too many business people tend to forget much of what contributes to their success and they justify it by saying "it's just business".

It's been said that Communists are really just Capitalists who are a lot more ruthless ;-)

When I write for another site, I place a prominent link on my own site, usually as part of the blog flow of my "in-house" articles. If I write for another site, I want to be sure to milk the prestige.

When "hangers-on" flock around the Rock star, they don't expect part of the royalties, they want to share in the groupies, er, luster of association.

Any claim that they deserve royalties would be ridiculous to everyone. A anyone talented enough to be published in a high-profile rag should be smart enough to know better.

Crying foul because they didn't get *more* than they expected to get is interesting, especially since my guess is that every single one of them would have acted exactly as Huffington has.

Rick

Fascinating post, Danny and comments besides. John's comment and Mark's enhancement make total sense. Those contributors have no financial stake in the action unless they literally invested in the project.

I personally, have never been a fan of hunting for other venues. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but for me, I like to keep the traffic coming to my own blog and I am not convinced people follow you back to your own when you are a regular contributor to another site.

Great post Danny. One of my friends @cmonstah is a travel and art journalist and I got her last summer on the Adverve Podcast that 2 other friends host. They discussed this issue. She was really only miffed when an aggregator site like Huff Post used her work and failed to credit it to her.

Every contributor to the Huff Post could of stopped writing for them anytime they wished.

As for the money there is a misconception Arianna got all the money. In fact there were a few VC backers and investors whom also were part owners so I am sure her take was much less.

Forget the hard working blogger/journalists who contributed for free. What would be more telling is the Celebrity and High Profile people who wrote occasionally. They are the ones who in my view brought a lot of readers. The Robert Redford's etc. These people often refuse to allow their likeness to be used for monetary gain (think of the upset stars from the Old Spice Twitter event who in hindsight weren't as cool with the stunt).

It seems silly to me. Payment has never been strictly in cash, and there are hundreds of ways to hustle for cash online without cashing in on someone else's deal.

I guess I can see contributors frustration, but at the end of the day a business decision is a business decision, and no one can fault someone for wanting to move on and try something new.

Danny when AOL comes to buy your blog, I do expect a share of the cake mate!
Seriously, the deal of providing content for exposure is pretty straightforward and let's look at it the other way around. Had Huffpost gone bankrupt do you think these same people would have claimed they owned part of the debt because they contributed poor content?

IDK Danny. On one hand it does seem like much ado. Huffington has ads right? Others contributed, Huffington made the ad money. So I don't see the sale of the business as that different. As Daria mentioned Huffington made the site what it is by hard work, marketing, etc. to build that brand, a following of 26 million readers and make it worth $300 million.

What may be different to those who contributed - for money or exposure - is the forum on which they chose to write is going or gone. Huffington is now AOL, a completely different image and brand; just ask TimeWarner. So the value of that exposure, the return on their contributions I have to expect will be something different under AOL. FWIW.

No free lunches Danny.
I can understand the contributors getting upset, but if that's the deal... that's the deal.

Many of us would settle for free exposure.
Sounds good to me.

I see your points, particularly agreeing with Esposito, but since neither HuffPo nor AOL means anything to me, I'll just wish those writer who feel slighted and walk the very best for the future.

What really strikes me is talk of how AOL is looking forward to monetizing this new audience by serving up ads. Yawn. Wake me when someone does something innovative in the digital revenue space.

The build-an-audience/monetize-via-affiliate/advertising model is trite, corporate shilling. It's a race to the bottom designed to suck money from the people.

Truly innovative business partners with sponsors to provide value to society. We accept no advertisers on Gearbox. We don't want them. We want partners who will help us help our audience.

We will help you grow your business if you help us grow ours, which requires taking an active role in improving the lives of our customers. Don't have the time to help our community? We don't have the time to tell them about you.

True success requires making everyone involved successful. :)

Hi Danny,

I've been surprised by the backlash, and a lot of it strikes me as very naive. As though The Huffington Post was a liberal outlet owned by the people and somehow Ariana Huffington has sold them out. And that's just the avid fans.

As to the contributors: as you so correctly pointed out, they got "the potential of grabbing a section of 26 million visitors" and potential media exposure as well. (And I didn't hear them complaining last month.) That's what we business people call a business decision.

We all make them. I chose where I contribute based on the value to me and my business as well -- which one hopes creates a win-win scenario for both parties as well.

What the people who are complaining today fail to grasp is that it is not their individual contributions that created the site's value--it was Huffington's vision, business savvy, and hard work that earned that $315 million pay off.