Rather than write it all again, I’m going to use my coverage for WPN liberally:

It looks like the average rate on a per-post basis is $25, though some reported to make as little as $10 and as much as $80. “Let’s say these people are half-time pro-bloggers making $25 per post, writing 3 posts per day,” Kirkpatrick [of RRW] says. “That’s $75 per half-day, a little less than $20 per hour, about $1500 to $1750 per month for half time work. Take two of those jobs at once, do it for a year, and you’ll make about $40k.”

You could do worse, but in-house bloggers seem to be doing better. According to Kirkpatrick, respondents reported annual salaries ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. “We’re tempted to say, based on the anonymously submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were,” he says. Now that’s interesting. Critics of blogs as news sources (like the one discussed in this article) ought to love that little nugget.

Those in-house bloggers still didn’t make as much as the participating social media consultants who make as little as $150 an hour, and most commonly about $300 an hour. That’s fascinating considering the amount of sponsored content infiltrating social networks. I have to wonder how the pay rates of these consultants reflect their practices in terms of white hat/black hat.

These numbers (while it should be kept in mind that there were only 20 anonymous participants) might make you jealous or provide you with motivation to reach that point (unless you’re already in the same range or are doing better). What do you think?

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How Much Bloggers Are Making

- How To Build A Community On Your Blog

- Rules For Accepting Guest Posts

- BlogWorld Expo: Doing Business With Advertisers (Video)

- Self Branding: Comments That Leave More Than Just An Opinion

- The Dinosaur and the Journalist

- How do I import my blog entries or RSS feed into Facebook?

Enjoy.

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Thursday Links: 10/09/08

I talked to Wu a second time and came away with some more insight into his deal, which I wrote about in yet another follow-up piece at WebProNews.

Since we’re all about blogging here, I didn’t want this nugget to float by off the radar, so you can read that here.

From the little I’ve communicated with Wu, he seems like a pretty cool guy with some personality. He likes BBQ and making his own beer (not to mention Subway at drinking on the weekends [I wonder if he's checked out Google's latest Google Labs project - the drunken email filter aka: Mail Goggles]).

Anyhow, Wu said taht user engagement was a huge part of why his blog was bought by Bankrate.

He also noted in a comment on WPN that Shoemoney is the reason he got into web publishing. Not a bad endorsement for Shoemoney huh?

It just goes to show that you can learn a lot from other bloggers, and translate that knowledge into a ridiculous amount of money for yourself.

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Enough with the Wu? I Don’t Think So.

In other words, if you never get any comments, then something’s not right. This could be for a variety of reasons however.

1. Your Content.

The most obvious reason for lack of user engagement is having bad content. If your content is boring, poorly written (to the extent that it becomes unreadable), or just simply brings nothing new to the table, people are just not going to be very interested in reading it, let alone commenting on it.

2. Visibility

It could also just as easily be that readers can’t find you. If they don’t know you exist, they  can’t very well comment on your artilces either, this is where marketing comes into play (obviously).

3. No Encouragement

Sometimes people need a litle encouragement to actually participate in the conversation. There’s no reason why you can’t come right out and say something like “please let me know what you think in the comments”, or to a more subtle extent, something like, “what do you think?” Let readers know that you really are interested in what they have to say, and this can spark quality discussions, that can often even turn out to be more useful to readers than the original post itself. That is the beauty of a blog as a source of information, you don’t have to rely on one perspective.

Advertisers will salivate at a blog that gets a lot of comments, because not only is that a sign of the blog’s popularity, but is also a strong indication of a like-minded readership (even if opinions vary, the base interests are probably still there), which can make ad targeting easier.

There is no question that user engagement is paramount to the success of most blogs.

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User Engagement’s Role in Success

I conducted a little Q&A with him and posted it at WebProNews.

I’ve contacted him again, and should be writing a follow up article for WPN, which will look a little closer at how Wu achieved his success.

Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, we’ve posted some more great video interviews with bloggers (like Darren Rowse and Jeremy Schoemaker to name a couple) on the WebProNews Video Blog. You’ll definitely want to watch those.

Update: Posted the article. Didn’t get a response from Rowse or another one from Wu yet, but it still looks at how authority and user engagement can be use to achieve success. I may still follow up yet again if I hear back from the others.

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The $15 Million Blog

After posting an article about CareerBuilder gaming Twitter at WebProNews, and talking about how social media legitimacy was deteriorating as a result of social sites not better policing their sites, I got into something of a debate with one of the commenters, who claims that there never has been or ever will be any legitimacy to social media as a news source. Obviously, that is a notion I disagree with.

Of course , seemingly right on cue, someone upset the “Apple” cart today on iReport.com falsely reporting Steve Jobs having a heart attack that temporarily sent Apple’s stock plummeting. I also talked about this at WebProNews.

That story would seem to favor the point of the guy I was debating with, but the community factor is what led to it being disproved, which kind of illustrates my own point.  To quote myself,

Where the legitimacy shines through is in the communities themselves. There are always others to call something out as BS in new media formats where discussion is the key to coming away with useful information.

When all is said and done, it is up to readers to use their heads and think about where they are getting their info. Just as has always been the case, (even long before social media, blogs, and citizen journalism were ever heard of) you shouldn’t believe everything you read. But damning an entire medium because some abuse it is just ridiculous.

Your thoughts?

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Don’t Damn the Medium, Damn the Abusers

Here are some notable ones for today:

From 0 to 2000+ Subscribers in 90 Days - This is a post from early in the year at ProBlogger, so some of you may have read it before, but speaking of using good titles, it’s hard to beat this one when you’re addressing an audience of people wanting to increase their blog traffic.

Too - Google Co-founder Sergey Brin started a personal blog a couple weeks ago called Too, which I talked about here. He’s only made one significant post so far, but it’s a blog worth watching, based on the fact that he is one of the brains behind one of the most important technology companies in the world.

Anatomy of a Social Networking Friendly Blog (video) - Again, the title pretty much says it all, but it’s an interesting and increasingly important concept.

Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda Talks with WebProNews - This is an interview from the BlogWorld Expo. While I’m definitely not a fan of Linkin Park’s music, Shinoda’s take on blogging is somewhat interesting, if only to get the perspective of a celebrity.

Top 5 corporate blogging mistakes and how to avoid them - Lists are always interesting, and there is not question that corporate blogs are always making mistakes. This is an interesting look at the issue from David Meerman Scott.

Enjoy!

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Thursday Links for October 2nd, 2008

Not only has the social bookmarking site (or “personalized recommendation engine” as they call it) announced a new partnership program that will see sites implement internal stumblability, but they are rolling out a new design that will no longer require users to install the toolbar into their browsers.

What does this mean besides added convenience for users?

It means that many more people are likely to start using it, and that means a whole lot more content. It also means a whole lot more potential fuel for bloggers (as I mentioned, it’s one of my favorite tools for overcoming writer’s block).

I think both of these announcements are going to turn into something really big for StumbleUpon, and they are announcements that are long overdue (particularly the non-toolbar one).

For more about it, I wrote a piece on it for WebProNews this morning.

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Why StumbleUpon Usage is About to Skyrocket

The title really is an important aspect to a blog post, particularly for your readers who use RSS Feeds. It is one thing if readers just visit your blog on a regular basis to see what you have to say, but for readers who digest your content through feed readers, your post might just be a headline to them, similar to the subject line of an email. In fact, I’ve written about this at SmallBusinessNewz in the past.

If you don’t hook readers in with a title that grabs their attention, there’s a good chance your post will just get lost in the shuffle. I know I personally have so many feeds syndicated through my reader that I couldn’t possibly read them all on a daily basis, but I read the ones that stand out to me, and others will do the same.

Some good titles ask questions that readers hope to find the answers to in the post, use hot keywords that are sure to attract attention, use humor, or inspire curiosity in other ways. In fact, I think “curiosity” is truly the key to getting your content read, so if you can capture that, you should be golden.

PuttingBlogsFirst has a detailed and thought-provoking post about writing good headlines here.

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The Key to Getting Your Content Read

Of course, there is always the option to not say anything, and it is definitely better to skip posting if you don’t feel like there is any value to what you would say. Another option, though, is to look for something to write about. Luckily with so many tools on the Internet at our disposal, there are a ton of ways to find topics to write about, even ones that are relevant to the niche you are known for. You just need to know where to find those ideas.

My favorite tools for finding topics to write about are:

1. StumbleUpon - I really can’t stress enough how useful I find StumbleUpon to be as a blogger, particularly its search feature. Frankly, I was a little surprised to see that eBay’s trying to get rid of it already. When you stumble through pages for any given keyword or phrase, you know you are going to get good results, because the way StumbleUpon works will allow you to see other pages that others have already given a “thumbs up” to.  So when I search for “blogging” for example, I know I’ll get all kinds of quality articles and other things related to blogging. I can then look at those and be inspired to add my own take on any subject that I might “stumble upon” related to blogging.

2. Google News - Often times, I will also use Google News for this purpose, but in this case, you’re only searching through relatively new items, and can find some news articles on issues relevant to you niche. Again, you can use these articles as inspiration to get your own thoughts rolling on said issues.

3. Google Reader - With Google Reader (or other feed readers…Google just happens to be the one I use), you can not only scroll through posts from all of your favorite blogs, but again, use the search tool to see what people on those blogs might be saying about any given subject that you wish to tackle or your niche in general. The reader (Google at least) will sort search results by date, so you can be sure you have the most current posts possible.

4. Audience Participation - When all else fails, you can always ask your readers if there are things they would like you to write about. That’s good for one post itself. Or you can do something like I did (or am currently in the process of doing technically) with the “Blogs on…” series, where I have specifically asked for audience participation.

5. Human Beings - Sometimes just speaking with other people in person will spark an idea for something to write about. Particularly if you work with people within your niche regularly. A live conversation you have with somebody can easily be translated into words on a blog.

There are definitely more tools available to you to help with writer’s block. What are some that you use?

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My Top 5 Tools for Curing Writers Block