How old is WiseBread?

[MasterYourCard]

Ah I see.. thanks Xin Lu! So WiseBread itself makes money through ads on the main page or any non author-specific pages. One thing I can't figure out is how they made this business model work before they reached a critical mass of viewers / advertising revenue.

I wonder if they started off paying bloggers a flat fee, and then moved to the AdShare model once they had a decent amount of traffic...

[Linsey Knerl]

I can't speak for anyone pre-summer of 2007 (when I joined), but there were no flat fees as for just starting out. It was an investment of time and energy at first, with lower payout for your first articles and posts -- BUT that being said, the community, professionalism of Will and the team, and the opportunities that writing for Wise Bread has brought about were worth far more than a flat fee paid for articles. Being part of a growing and supportive community like Wise Bread has a value that just can't be capped off at $5-30 per post (or whatever other blogs are paying.) Plus, writing for Wise Bread has the lovely residual factor.. as long as your articles are live and on the site, you're profiting from them!

It is the most unique formula for blogging compensation -- but it works very, very well!

[Julie Rains]

Originally Posted by MasterYourCard

One thing I can't figure out is how they made this business model work before they reached a critical mass of viewers / advertising revenue.

I wonder if they started off paying bloggers a flat fee, and then moved to the AdShare model once they had a decent amount of traffic...

The business model is called FairBlogging (TM) -- more at Killer Aces Media. Some of the blogs I had looked into blogging for want you to share the adsense revenue, whereas FairBlogging means you keep the adsense revenue -- making it on par with any blog you could have started yourself. But KAM also handles the technical aspects of the blog (which is actually more complicated than designing a website b/c of the interactivity, changes in volume when an article gets popular, etc.), sells ads on our behalf, and does some relationship-building work.

I think it is like any other start-up -- the real bonus (aka revenue) should come when everyone works hard and makes the blog a major success.

[MasterYourCard]

What a fascinating business model. I am truly astounded that such a system can not only work, but work spectacularly.

[Xin Lu]

Yup, if we can grow the blog another 10 times I could pay my rent.

[Philip Brewer]

Originally Posted by MasterYourCard

If so, how does the writer know they are not getting shafted?

The biggest single source of money is the Google adwords, and that money comes straight to us from Google. (So, we can look at our pages and make sure that the ads being shown are our ads. After that, if anybody is shafting us, it's Google.)

We also get shares of the money from site-wide ads (banner ads, etc.). That gets divvied up by the admins in proportion to traffic. That calculation isn't being audited, as far as I know.

You're right that, if the model becomes successful, it'd be necessary to come up with a way to do that transparently at some point. (Basically, at the point when writers and admins don't have a personal relationship to serve as the basis for trust.) Presently, I'm not worried about getting cheated. But, as I say, my basis for being casual about it is a relationship of trust with the admins.

[MasterYourCard]

Thanks for the replies Xin and Phillip.

How much does the fact that you get all the advertising revenues, and (to a certain extent) can influence the amount of money you make appeal to you?

For example, would you rather get paid a definite $30 per article, or work on a WB model and risk earning much less?

[Philip Brewer]

I picked Wise Bread primarily because of the subject area--the guys here were writing about exactly the stuff I wanted to write about, so I thought I'd fit in well.

Although I knew my job was going away when I first started, I wasn't sure how busy I was going to be at work, so I was somewhat cautious about committing myself to any particular amount of writing. There again, Wise Bread was great--there's no minimum posting frequency that I need to maintain. (It turns out I was able to be pretty productive, but I wasn't sure about that up front.)

Basically, I'm entirely pleased with the way the sort-of co-op-ish structure has worked for me. Several of my posts have gotten some attention on Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, and those posts have made much more money than I'd have gotten paid if I'd been paid per-post. Many others have earned very little money (although even those earn an occasional penny, which all adds up).

It's partly a matter of when you get your money. Right now, I'm probably about where I'd have been if I'd been paid by-the-post by one of blogs that pays that way. It didn't start out that way, though. For the first couple of months (until I had a good number of posts out there earning money), my income was pretty low. Now I'm making some money (not enough to live on, but a tidy boost to my investment income). And my posts aren't done earning money. I make money every day from my old posts.

Just how long that will continue is a big unknown--changes in the way people read blogs or changes in the on-line advertising market could cut into my income at any time. Still, it's awfully nice to come home from the fitness center and find that my posts earned me a couple of dollars while I was out lifting weights.

[Xin Lu]

Yeah, I also like the fact that the articles continue to earn money months and even years after they are posted. There was a good post that I read somewhere that said a blog article could be worth thousands of dollars if you just let it continue to earn money, which could be true if the article continues to get visits and stay on the web for a significant period of time. Also, there is no pressure to write at Wise Bread as Philip said. I don't think I can handle something that demands six posts a week.