How much should content creators get paid?
Let’s take two writers, Alice and Bob. Alice is a very good writer who hits deadlines, does her research, and cares about her clients. Bob is a mediocre writer who goes on vacation unexpectedly, complains loudly about his dog, and suffers from halitosis.
Alice works for peanuts; Bob charges exorbitant rates.
Does this seem fair?
At Media Shower, we believe that your results should drive your rate.
In content marketing, the customers care about results, i.e., whether you’re helping them bring in more customers. So the correct question is: who drives more business, Alice or Bob? That is the writer, we believe, who should get the most opportunity. More importantly, Alice and Bob’s rates should reflect their results.
Pricing by Word vs. Pricing by Results
The most important result you can drive is the conversion. For content writers, this is the click on your Call To Action at the end of the article: “learn more” or “try our demo” or “sign up for our email newsletter.” When a reader clicks this link, it means that everything is working:
- Your content is getting read;
- The reader is engaged to the end of the article;
- You’ve convinced the reader to take the next step.
“But wait!” complains Bob, who just ate an onion sandwich. “That’s not fair. I can’t control that.” It’s true that on any given article, some elements are outside of your control: the customer’s edits, the design of their blog, and so on. But over time, your results accumulate. As you earn more clicks, you earn more value in the marketplace.
Traditionally, writers have based their rates on “cost per word,” but that’s a terrible way to price. From customers’ point of view, the first thing they think is that you’ll be loading up your article with lots of unnecessary words to drive up your rate (which, let’s face it, is often true).
When you price by results, it changes the game completely.
For example, let’s say your 500-word pieces get an average of 5 conversions, but your 1000-word pieces get 15 conversions. That means your 1,000-word pieces are more than twice as valuable to the customer, though they don’t take that much longer to write. It’s better for you, and better for the customer.
How Our Customers See Your Results
Media Shower Studio gives you lots of opportunities to pitch new content pieces, under “Pitch Requests.” If our editors accept your pitch, it is emailed to our customer, along with a mini-profile of your results, like the screenshot here.
Note that your past results are displayed to the customer (imagine your results next to the great Kevin Wesley!). The more results you drive, the better your pitch will look to the customer. We also project the future results your piece is likely to receive, based on your historical performance.
Our vision is to give Media Shower writers far more earning potential than any other content company. For the first time, we’re putting the needs of the customer and the content creator in alignment. We’re all rowing in the same direction.
Imagine being part of a rich network of content creators, with your earning opportunity increasing as you drive customer results. The more you earn per piece, the more time you have to make future pieces even greater. The entire system gets better and better.
That’s where we’re headed. If you have any questions on how our system works, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].
Sir John Hargrave is the author of Mind Hacking: How to Change Your Mind for Good in 21 Days, with a perfect five-star reader rating on Amazon.com.