Think of the Guardian Liberty Voice as a trade-off: either you take the time and effort to network and communicate with editors and wait for them to throw you a freelance bone once in a while – or you go with the Guardian Liberty Voice where you will have a guaranteed platform for all of your writing, every day, 24/7, truly building your own business, and actually earning commissions on your impressions for the rest of your life. Who else will pay you for the impressions your articles generate for the rest of your life?
What are earnings for, say, your top 5 earners?
I’m afraid Rebecca’s post was deceptive in that she posed first as a freelance writer in part of her comment, then revealed (with a threat to sue me) that she was in fact a staffer at Guardian.
You don’t seem to refute any of the basics of Danyelle’s comment – that she wrote 15 articles and was paid zero. Unfortunately, many of us freelance writers take a dim view of speculative writing that may or may not pay depending on how many clicks we get, or whether at the end of that lengthy ‘tryout’ we’ll get a green light to continue.
We’d love it here if you could enlighten readers as to average earnings for your 100 writers, and how many articles they have to write to earn that pay
I agree revenue share isn’t a content mill. We’ll give you that. I’d say Danyelle misspoke there, in terms of what we normally view as a mill.
For many writers who try it, we’ve found, revenue share is worse. Content mills do usually offer at least a small, guaranteed per-post fee.
That’d be useful information as well. I’m all about presenting good writing opportunities to my readers, Alex, so feel free to fill us in if there’s a major living to be had on Guardian by the typical writer for you. Also – how many posts per day are they required to write?
Really appreciate the stats on how few people make it through the bootcamp. I think that gives our writers a great sense of whether Guardian is a site they would consider worth their time.
And that “for the rest of your life” part? Give me a break. Most of us have been around long enough to see many startup websites promising residual retirement income disappear, and for pay rules to be arbitrarily changed without notice. Now that Google is actively hunting and killing mass content sites, I’d say most experienced writers’ expectations that sites like yours will survive are lower than ever.
I had welcomed Rebecca to send over a freelance writer who’s earning well to comment and share their earnings and how many posts they write for the money. One person turned up who seemed to post under a fake name (their link to a Guardian post had someone Victoria hookup ads posting else’s name on it, so I’ve removed those). You can see her in fact right up above you here.
I’ve been covering ecommerce as a beat since 1999, and have yet to see a site that pays for impressions become successful…since impressions are not dollars, that’s not a sound business model. Very best of luck with being the first.
I’ve made an exception and left you here even though you called one of my posters a liar, because you indicated you felt wronged. You wanted a platform to respond – here it is.
This website is devoted to helping writers who feel the same way about our work play the game right to find financial and professional success – and change how many people and companies still wrongly devalue good writing.