The cost of getting your written content seen by hundreds if not thousands of people can be as little as nothing at all. Websites like the Huffington Post and the Bleacher Report may have popularised the idea of using unpaid contributors to grow your website, but they certainly aren’t the only ones doing it. Now that they are worth millions, these websites are using their substantial revenue to hire star-name writers and build their brand name even more, while at the same time they continue to be extremely profitable because they don’t pay their lesser known contributors.
So why are publications able to get writers to work for free? The answer lies with society’s romanticised notion of what it means to be a writer, and more importantly the current job market, especially for graduates.
Not paying your writer is culturally and legally acceptable in a way that not paying your web designer is not.
Partly this is because many young liberal arts graduates are so eager to become ‘writers’and ‘authors’that they are willing to work for free. Those asking for a wage for their work don’t stand a chance whilst there are others working for nothing. An unpaid internship which offers only the chance to get their work ‘known,’bulk up their portfolio, and add another string to the bow of their CV is enough to get would-be writers through the door.
Companies are tasking their intern (or interns) with creating valuable, original material and getting it published across the web with the hope that it will go viral. Magazines have had sponsored sections since the ‘0s, and soap operas have been around even longer, but the changing landscape of digital media has forced content mareting to adapt to new circumstances. Today’s content marketing is all about viral blog posts, viral videos and free content.
If the intern doesn’t make it, no cost no harm, but if they do, then you have just managed to add value to your company for nothing. If you’ve been at it a little while, then you can even use your more experienced interns to mentor your newer ones. Of course, when interns do make it, they’re looking to move up the ranks to a paid position or at least to a bigger name company - if they can find one. In the current job market though, unpaid interns are easily replaceable.
If writers are so easily replaceable, are they really that valuable?
Those unpaid writers are extremely valuable. Take a look at the Huffington Post, the articles from those unknown and unpaid writers were good enough to get the website millions of views, and when the little fish are biting, the big fish aren’t far behind. Once all those click-happy readers came through the floodgate, AOL was there, ready to make an investment that generated millions of dollars for the owners. BuzzFeed is another high-profile success story. Currently valued at $850 million dollars, and recently securing a $50 million investment from a venture capitalist group, it has proved that written content is extremely valuable given the right platform. BuzzFeed does usually pay its small army of employees, including writers, but it also accepts unpaid community contributions from dedicated users to the tune of a hundred new articles each day, some of which end up being successful.
So why would anyone would ever pay their writers nowadays? If an unpaid intern has really managed to add value to your company, then you may decide that it’s only fair to reimburse them with a portion of that value, or take them on as a paid, senior writer. On the other hand, you may take the Huffington Post approach and decide that the chance to practice a trade and gain exposure is payment in itself. So far the US legal system has decided that this is a perfectly legitimate move to make, ruling that the Huffington Post doesn’t owe its contributors a single cent. Looks like the cultural stereotype of the starving writer isn’t so far from the truth after all.
By Tim Kitchen, Head Ninja at Exposure Ninja online marketing.
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