Crowdsourcing, Free Labor and Giving It All Away

November 3, 4:58 PMChicago Advertising & Marketing ExaminerJoe Orlandino

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Slave Labor
theblogguy.com/

Recently I congratulated a colleague on his successful on -line magazine. I did this in a semi-public forum and some of the resulting comments were less than complimentary.
You see, he pays his bloggers (ahem...writers) along the lines of other, similar publications....Pennies Per/M. Most pay nothing.

In fact the Huffington Post's business model requires you, the blogger to pay them, This reminds me of my early 80's music business days in L.A. The market was flooded with 'talent", my self included (there I use that term loosely). So crowded was the music scene that a band or performer actually had to rent the room to get an opportunity to play a venue. A similar dynamic exists today in the independent film business. There it's called four-walling. The supply far outweighs the demand.

Yet real talent will always find a revenue stream to support itself.

I am married to a freelance writer. She's been a freelancer for over 20 years and during the salad days of publishing she suffered the slings and arrows of being called a stringer.
The implication was that if you weren't 'on staff' at a publication you were less than worthy. But throughout those two decades and by prescient choice, she learned how to navigate the world of freelance writing, pitch ideas, develop contacts and land book deals and regular assignments national print publications. I now find it interesting that now her downsized, right-sized, ex-staffer writer contacts are now calling her and asking "how can I freelance?".

So, ride it out you talented folks, whatever your area of creativity is. True talent and commitment will rise to the top. And people will always be willing to pay for it. Remember, bloggers are not imbedded with our troops, nor rarely can they get real interview s. They rarely attend Cannes or Venice and often times report second hand about art openings. There is definitely room for the sound bites, tweets and encapsulated snippets bloggers provide. But the creatives with the boots-on-the-ground willingness and mentality will continue to do the heavy lifting now and in the foreseeable future.

The question boils down to that haunting one for all creatives....do you really have what it takes to ride this out?