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Paying for Content: Netscape vs. Stylehive
I seem to be the only person who thought Jason Calcanasis’ recent announcement was brilliant. In case you missed it, Jason announced that Netscape would pay the top 12 social bookmarkers to pick articles at Netscape instead of the sites (e.g. Digg) where they do this for no monetary compensation.
Before I dive into Stylehive’s latest marketing effort, let’s look at the history of paying for things on the Internet.
Way back when I joined GoTo.com in 1999, paid search was considered wrong by most people. I assume the people who are lambasting Jason would have hated (or did hate) GoTo.com back then. Now, paid search is more than accepted. Yahoo’s saw its stock price fall with the delay of Overture’s Panama.
When Jason announced he was paying bloggers to write for Weblogsinc, again there was uproar at how wrong that was. In this case, just as with Netscape, Jason wasn’t changing what people were doing, he was just changing where they were doing it. People write articles. People pick articles. If you can get the best people at these jobs to do exactly the same thing in a different place, nothing is corrupted. (I know, paid search doesn’t fall into this quite as neatly.)
Stylehive pays for picks
Last week, Stylehive started sending out e-mails to bloggers offering to pay $1 for every pick they made at Stylehive. The story was broken by Julie and Phil of Coutorture. They received an e-mail from Stephanie at Stylehive offering:
Here is the deal. We’ll pay you $1 for every original bookmark you add to the Stylehive and you will also need to put our Stylehive badge on a prominent spot on your blog. The bookmarks must be original, that means no ‘quick copies’ and no ‘copy and edit’. At the end of each month we’ll total the number of original bookmarks you’ve added and send you $ via Paypal. The number of bookmarks you add is up to you!
Julie and Phil have great points and I recommend reading their articles. Julie’s has more comments so you might want to read that one first.
How can I be for paying diggers but not pickers?
If people love to pick and are great at picking great articles online, why does it matter where they do it? What’s wrong with getting them to do it somewhere else? Jason set a minimum threshold for a flat payment. Volume above that level won’t be compensated above the $1,000 per month. He runs the risk that someone will pick articles of a lower quality on top of the ones the picker is digging but he can quickly fire the picker. Also, he can get duplicates of what is being dugg, but again he can fire the person. Plus, his terms probably cover the later. Low risk for the high reward he can receive by getting the best talent on the market for a cheap price.
What about Stylehive? Stylehive is requesting a new behavior. There is nothing wrong with that. New behavior can be good. The problem comes from the reward system and paying for this en mass. Does Stylehive want bulk submissions? Well, it appears so.
Stylehive ran a purse contest. There were 4,000 new purses submitted. The winner submitted 709 of those purses. Forget about whether or not 4,000 purses would be useful to Stylehive’s consumers. The real question is whether the contest winner could write something informed and inspiring about 709 purses. Obviously, I didn’t think so. So I went and looked. Here is her review of a Kate Spade purse. This is what is wrong with paying for bulk.
Sylehive CEO Michael Carrier (aka Kingbee) answered Julie and Phil earlier today at Almost Girl. He wrote that this is an exclusive program by invitation only so it appears that if managed, they won’t see the abuse that the myriad applicants being turned away might create. Further he wrote that the real goal was distribution of the Stylehive badge. Julie and Phil sure didn’t read it that way. Did you?
I still score it Calacanis 1 / Stylehive 0.
Is the jury out on PayPerPost? Feel free to comment below if anyone else is in this game.
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