2.7
May 3, 2015

Write for elephant, Get Paid. (+ April’s Best Writers!)

washington irving and literary friends era

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?” ~ Charles.

Want to write on elephant? Click here.

Write for elephant, change the world, get rich!*

15 years ago, the public paid for media. Media, in turn, paid writers. And advertisers advertised. Now, advertisers spend money on cool videos, the public expects to read for free online, craigslist killed classified revenue, and most websites can’t afford to pay editors or writers because readers don’t pay to read and advertisers don’t advertise and classifieds don’t exist and…

This is serious stuff because it reduces quality original information for you and me.

Journalism is meant to serve as the fourth estate—the watch dog of government, and our corporations. A check on power and a beacon of honesty and transparency on behalf of we, the people.

As a lifelong writer, I believe in paying writers for quality work—and my “paygate”, innovate means of refueling journalism in a new media context—enables passionate elephant subscribers to make it possible. Despite the fact that we make very little off of ads—about 1/50th other sites our size—I voluntarily pay the equivalent of several staff salaries a month to writers who are consistent, quality and popular.

Our system, detailed below, is intended to:

1) establish clear goals for you writers every month and
2) create a cooperative, team-effort system that encourages writers to support one another through commenting, sharing, & sharing tips.

Elephant Journal’s Writer Payment Plan:

Our incentives will reward writers who are

1) popular,
2) consistent
3) and quality

and not just one of the three.

Secondly, we pay team players: there’s direct financial incentive to support one another with advice, likes, tweets, comments and shares.

We measure total elephant readership numbers (we’ve reached 17.7 million sessions/month) through Google Analytics, not individual numbers through WordPress (WP numbers can be fuzzy) to ensure that our incentive payment system rewards both group effort and individual achievement. Writers are directly incentivized to support one another with comments, shares, tweets and likes, shares to reddit, stumbleupon.

Payment: Rule Changes this month following talks with Janne will be better for everyone! Want a guarantee so you can pay your rent? Treat this like a part-time job, not a pastime:

So: starting this month, any elephant writer who applies to Waylon (click here to email me; subject bar must read: “steady writer”) and 1) is accepted based on your writing and mission 2) who wants to blog 12 times every month for a year, minimum, and 3) who will share up said blogs can get a guarantee of $1,200 for that month. If you have the highest viewcount (see below: $2,000) for that month, you can win that $2,000 instead. If you fail to blog at that consistent rate or if you fail to share and network your articles, you’re out—for the year (but you’d still be eligible for incentives below).

Plus, next month, the Ecosystem launches!

…which will enable writers to “tip” articles and authors they like, the money goes into a pool, the pool is disbursed to top writers at the end of the week. Instead of getting paid 10%, as with book publishers, or measly amounts writing for magazines, writers will get paid clear amounts each month. But that’s next month! This month, I’m paying much more than last few months since the last rule change (which was asked for by a writer for good reasons, but didn’t work out well for some writers):

Payment Rules:

>The most popular among you qualify for the most popular writers bonus below:

Most Popular Writers.

Our 15 top writers get paid a bonus (see below). I’ll be able to pay 20 top writers, and up, as elephant makes more money.

To qualify for one of our 15 monthly bonuses, fulfill three criteria:

1) consistency: six quality blogs, or more, published in the month—note: do not wait to send in blogs toward the end of the month as we may not get them up in time and they won’t count. Turnaround is a week, often.

2) quality: not only do you blog consistently, but they are of sufficient quality and merit that we accept them and share them up. If they are quality, your community on your FB, Pinterest, Instagram etc will respond and support with likes, reads, shares.

3) popularity: reaching beyond the choir to all those who don’t yet know they give a care about “the mindful life” is a part of our mission.

I’ll pay the top 15 most popular folks who submit view counts by noon MST on the last day of the month—if you submit your view count even one hour late, no payment. No excuses, no exceptions. I promise.

If our team of writers helps elephant grow as a site,
elephant’s #1 writer for the month garners $2,000!
#2 and #3 writers get $1000, and
#4 and #5 receive $500 each,
#6 and #7 win $250 each,
and #8 – #15 earn $108 each.

If elephant doesn’t grow as a whole (the team player incentive),
Everyone gets the above, except the bottom tier who would have been paid $108 gets a free year-long gift subscription to elephant journal to give away instead.

If you think you may qualify for a payment or bonus this month, you must submit your total WordPress view count (with links to the articles) for that month (as in the past) by noon of the last day of said month. Be on time or early: no exceptions.

PS: no exceptions.

April’s Winners:

alexsandramyles-100100 incentives Alex Sandra Myles: 21 articles; 1,262,228 views for $2,000!

Monika Carless 100x100 thumb incentives Monika Carless: 21 articles; 74,123 views for $500!

Janne Robinson Janne Robinson: 15 articles; 85,817 views for $500!

Sarah Harvey thumbnail incentives pic Sarah Harvey: 15 articles; 95,977 views for $1,000!

Kate-Rose-incentives thumbnail 100x100 Kate Rose: 20 articles; 292,124 views for $1,000!

christine white 100 x100 incentives thumb Christine “Cissy” White: 10 articles; 51,635 views for $250!

Kathryn Muyskens Author pic1 Kathryn Muyskens: 7 articles; 62,167 views for $250!

 

For a grand total of $5500! Plus a bunch of gift subscriptions…and most of all appreciation for all those working together with our hard-working editors and social media-ers to share the mindful life beyond the choir!

Gift Subscription Winners!

Stacy Porter: 5 articles; 7,587 views!
Carmelene Siani: 15 articles; 9,190 views!
Michelle Margaret Fajkus: 6 articles; 13,996!
Tammy Stone: 5 articles; 9,077 views!
Dr. Fahmida Zaman: 6 articles; 26, 334 views!
Damien Bohler: 5 articles; 25,857 views!
Megan Ridge Morris: 5 articles; 3,126 views!!
Peter Schaller: 7 articles; 9,035 views!n!
Brenna Fisher: 6 articles; 26,085 views!
Khara-Jade Warren: 6 articles; 27,041 views!
Daniel Scharpenburg: 6 articles; 17,260 views!
Yoli Ramazzina: 6 articles; 5,513 views!
Hannah Martin: 5 articles; 7,496 views!
Kimberly Lo: 14 articles; 40,185 views!
Toby Israel: 8 articles; 31,213 views!
Hilda Carroll: 6 articles; 29,990 views!
Katie Schellenberg: 16 articles; 25909 views!
Keeley Milne: 10 articles; 51, 293 views!

 

Photo: Cliff/Flickr

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