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15 years ago, the public paid for media. Media, in turn, paid writers. And advertisers advertised.

Now, advertisers spend money sponsoring cool videos, most of us expect to read for free online, Craigslist killed classified revenue…so 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 important because it reduces quality original information—real journalism—for we the people.

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 writer, trained journalist, and founder of elephant journal, I believe in paying writers for quality work—and my “paygate” (“Reinventing journalism in a new media context,” which I created in 2009, before the nytimes.com model was launched), which allows readers to read free then pay optionally, and which has since become the popular metered all over the US—enables our most elephant readers (subscribers) to pay our best writers and editors to do good work for you.

Despite the fact that we make very little off of ads—about 1/50th other sites our size, because we only want to work with mindful advertisers—I 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 writers every month and
2) create a cooperative, team-effort system that encourages writers to support one another through commenting, sharing and tips.

Elephant Journal’s Writer Payment Plan:

Our incentives reward writers who are

1) popular,
2) consistent
3) and quality

…and not just one of the three.

Secondly, we pay team players: those who support one another with advice, likes, tweets, comments and shares.

We measure total elephant readership numbers (24 million sessions/month) through Google Analytics.

Payment Rules:

Most Popular Writers.

Each month’s top 15 writers get a bonus. I’ll be able to pay the 20 top writers if elephant makes more money.

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

1) Consistency: eight or more quality blogs 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 from receipt of your submission to posting could be as long as a week unless labeled “timely” in the submit form.

2) Quality: not only do you blog consistently, but they are of sufficient quality and merit that our editors accept them and share them up. If they are quality, your social media communities 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. We don’t look down on clicks or views: they represent readers, and communicating with readers is our reason for being.

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. If you ask for an exception and it is granted, you will be booted from the program for the next month.

> If our team of writers helps elephant grow as a site for any given month,
> elephant’s #1 writer for the month wins $2,500
> #2 wins $1,250
> #3 wins $750
> #4 and #5 receive $300 each
> #6 and #7 win $150 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, and the top two tiers get $1,500 instead of $2,500 and $850 instead of $1,250.

July’s Winners:

Alex Sandra Myles: 15 articles; 1,628,310 readers for $2,500 & a bear hug!

Kate Rose: 26 articles; 705,836 readers for $1,250 & a lascivious smooch!

Hilda Carroll: 14 articles; 315,043 views for $750 & a Shambhala bow!
Monika Carless: 18 articles; 229,489 views for $300 & a waltz!

Kimberly Lo: 15 articles; 125,579 views for $300 & a high five!

Carmelene Siani: 17 articles; 28,836 views for $150 & a hot damn!

Stacy Porter: 8 articles; 5,409 views for $150 & formal toast!

~

For a grand total of $5,508 and a big thanks to Waylon, our editors, social media sharers, and most of all our readers. ~ ed.