[sparkzilla]

I checked Mechanical Turk as an example of how to not to price for Newslines, my crowdsourced content site. It seems that most publishers use crowdsourcing as a way to save money, and while that may work for some tasks, you will not get consistent work done.

Rather than crowdsourcing being a way to find cheap writers, content business should see crowdsourcing as a way to find a diverse pool of writers who have different interests or knowledge, who can dip in and out of work, and then pay them fair money for their time.

I pay $1 per post for writers to write 50-100 word posts that follow a very specific format. We provide feedback to the writer to try to make them make money faster. The way I figure it is, if the writer makes money then I can make money. If they stick with you, you don't have to train new people. People won't leave after half a day.

We have already paid out thousands of dollars and our site is growing fast. Writer satisfaction is high. We currently have a waiting list of hundreds of writers wanting to sign up.

http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/

[e12e]

Initially I found $1/[edit: item] strangely low as an example of "high pay". Having a look at what newslines is actually about, I still think it is low, but not as low as I intially thought (I'd assumed you wanted contribution from domain experts, who'd I guess you'd price at at least 100/hour).

I'd assume anyone that can write well, should be able to make at the very minimum 30/hour writing -- That leaves on average 2 minutes/newsline. I suppose the lesson is that there are many skilled poor people out there.

(Note, this isn't meant as negative criticism, just some observations)

[sparkzilla]

Thank you for your observations, I appreciate the tone. In our case the writers are working to a formula, which for most people is a lot easier than creative writing. So far most of our writers are actually work-at-home moms who are happy to make around $10 an hour, for a task they see as being quite enjoyable - writing news summaries about their favorite celebrities, while sitting at home. They can finish a task in a few minutes, depending on the topic, and bank $10-$20 a day extra cash (or more) fairly easily. Then they can come back the next day for more. On our side we get a 24hr/day pool of talent that wants to keep adding content, without the need for office space and other HR issues.

[cm2012]

You are dead wrong if you think any skilled writer can make $30 per hour. Only copywriters and technical writers can do that, and those are not easy jobs to get. Journalism, as an example, is one of the lowest paying professions. Writing jobs on Craigslist are almost always unpaid internships.

[e12e]

I suppose I'm rather out of touch with the not-cs hourly wages in the US. According to:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/04/26/is-journal...

Journalists earn (for ~2000 hours/year) between 15 and 28 (without a graduate degree), while lower level CS started at around 25/hour. So I was clearly wrong, but it would also appear journalism isn't especially low paying either?

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/202644/gov-stat...

Seem to mostly agree.