Should bloggers get paid? To be honest, I had never really thought about it until reading Clay Shirky’s piece “Weblogs and the Mass Amatuerisation of Publishing”. Shirky (2002) mentions that the vast majority of blogs are posted by amateurs and cover basic thoughts and opinions, but there is a minority portion of bloggers that write about real issues and have huge followings. But do they deserve to be paid? If these serious bloggers started charging a ‘pay-per-read’ fee, they would no doubt lose a lot of their readers. Shirky (2002) suggests advertising or asking for donations as a way to earn an income. I think these are both viable options and the only real chance bloggers have of earning any semblance of a pay-cheque. As Shirky (2002) points out, “the people who have profited most from weblogs are the people who've written books about weblogging”. It seems to me that if these serious bloggers want to be taken seriously as writers and get paid for their efforts, they should go through the traditional channels of publishing. And now is the time to do it. In Chris Anderson’s “the Long Tail” (2004), he points out that sites like Amazon.com and its recommendations and user review features makes it easier for lesser known authors and artists to be discovered and embraced by the public. As for weblogs, I agree with Shirky when he finished his piece with “participation in the conversation is its own reward”.
References
Shirky, C. (2002). Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing. [URL: http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html]
Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired, 12.10 [URL: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html]
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The reason why it is mass amatuerisation is that fact that blogs are mainly written by amateur writers with not enough credentials to land a paid writing job. This is a way of expressing opinions and showing people you do have some talent in writing and at times can even be used to acquire a paid writing job.
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