I will try to make this as brief as possible. I have an opportunity to write regular articles for a website,and I am trying to determine how much the traffic I bring to said site is worth...if anything.Im sure the site has a way to figure this out pretty easily,but is there any way to estimate this on my own to maximize my compensation? I am very new to internet marketing and employment and would like any help possible..thanks. If you have any questions I will provide as much detail as possible.
You can charge per view. For example if 1000 people view your written article,you can charge a certain amount.
I think its possible with the help of site analytics. You will need to enter the analytic code at the end of your article which is not displayed to the visitors. And then monitor the activity in the control panel. You will get complete data like visitors, traffic, country, average time etc... Try to get a free one like www.statcounter.com
I believe one should not take the charge on the basis of what other is benefited from our service, that is his calculation, style, risk part, his luck, and many things. We should determine our charges by our efforts, services and quality, that is what I do in my business.
100% agree, I think that is the basis of article writing, charging for our skills and competencies. The website owner is the one who is taking risks here, risking their own money for non-guaranteed returns, the article writer is usually sure of their own income from each project. Whilst I would never criticize anyone for looking to maximize their own income it would seem unlikely that any website owner would pay you what you are earning them. Consider a number of factors 1.The owner needs to make a profit to pay themselves 2.The owner is risking their own money 3.Other 'players' need to be paid, e.g. Designers etc 4.Other bills, e.g. Hosting 5.Non-profiting sections of the website need to be covered by earning enough on profit making sections 6.The odds are that the owner also has other websites – not all will be making money. The business model over all requires the profit making websites to bring in enough value to cover the nonprofit making sites So be careful when you approach the owner with any facts. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, you need to make sure that you consider the bigger picture first.
Wow thank you for the responses guys I appreciate it. I am still in the infancy stages of this process,and your feedback was great.That statcounter website looks like it might be the way to go....never knew they had anything like that. I am actually now reconsidering this opportunity because I am starting to get the impression there will be very little money involved.....as in NONE. I really dont have that long of a resume as far as freelance writing and the owner wants to make me "prove myself" I think before we talk about compensation.I want to get my foot in the door with this site,but even at this stage of my career I think my time is worth at least something.These articles take anywhere from 4-6 hours to write and research,probably at about 2-3 a week that adds up. As far as how many views the articles will get that will be anyones guess,but I just want to protect myself before I committ to anything definite.If he does come to me and say hey its gonna be pro-bono for now is that acceptable or standard for this type of situation? Also is that Alexa site the only place that monitors overall traffic? I just went there and searched the site I am referring to and it didnt even come up in the top100k.I was just trying to get an idea of overall traffic to give you guys some more reference.The site I am referring to has only been around since about 2005 and is in a fairly niche market,but is definitely trending up from what I have seen just being a regular on the site.Actually I just found the numbers and here they are... Reach for Percent of global Internet users who visit this site Yesterday N/A* Avg. 1 wk .0.00012% Avg. 3 mos.0.000073% Change UP 50% Traffic Rank for Alexa traffic rank based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach) Yesterday N/A* 1 wk. 804,494 Avg. 3 mos. 1,188,054 Change UP 276,039 Page Views per user for The number of unique pages viewed per user per day for this site Yesterday N/A* 1 wk. Avg. 2.5 3 mos. Avg. 1.9 3 mos. Change DOWN 20% Users come from these countries: United States46.5% Ireland27.4% Other countries25.5% United States46.5% Ireland27.4% Other countries25.5% Less... Rank in other countries: Ireland19,432 United States537,461
ah you mean you aren't being paid? thats different. if you are looking to make money as a writer then you should not accept these sort of gigs (sweeping generalisation I know, but true most of the time). You can build clips easily enough without needing to rely on nonpaying gigs
Yeah thats the way its looking right now.I think I am going to cut that 2-3 times per week to 1 unless something changes.The thing is I absolutely LOVE writing about this subject,and will do almost anything to get my foot in the door on the hopes it turns into something bigger(and more lucrative obv) As far as the bolded part.....what would you recommend as far as "building clips"-I honestly dont really know what you mean by that...sorry I am a newbie to this stuff. Thanks again.
By clips really we're just talking about a collection of examples of your work. You should be able to do this easily enough either by creating your own site (which you may as well do rather than write for free as hosting costs peanuts and you can use it to earn money via adsense/affiliates etc) or by submitting articles to the likes of associated content, ezines etc. You then use these examples of your work to help sell your work to others. The 'exposure' gained for writing for free is rarely worth it, unless you are writing for a very well respected website - in which case they would probably be paying anyway
Just signed up for ezine and associated content,as well as another site which is basically the same thing but more specific in what subject they publish.Thanks for the info! I figure if I am going to be doing this without compensation,I might as well post all the articles on these sites and maybe they get picked up by someone.Its not like the site I am wirting for has a contract with me or anything,so they cant object to me posting them elsewhere. I figure the odds of any serious publications picking up the articles is probably slim and none,but the exposure cant hurt and the more people that see the work the better. Nick I can thank you enough.
to be honest you probably wont really be picked up by anything major there... what it does give you is a variety of articles you can link to when advertising your skills to other domain owners who WILL pay you. try starting a thread in teh content creation forum here on DP offering your paid services (you need 25 posts first) - webmasters are ALWAYS hungry for content