How to Pay Your Blogger

Many years ago at a conference, I gave a talk about blogging and a blogger asked, “How do you get money for blogging?”

“I send out invoices,” I cheerfully explained. At the time, sending out invoices was a fairly new skill for me, and I completely understood that someone might need that information.

That is not what the blogger in question was asking me. She wanted to know how to monetize her blog. I’m not that kind of blogger. I do have a personal blog, and I blog (here) for my own business, but my bread and butter is writing blog posts for other people. I and my colleagues at Haden Interactive get our clients top rankings, editorial links from national publications, and lots of traffic. We’re definitely worth paying for. And that’s what we do: we blog for hire.

But what does it mean to hire a blogger, and how can you pay for blogging?

Hiring a blogger

If you own a website for your practice or company and you want the benefits of blogging, you will probably need to hire a blogger. In many ways, bloggers are among the easiest tech workers to hire. You may not be able to recognize good quality code when you see it and you can’t always tell from talking whether an individual is truly good with hardware or not. Bloggers, however, are writers, and you can see examples of their work online.

If you ever consider hiring a blogger and they don’t have any examples of their work online, you should think twice.

Assuming they have examples, though, you can probably tell by looking whether they can write a blog post or not. 

But hiring a blogger can be challenging because there is a wide range of prices and other details. Here are some ways it can be done, for you to think about:

• Hire by the post You can set a price for each post. We’ve heard of people churning out blog posts for $10 apiece, and we’re pretty sure that those posts are not worth buying.  However, if you set a reasonable rate, paying by the post has the advantage of predictability. You can suit your blog post order to your budget, buy posts to cover your in-house blogger’s vacation, or splurge on posts when you have a particular topic you want to promote.
• Hire by the hour If you already pay people by the hour, this may be the most comfortable option. It is likely to be less predictable than other approaches, though. Some topics require more research than others, and some are faster than others. If you’re not prepared to pay different prices for different posts, this might not be the best choice. 
• Pay by the week or month This is what we usually do at Haden Interactive. We have found that three posts a week gets good results, so we charge by the month for three posts a week. This has the advantage of giving you a completely predictable price, along with the certainty of having plenty of fresh content on a regular basis without having to think about it when you’re busy. We also look after updates and small site changes at no extra charge. 

Professional bloggers typically offer one or more of these options. 

Do you need a blogger? Contact us. We would love to help.