Assessing SeekingAlpha.com's new pay strategy

Justin Ellis of the Nieman Journalism Lab writes about financial news site SeekingAlpha.com’s decision to begin paying its contributors.

Ellis writes, “When I spoke with Seeking Alpha’s CEO, David Jackson, last week, he told me that the site’s contributors were a mix of novice writers with backgrounds in the financial industries as well as established bloggers and newsletter writers. (Seeking Alpha has close to 4,000 contributors all told, including both individuals and other media properties like TechCrunch and Globe Investor, the investment site from Canada’s Globe and Mail.)

“Before the partnership program, the payoff for writers was publicity for the work they published elsewhere. ‘We publish the article; we get traffic and drive leads to your business,’ Jackson said in a phone conversation.

“While that’s still the case, the money will sweeten the deal for the writers. ‘If they specialize in a particular sector, they become the authority on it and get lots of readership,’ Jackson said. And that, in turn, will ‘make real money.’

“Though he didn’t go into specifics, Jackson noted that writers have the potential to pull in a bigger take from pageviews than the site does from advertisers. Jackson told me they ‘view how much money [contributors] make as a sign of our success. If they do really well, it means we’re successful.'”

Read more here.