Lisa O’Carroll of The Guardian profiles Forbes chief product officer Lewis Dvorkin, who is pushing the business magazine to try unique revenue strategies on its website.
O’Carroll writes, “It all started in 2010 when Forbes threw its website open to bloggers, academics and experts from all sorts of areas relating to investing and entrepreneurship.
“In total DVorkin now has 1,000 contributors – he hates the word ‘bloggers’ – alongside a core staff team of 100, of whom about 50 are reporters.
“And here’s where the difference starts – not only do contributors self-publish, but they are paid according to the size of the audience they attract. He declines to reveal exact rates, but each contributor gets paid a certain number of cents for every visitor per month. There is a clear incentive for them to get repeat custom, as they get paid 20 times that amount if the same person reads another of their posts during that month.
“The beauty of the arrangement for Forbes is that it encourages contributors to increase their traffic through social media and whatever other self-promotional outlets they have. In 2012 two contributors made more than $100,000, several made $75,000 and 25 made $35,000. One of the most popular individual blogs last week was a piece on the world’s most valuable football teams, starting with Real Madrid.”
Read more here.
