Why would writer give SeekingAlpha their content exclusively?

Reuters blogger Felix Salmon, whose content also appears on SeekingAlpha.com, doesn’t understand why anyone would give the site their content exclusively under its new pay plan.

Salmon writes, “This is reminiscent of the evil goings-on at Forbes. I can easily imagine that Forbes magazine, or Forbes.com, or any number of other media outlets, might be interested in republishing the most popular content on Seeking Alpha. But up until now, Seeking Alpha hasn’t had the right to sell or license their content. With this new program, they can do just that, and keep all of the proceeds for themselves.

“I don’t have access to Seeking Alpha’s internal metrics, but my guess is that on average they’re ultimately going to be paying roughly $10 per article for this premium content — that’s on a par with what content farms like Demand Media pay, but Seeking Alpha’s material, of course, is much higher quality.

“I’m very suspicious, then, of what Seeking Alpha is doing here, and whether it’s really being transparent and honest. Jackson told Joseph Tartakoff that an average entry on Seeking Alpha gets between 3,000 and 4,000 page views, but I simply can’t believe that’s true:  Seeking Alpha published about 600 of my articles between February and December of 2010, which generated about 500,000 pageviews in total. That averages out to less than 1,000 pageviews per article, despite the fact that I have over 50,000 Seeking Alpha users following me. (It’ll be fascinating to see whether they publish this one, and if so how many pageviews it ends up getting.)”

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