During a recent interview with Podtech's Maryam Scoble, Mary Jo Foley revealed that ZDNet has a payment scheme in place that rewards its bloggers based on the number of clicks their posts get. Foley recently left Ziff Davis to become a free agent. Her primary gig involves writing a well-read blog on Microsoft for ZDNet, which CNET owns. (Microsoft is an Edelman client.)
Foley says she likes the pay-for-performance model because "It rewards people... who do a lot of work to make sure that their blogs are popular, which is what I do." Foley's writing has long been a must-read for keeping up with all things Microsoft.
Whenever one of my clients gets a good hit in the press, I send the link around to every blogger who covers the subject in question. I assume everyone else is doing likewise. Here at Presto Vivace we do things the old fashioned way, one pitch at a time. My competitor at Smoke, Mirrors, & Hatchet is not so squeamish. In a world where journalists are paid on the basis of the page count, Smoke, Mirrors, & Hatchet will hire a string of impecunious freelancers to blog about their clients, and set up a software bot that will repeatedly hit the stories in question from the astroturf blogs. Reporters who cover Smoke, Mirrors, & Hatchet clients will see their page count soar while reporters who cover Presto Vivace will see a modest bump that is coming from actual human beings. You see the problem?
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