Addressing paying by piece, reprints and how to create packages of content for freelancers

Before I kick things off in this week’s newsletter, there are two things I want to mention:

1. Hello Penny: This week, I shared on LinkedIn that I was partnering with Penny Riordan to help support more of our clients in areas like SEO, analytics, reader revenue, tech stacks and philanthropy. Penny, who I have known for a decade, brings such a high-quality expertise to our organization. I’m so thrilled to get to share how she can help our clients in the coming weeks. You can read more here.

2. Niche conference: I’m going to be speaking at the upcoming Niche Leadership Summit in Dallas on the importance of AI policies and the best practices with AI right now. Niche is such a terrific organization and I’m thankful to Ryan Dohrn for putting me on this year’s agenda. More here.

This week’s newsletter is about freelancers and some important things to consider when working with them.

1. Stop paying by word for content

I know that for years, freelancers — especially for magazines — have been paid by word. And there was a good reason for that. 

But times have definitely changed and it’s time to change how you consider compensating freelancers. 

Putting writers into a word count box just doesn’t make sense anymore and rewarding them for length, feels pretty counter intuitive based on how content is consumed.

Google has repeatedly said that word count doesn’t factor into performance, so that definitely shouldn’t be a driver. 

And I like to live by this “job to done” mantra when it comes to content. This means, did you accomplish the job that the reader came to the story for? Yes, sometimes that’s a beautifully written profile or a deep analysis, but more times than not, it’s an answer to a question. So let the freelancer answer that question and accomplish that job. If it’s 300 words, great. If it’s 500 words, great. Pay for the article. That’s it.

But don’t reward by a certain number of words. It’s not what’s best for the article or really your organization.

2. Are reprints really relevant any longer?

Reprints — when a writer creates a story that can be used in numerous publications — have been around for years.

They were a pretty good business model for publications that were seeking general information on a niche topic.

But for lots of reasons, I think this is also outdated but I unfortunately still see people using them.

If you’re a local publication, featuring general and generic content just isn’t why people are coming to you. It’s for local information. They can get those fall gardening tips other places.

Also, the idea of duplicate content on the web, is no good. And there are really no systems in place once these stories are shared, to address that. In addition, AI is going to eat up this kind of content going forward, really de-valuing it.

So if you are spending money on these, I’d re-route that to local freelance that can do those jobs to be done articles and nice profile pieces on local people.

3. Create packages of content for freelancers

Opposed to working with so many individual freelancers, consider how you could provide a package of work to a few select freelancers.

The idea is that you are providing ongoing work to them and maybe consistent revenue they can count on. This is going to help retain the relationship and give you and them something to count on.

I’m seeing some pretty creative uses of this right now, from a combination of articles to Reels to even calendar creation and editing, all packaged into what a single freelancer might provide in a given month.

We have a big network of writers, producers and editors that can help you today

If you have content creation needs, whether branded content, guides, editing or Reels, we have the network that you can tap into at prices that are publisher friendly. Message me at david@davidarkinconsuting.com and I can tell you how we can help.