Get Paid to Spread the News
If you haven't paid much attention to 'social news' sites like Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, etc. it might be time for you to make sure they're on your radar. In a nutshell, they're news aggregartor sites (like Google News), but instead of auto-scraping news stories from other news sites, they let their users do it for them. Users can then vote on which stories they think are the most important, using the 'wisdom of crowds' theory to push the best ones to the top.
The thing is, it only works if there are people submitting enough good stories that their fellow users are likely to be interested in. For the most popular of these social news sites, Digg, it turns out that a lot of the stories that make it to the top are submitted by a relatively small number of people. The numbers vary, but even Kevin Rose, one of the founders of Digg, admits that with nearly a half million registered Digg users, nearly one-third of the stories that are ranked high enough to make it to the homepage are selected by just 100 users.
But the 'Top Diggers' submit those stories for free. So what's this got to do with making money? Well, the head of Netscape.com, Jason Calacanis, recently offered to pay people to submit news stories to the Netscape.com site. In the first round of hiring, he nabbed 3 of the top 12 submitters are Digg, and the #1 submitters at both Reddit and Newsvine. They've just done a second round of another 10 'Navigators', and they're looking for more.
I think this sort of thing could really take off. Not just at social news sites, but at other sites where the bulk of content is created by the users themselves. Sites like YouTube, del.icio.us, and many, many more. Yes, it's cool that these sites are driven by the users, and maybe in some instances the 'power of community' and the 'wisdom of crowds' will be enough to make them work, with nobody getting paid -- except for the owners. According to Businessweek, Digg could ultimately be worth up to $200 million. If that sounds crazy, they say Yahoo! has already offered $40 million, but Rose and the gang didn't take it. But they did pick up del.icio.us for a cool $31 million, and News Corporation snapped up MySpace for $580 million last year.
As Calacanis points out, those sites are worth $0 without the community of users who contribute to them. In many instances, it makes sense to "share the wealth, dude."
So if you're interested in making money online, here's another possible opportunity. According to this article in the Washington Post, it's working for the few 'Navigators' at Netscape.com. And if Calacanis' little experiment takes off, there are lots of other sites that might give it a try as well. So why not check out a couple of these sorts of sites and give them a try? If it turns out to be something you enjoy, you might end up getting paid to do it!
The thing is, it only works if there are people submitting enough good stories that their fellow users are likely to be interested in. For the most popular of these social news sites, Digg, it turns out that a lot of the stories that make it to the top are submitted by a relatively small number of people. The numbers vary, but even Kevin Rose, one of the founders of Digg, admits that with nearly a half million registered Digg users, nearly one-third of the stories that are ranked high enough to make it to the homepage are selected by just 100 users.
But the 'Top Diggers' submit those stories for free. So what's this got to do with making money? Well, the head of Netscape.com, Jason Calacanis, recently offered to pay people to submit news stories to the Netscape.com site. In the first round of hiring, he nabbed 3 of the top 12 submitters are Digg, and the #1 submitters at both Reddit and Newsvine. They've just done a second round of another 10 'Navigators', and they're looking for more.
I think this sort of thing could really take off. Not just at social news sites, but at other sites where the bulk of content is created by the users themselves. Sites like YouTube, del.icio.us, and many, many more. Yes, it's cool that these sites are driven by the users, and maybe in some instances the 'power of community' and the 'wisdom of crowds' will be enough to make them work, with nobody getting paid -- except for the owners. According to Businessweek, Digg could ultimately be worth up to $200 million. If that sounds crazy, they say Yahoo! has already offered $40 million, but Rose and the gang didn't take it. But they did pick up del.icio.us for a cool $31 million, and News Corporation snapped up MySpace for $580 million last year.
As Calacanis points out, those sites are worth $0 without the community of users who contribute to them. In many instances, it makes sense to "share the wealth, dude."
So if you're interested in making money online, here's another possible opportunity. According to this article in the Washington Post, it's working for the few 'Navigators' at Netscape.com. And if Calacanis' little experiment takes off, there are lots of other sites that might give it a try as well. So why not check out a couple of these sorts of sites and give them a try? If it turns out to be something you enjoy, you might end up getting paid to do it!
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