SB Nation Payscale

SB Nation gets advertising revenue and Vox Media received VC, which pay the salaries, via traffic. A ton of that traffic comes from unpaid or lowly paid bloggers pumping out content to inundate search engines and social media platforms. Ergo, pyramid scheme.

Of course any industry will pay those at the bottom less. That's not the issue. The issue is the sheer volume of low-level staff that are employed, and the gaping disparity between them and the full-time staff. The whole structure has a banana republic look to it, where a tiny percent of upper class has a disproportionate amount of the revenue, there's a giant lower class and no real middle class to speak of.

No, I'm not. I never even responded to you.

ETA: I should elaborate: I'm sure for some independent blog to get folded into SB Nation and have tech support is nice. That's a savings of maybe $100/year or so, which is roughly what it costs for hosting and services from a company like Blue Host.

As I mentioned before, a lot of these low-level bloggers use their sites the way a fan would a message board, and for them, it's not big deal if it doesn't pay.

But as for this model not impacting the overall wage landscape, I think that's ridiculous. It's already happening -- look at the number of reputable outlets that cut full-time, waged staff in favor of aggregating the work of unpaid/low-paid blogs. Fox Sports, which has shed numerous jobs from the dot com, and many talented journos, just recently struck a deal to aggregate Fansided content. So yeah, I do think it impacts the entire landscape.

 

Since CNN.com replaced SI.COM with Bleacher Report as the default sports section, B/R has indeed brought on top-notch writers. I'm a freelancer with a contract with B/R. They still have entry-level training programs and some people who are hangers on from the old system of anything goes. But I find writing for B/R rewarding and I make more with them than I would freelancing for "traditional" sports outlets. Pay varies from $60 to $200 a blog post, more for long-form. Posts are 300 to 600 words. It's not a full-time job and I don't depend on it as my only source of income.

Bleacher Report is just another client, a good one. Pays on time without hassle.

 

Frankly I think a lot of people who thought they were talented and adding value were shown to not be doing so. My experience of sports has not suffered one lick from the new landscape. I lost jobs, too. But I got over it and moved on to a place where I can make money with the same skill set of bombast and bullshit: corporate communications!

 

Seeing an awful lot of writers whose work routine involves breaking down video and analyzing strategy into (and possibly through) the wee hours as if they're assistant coaches or video coordinators. To me, they're writing for each other more than they are the fans, even the most avid ones. I've never seen the allure of wanting to get so close that you would grab a job on the other side, but it seems like there's a lot of that out there now. Heck, it used to bug me what slobbering fans the golf writers looked like when they took to the course before or after an event, as if it's just a thin wall of skill between them and the pros. Sensing a lot more of that across the sports spectrum now.

 

Jesus, that's awful. I did a slideshow today that's gotten 55,000 so far. Took me probably four hours over a couple days. So that would net me $55? No thanks. Thank God my place doesn't do that. (Although like everyone else, I never get paid for all the hours I work.)

 

Ha! I could hit 50 in a week or two. Sometimes, a slow week or two.