What would be some good perfomance incentives for writers?

[bernard]

I see performance incentives as both a cost cutting option and a quality control option.

I know some people with very successful, multinational websites who use a combination of performance incentives to get their writers to take ownership of their content.

It's usually something like a fixed extra payment when the content "ranks", but as an affiliate I would probably add a cash bonus once a content batch had earned its own keep. Maybe like adding $100 for a batch of $1000 articles.

Or adding a content promotion bonus, so that they get a $20 extra or something if they promote it on their own SoMe and get a certain number of visitors from it.

Have you seen any success using incentives?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Or adding a content promotion bonus, so that they get a $20 extra or something if they promote it on their own SoMe and get a certain number of visitors from it.

There are sites out there that invite anyone to write for them. TheRichest.com is one of them. You write for free and then get paid based on the article's performance. They don't accept everything and if I recall they assign you articles too. This gets the writers to do a little promotion to seed the articles with traffic, and I can't recall if the site promotes articles to the front page if they seem to be gaining traction or what. It's a big "get us links and traffic" racket, because you only get paid for early traffic and not "once it ranks on Google" traffic.

Anyways, having writers put their face and name to their content in the author's box and giving them an author page can kind of force them not to pump out garbage lest it gets associated with them. But this gives them something for their resume and portfolio too.

In the same vein, after X amount of articles and X amount of time, if they perform well, you could offer them a title within your company that they could put on a resume. I'm spitballing here.

Of course, performance bonuses and all that is what really matters at the end of the day. Money talks, everything else walks unless the person is young, maybe a bit naive, and is "investing in themselves" by building the resume.

I agree though. Good pay, stringent quality control, and bonuses is the best thing to keep them on. Unless they know SEO or you already have a boatload of traffic to your social media channels and to your site, basing it off traffic isn't really something they can influence a whole lot, unless they themselves can promote it well. And I'd rather have them focused on writing.