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BlogMutt, the Boulder-based blogging service, announced today that it will compensate its writers with fully vested stock options in the company.
BlogMutt, like 99designs, CrowdFlower and dozens of others, uses “crowdsourcing” to accomplish business tasks. In BlogMutt’s case there are more than 3,000 writers who create blogs for businesses. For the first time in the history of crowdsourcing, BlogMutt is making part of the compensation package for writers actual ownership of the crowdsourcing company.
“Writers are the very core of our business, and we’re so glad we worked out this way of sharing our success with the most productive and best writers in our system,” said Scott Yates, Cofounder and CEO of BlogMutt. “I was a writer for years, and I know writers are crucial in today’s world, but I also know they are always considered expendable at newspapers, agencies, and writing platforms. We’ve changed that whole mindset.”
Many crowdsourced content companies have done well in the past, and continue to grow. For instance HuffingtonPost sold to AOL for $315 million in 2011, but at the time many writers complained that they didn’t share in the successful exit. Those complaints continue to this day.
“Arianna certainly moved the conversation forward in terms of the value of content,” Yates said, adding that he empathized with the writers’ complaints. “They weren’t technically owed anything, but I thought they had a point. Now along with my cofounder, Wade Green, we are the boss and we get to do things differently, and so we are.”
To earn the vested shares, writers must reach Level 8 in the BlogMutt system. To reach that level the writers create posts that are approved by BlogMutt customers. BlogMutt uses a point system that rewards posts that customers like the best.
