As Jeremy pointed out, the “b5media’s $1.50 per 1,000 pageviews” isn’t actually the right formula. In our recent pay schedule, we do have a sliding scale of payments that actually addressed a lot of your suggestions. So, yeah, we DO think [a lot] about how to compensate our bloggers in the best possible way. :-)

We now have a flat monthly fee that gives enough incentive for new bloggers to come on board and at the same time, rewards those who stay with us.

We now have a traffic bonus scheme.

And, while we don’t pay for a lot of travel (yet?!) for our bloggers, Darren’s taking on the role as the main man for a blogger’s Training and Development.

Schwag bags – we’re definitely working on them, as J said. :-) I’ve just recently joined b5 on a full time capacity to develop our Community and to help deliver a fuller “salary package”. While b5 bloggers are not employees (they’re hired as Independent Contractors), we definitely value them a great big deal and we want to give them as many benefits as we can possibly give them (without letting b5 go bankrupt, as no one will benefit from that scenario – except maybe those who DO want to say and to prove that “blog networks are failures” ;-)).

Yes, what I am driving at is that the total value of being part of a blog network cannot always or simply be measured by the amount of money you pay bloggers on a per post or per hour basis. Otherwise, you’d see network bloggers jump from one network to another, whoever is paying better.

The overall value is sometimes more in tuned with how the bloggers see their efforts, dedication and loyalty are being rewarded even with such trivial stuff like a free baseball cap. So, try a blind and completely anonymous survey and see how they all feel about your compensation package. :)

On a side note, it is good to hear that Darren will be going on in a fulltime basis. His talents should have been tapped a long time ago. Imagine how huge/great b5media would have been had he used his creativity with each and every one of the 170 blogs in your network and duplicate the staggering success he did with his new DPS blog.

It’s their goal to develop an incredibly comprehensive set of benefits and resources that help bloggers get motivated, learn, have fun and stretch their wings beyond blogging :)

Right now, our pay structure is base pay (which increases every review period, which is every 3 months) + traffic bonus (which is currently set at 1.50$CPM, though we’ve said we’d review this in 3 months with a view of increasing it every 3-6 months both across the network and in higher earning areas) + performance bonuses.

I’m not really a big believer in paying people to get onto Digg or large blogs. Mainly because they’ll see that 25-50$ increase just from the traffic bonus we give them.

In addition, we provide our bloggers with free hosting, deep discounts on schwag (we’re playing around with ways to get bloggers free schwag on anniversaries or something as well), we support their personal projects or charity drives, we’re about to give bonuses for bringing on advertisers and a half-dozen other things. We also have a “community budget” of 500-1000$/month which is dedicated to contests, birthday/baby/anniversary presents, magazine subscriptions and the like.

But, I’ll be the first to admit it isn’t perfect. But it’s a good first step. Before we brought in the new pay structure, our average pay to all our bloggers and CE’s was about 25K/month. With the new system, that’s more than doubled.

Sure, it can get better. And it will. But first we need to get revenue up. As b5′s overall revenue grows, so will our payouts to bloggers.

All we’ve ever said about the new pay system is that it’s a good first step.

I’d like to think your post is agreeing with that, Abe, as well as emphasizing that sometimes “soft benefits” are just as important as an extra couple of dollars in pay. If that’s the thrust of your post, I completely and totally agree :-D