ScooptWords blog

Olive commission bloggers

BBC Olive Magazine runs a fantastic food feature put together entirely by ScooptWords food bloggers. It's an eclectic tour of the world's food spots with the inside eye that only folk who live there can give. It was great fun putting this all together. Olive are very happy with the results. In their words, "fabulous" A big up to all the food bloggers who stepped up to work on this feature, namely,

 

Clotilde in Paris - Chocolate & Zucchini
Barbara in Auckland - Winos & Foodies
Robyn in Kuala Lumpur - Eating Asia
Mark in Hanoi - Sticky Rice
Ben in Madrid - Notes from Spain
Anne in Stockholm - Anne's Food
Catherine in San Francisco - Food Musings
Nicky in Munich - delicious days

Wanted: European Food Blogger

Are you a food blogger? Based in a European city - but not UK, Madrid, Stockholm or Paris? Want to earn some cash writing for a big name food magazine and you can knock out 350 words to a very tight brief by this Friday, then email me now... NB: This post is brought to you via a lightning strike to Il Forno's Mac. Hope it gets better soon Alberto :) and crossposted at noodlepie.

UPDATE: Thanks to all who have responded. I now have a couple of bloggers lined up and a few more in reserver who have offered to have a crack in the hope they may be called off the subs bench.

Scoopt & MoblogUK

Scoopt joins up with MoblogUK to for the world's first 'community site' to allow members to sell their images. Journalism.co.uk has the full skinny, but appended in brief,

"What we are trying to do here is make an easy way for that to happen, to create an easy route to market for these images," said Kyle Macrae...

..."There are millions of pictures on the web and none of them are available for sale. That is where we are heading with this, it is the first step to get that vast amount of photos to be used commercially."

Alfie Dennen, MoblogUK co-founder, said: "Through our collaboration with Scoopt, MoblogUK is the only photo-sharing community site in the world offering its members a direct route to market.

"By partnering with Scoopt we are opening up a new service for our users, who these days are among those creating the news."

This is very good news for moblogUK members and Scoopt. Alfie is a stand up guy I've had several dealings with over the years and MoblogUK provide an excellent service and a quailty product. You can go discuss this on the MoblogUK forum. And if you're a MoblogUK member and have a newsworthy snap you think we can sell you'll need to stick it here.

Briefest of updates

Still a bit quiet on the blog as I settle into a new country, culture and all. Just a brief update on one of the commissions we got through lately. It's an eight blogger deal. The story will spread over 4 to 6 pages. Full links to each blogger will be included along with prominent individual biographies. Great publicity for the bloggers. A big name magazine and a bit of cash too, which is nice. Go bloggers.

Scoopt in the New York Times

Oh... this citizen journalism thing is only just getting started,

A British Web site that sees itself as a “citizen journalism agency,” connecting camera phone reporters with newspapers. The site’s founder, Kyle McRae, a former freelance technology writer, counts the major British dailies, along with newspapers on the Continent and in the United States, as his clients.

Unlike Bild, Scoopt’s reader-reporters license their photos for three months to Mr. McRae’s organization, and in return receive 50 percent of the sale price every time Scoopt sells a picture.

The Web site has members in 90 countries, and Mr. McRae talks of a day when a global legion of bloggers and camera phone reporters replaces journalists in covering major news events.

“Being the first on the scene is valuable,” he said. “It’s thousands of times more valuable than the quality.” From The New York Times.

Short sabbatical

This blog takes a wee break as I am in the middle of moving house, country and continent. I'll pick up the reins again as soon as I'm newly installed in France. In the meantime, here's a thought from Jeff Jarvis,

The jailing of a Californian blogger raises questions about who qualifies as a journalist - and what protections they deserve. From Comment is free.

Caught plagiarised

Jonathan at Plagiarism Today writes a long feature about ScooptWords. Good stuff and well worth a read. Unfortunately, like many Wordpress blogs of late, and for some reason I can't fathom when I post a comment to the site, it doesn't show up. So I'll post my comment here. I've also emailed it to Jonathan,

Excellent overview Jonathan, cheers. Just a few additions/clarifications.

The oft talked about blog button is already broaching sales, but it is actually a very, very small part of what we're about. It's the most passive sales method we currently have.

In the near future we will package the most commercial posts and present them in an easy to buy fashion. Editors will be able to sign up for a tailored email newsletter and/or RSS feed or visit an aggregated website. Buying content is as simple clicking a payment button in a feed, an email, on a website, or indeed the blog button on the originating blog.

How do we choose the 'most commercial posts'? Well, as you mention, we all have a journalistic background. We're not just some tech start up looking to make cash from bloggers. Some of us have written books, worked as editors or staff writers and freelances, so we have an idea of what sells and where it sells. I still work as a journalist myself. We're not saying we're experts, but we're not that clueless either :)

Also, we strongly believe that an editorial gatekeeper is key to the success of ScooptWords, or any blog based content selling service for that matter. We've had some great feedback from editors on our plans. From editors at publications with a 2 million circulation to wee specialist outfits with print runs in the thousands. Our job is to make the best, relevant, niche content available to these editors in an easily digestible form that's a snap for them to buy. As I mentioned, all of that's coming, just give us some time :)

You're bang on about rates, nothing is fixed in stone. We'll be reassessing every aspect of ScooptWords within 6 months. The blogger/ScooptWords cut is high on the list to chat about.

As for the copyright protection we offer. It's interesting that many bloggers signed up to BlogBurst, seemingly without realising the copyright grab that was going on and for no money. I believe BB have changed this slightly now. This made us very starkly aware that many bloggers didn't seem to have a clue about copyright. I mean I'm a blogger too and I'm very protective of my content - I've dealt head on with spambloggers and gotten results. Funnily enough, BlogBurst approached me to sign up for their service :)

However, there's no way I'm giving my content away, least of all to a company that's making cash out of it and offering zilch in return bar 'exposure'. Unfortunately, agreements like that are absolute nobrainers for newspapers. They get to choose whatever blog content they want and they get it for free and, worse, they plaster that content with advertising. Did you see how Scott Karp's post on SFGate appeared in a BlogBurst feed:

http://publishing2.com/2006/07/19/3-million-bloggers-looking-to-make-money/

Now tell me if that was your content and you saw no financial gain from that how would you feel? Be honest now.

Do it again

ProBlogger Darren Rowse's series 'What I'd do differently if I had to start my blog over again' has come to a close. He got 14 replies from his favourite bloggers. Now he's opening the question up to the oi polloi in a group writing project. If you're interested in taking part, this is the page for you. Here's what he's after,

Write a post on the topic of ‘what I’d do differently if I had to start my blog again’

• Be as creative as you’d like - take it in any direction you want from writing a long list of what you’d do differently to a single short point.
• You can write it in any form you like (last time we had poems, rants, humorous posts etc).
• Consider calling your post something a little different to ‘what I’d do differently if I…..’ as last time we had 80 submissions, most of which had similar titles. Your title is a key to making people come and read your post.
• Ideally it’d be great if you could write it on your actual blog but if it’s completely inappropriate to do so I’ll post them again on ProBlogger on a ‘page’ (not a post) with a link back to your blog.
• Feel free to write your post in your own first language - I’ve previously included a number of non-english posts and am excited by the prospect of making this a multi-lingual project.

Technorati Tags: blogging for beginners, problogging

Viva la 'J' list

The New York Times runs a short feature on journalists, namely Om Malik, Rafat Ali and Nina Munk, who've gone it alone, left the deadwood behind, received varying degrees of funding and made a success of it. The money quote comes from Ali,

“A lot of journalists are going to have to rethink what they are doing if they are going to survive,” said Mr. Ali. “If you stand back and do nothing, what are you going to do with the rest of your life? The newspaper you are working at could go away and then you won’t have a place to work.” via Cyberjournalist.

Gloom and doom in the press is one thing, but look beyond these 'A' listers who are scurrying their way out rather successfully and you'll discover a whole lot more bloggers earning $100 in Adsense here, $1000 there, a commission this month, a BlogAd next month, a new contact today, a regular client tomorrow. These bloggers who find their blog 'leads to something unexpected' far outweigh those like Malik, Ali and Munk who impress with headlines, but who represent the more freakish corner of blogdom.

Technorati Tags: benefits of blogging, blog marketing

The Long Tail speaks

This could be worth tuning into if you're a Skype user. Wired Magazine Editor and Long Tailologist, Chris Anderson, will be taking part in a Typepad Skypecast tonight, today, tomorrow depending on your time zone,

On Monday, July 24 at 1:30 PM PDT, we'll be hosting a moderated SkypeCast discussion with Anderson.  To participate, all you'll need is Skype and this link:  skypecasts.skype.com.  We couldn't be more excited about this event!

ScooptWords members are very much part of the Long Tail; selling niche products to niche markets. If this is the first time you've heard of the theory of the Long Tail, here's Anderson's original article that preceded the blog, that heralded the Wikipedia entry before the book was released this month.

Technorati Tags: long tail, skypecast