Some of Northcliffe's local people sites are offering contributors cash for 50-word "mini-reviews" or "snippets" about local shops, restaurants and businesses - at a rate of £50 for 35 items.
For example the Hove People site says:
"If you’re clued up on what makes Hove a great place to eat, shop, relax or even exercise, and would like a bit of extra New Year cash, Hove People wants to hear from you.
"We’re offering £50 for 35 snippets about the best independent businesses serving your community. Any business counts as long as it’s not part of a big chain.
"All you need to do is tell us in about 50 words what you like about your favourite independent businesses and why people should use them."
The same offer is made to readers of Lewes People and Tunbridge Wells People which says: "Earn yourself £50 and support Tunbridge Wells businesses"'
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3 comments:
Whichever way you look at it, this doesn't bode well for localpeople.
If they're after genuine reader comments/nominations, they can't be building much of a community if they need to pay people to make them.
Then again, as they're only paying their site moderators £500 a month, that's probably not much of a surprise.
I run http://mytunstall.co.uk not for profit but for the passion of my local area. Maybe that's the difference between homemade hyperlocal and out of the can, on the rails hyperlocal, passion.
With the likes of wordpress.com or drupalgardens.com allowing you to do pretty much the same thing, but without the pressures to produce, I can see this sadly being a losing battle.
Top-down hyperlocal like this just doesn't work, IMO. These kind of tactics don't garner the sort of engagement that grass-roots efforts enjoy. That is what makes those sites successful, not the amount of content - it's the quality, and passion of the content.
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