The Temptation of Blogging for a Fee

Jason Calcanis caused quite the stir recently when he offered to pay some bloggers writing for sites such as Digg and Reddit a $1,000 a month to write for Netscape’s new Digg-like site. Among those solicited was Toronto-based programmer Derek van Vliet (hat tip to Mark Glaser), a highly-ranked Digg contributor (BloodJunkie), who decided to go for it. The idea of blogging for a fee is a new and controversial phenomena because there seems to be this belief it’s an altruistic activity. Truth be told, blogging for a fee is fine as long as there is transparency. As long as everyone knows the rules of the game, play away.