Q: What is GO Media?
A: GO Media was the first green blog network and is now the second largest sustainability-focused network online, with 15 independent sites and over a million monthly readers. We have over 100 writers, including a mix of journalists, industry professionals, and politicians including: SF Mayor Gavin Newsom, Portland Mayor Sam Adams, CEO of Coulomb Richard Lowenthal, Head of Vehicle Electrification for GM Frank Weber, and the CEOs of all major solar energy companies.
Our top blogs are syndicated to numerous media outlets, including Popular Mechanics, Huffington Post, NYTimes blogs, The Guardian (UK), and we’re one of a handful of publishers to make it onto Yahoo.com once a month (which can bring us a million readers to a single post). Writing for us can provide substantial exposure, and we’ve had several writers move on to positions at Fast Company and the NYTimes.
GO has a tremendous presence in social media, including a rank of #16th for digg.com front page appearances in 2008, right between CNET and Time.
GO Media provides writers and green experts with a substantially larger distribution platform than would be available to most individuals. Our writers have repeatedly expressed amazement at author-level readership that can span in the millions over the course of a few months. Our stories are frequently posted on the top of major social media networks like Digg and Reddit, the front page of Yahoo.com, or syndicated to other major media outlets.
We also put our writers in touch with a network of over 100 green experts and professionals through our writer community, and offer the chance to learn the tricks of some of our most successful writers, professional bloggers, and social media experts.
Q: Who Owns GO Media?
A: GO Media was acquired in Q4 of 2008 by activism startup Virgance. Virgance represents an entirely new way to do business, functioning as an incubator for positive change. You can read about the acquisition and Virgance in TechCrunch.
Q: What is GO’s Mission?
A: GO is dedicated to “empowering sustainable choices” through good news. Our original goal was to create a news platform capable of competing with mainstream media in reach, topic selection, and quality of content. We wanted to provide an opportunity for geen experts, citizen journalists, or industry leaders to reach the largest possible audience, in a way that positively informs the national discussion of important topics.
Q: How can I get involved?
A: If you’re interested in our mission, we’re always looking for citizen and professional journalists (as well as students), who are passionate about a topic. Some of our contributors write for exposure, and some simply write to promote good news or cover an underreported topic. It’s a mission and a campaign, and we’re always looking for help. Virgance itself is also on the lookout for qualified applicants, interns, volunteers, and partners to further our collective goals.
Q: How much do you pay per post?
A: Many of our contributors are not paid, and simply use the platform for exposure or because they strongly believe in our mission.
GO Media writers are currently paid a combination of fixed post rate and a bonus based on traffic. This structure provides a payment system that is optimized towards different levels of writer engagement, providing greater incentives for increasing levels of commitment.
Writers posting less than four times within a month - which is below our minimum Paid Writer commitment level - will be classified as Guest Contributors and will not be paid. Payment will be resumed in this case as soon as the minimum four posts per month limit is reached. There is an individual per post payment cap of $250.
For some background reading on performance-based pay-scales, see Nick Denton’s justification for nuanced compensation systems.
Q: How many page views might I expect to get?
A: That depends entirely on how much you write, and can also depend on how hard you work to promote your material. A post that is not promoted in some way will usually receieve an average of 2,000 hits, whereas posts that are popular on social media can get anywhere from 3,000-50,000 pageviews (or more) in a 24 hour period. Some additional incentives are provided for this type of promotion. Posts that are properly crafted using the best practices of search engine optimization can receive hundreds or thousands of hits per month on an ongoing basis.
Fact: The standing record for pageviews on a single post is 1,000,000 in 24 hours.
Fact: The standing record for monthly search traffic on a single post is approximately 30,000 pageviews per month. Search terms: “electric cars”.
GO Media has been one of the most successful networks on social media since it’s inception, and we’re well equipped to help anyone who wants to learn.
Q: How do I know how many pageviews I’m getting?
A: One of the most useful tools we’ve developed is our highly-customized WordPress interface, which includes a real-time stats tracking system. The stats tracker keeps tabs on all writer post pageviews and commissions, which not only gives writers a way to see how much they’ve made for the month (updated continuously), but also shows the source of referral traffic. This provides writers with an extremely powerful tool to help promote content more effectively.
Q: How often do I need to post, and on what schedule?
A: In general you are free to post whenever you like, although we do require that you post at least four times a month in order to qualify for payment, and we prefer our paid writers to post at least 2-3 times per week. Posting on a more or less regular schedule can help us to plan our content calendar, although this is not always required.
Q: What is GO’s Business Model?
A: GO is funded entirely by advertising revenue. We run a series of standard of banner advertisements that you can see on every post, along with higher-value “beyond-the-banner” campaigns, and some in-text and contextual advertisements. You can learn more about this at greenoptionsmedia.com.
As a result of this model, GO gone through some growing pains in the effort to meet the financial needs of writers while maintaining a viable business. We think it’s important that our writers understand the limitations of this model (e.g. we have to wait for advertisers to pay us before we can pay you), because this helps you understand where we’re coming from.
Q: How do I get paid?
A: We pay our writers no later than 30-60 days after month end via paypal. We working on moving that up for all writers. It can take up to three months for advertisers to settle their accounts with us.
Q: Who owns the copyright / Can I reuse my posts elsewhere?
A: Any posts you write will remain the property of Green Options, and we shall have exclusive use of your posts for the first 5 days. After that you may re-use your post on your own blog, or even resell it elsewhere. However, in this case we do ask that you add a link back stating that the post was first published at Green Options. We are open to discussing special arrangements concerning this.
Q: How do I get started?
A: As soon as we have reached an informal agreement on your joining the team we will send you a registration link, as well as some supporting information to get you posting with us as quickly as possible. At the same time we will be sending you a contract for signature using our online contract management system
Q: Do I get to choose my own stories?
A: Yes! One of the perks of our blog network is the flexibility to write about whatever topics speak to you! If you typically write about sustainable fabrics and suddenly feel the need to write about electric cars, we’re behind you 100%. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing this.
We’ll sometimes ask for volunteers to write about a particular topic or ask writers from a particular blog to contribute to a one-time weekly theme, but these are more for fun than any kind of editorial requirment.
Q: More Questions?
A: Feel free to email clayton [at] virgance [dot] com with more questions.
