

Mahalo.com screws all their writers - melvinram
http://www.searchengineoptimisation.org/mahalo-com-screw-all-their-writers/

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augustflanagan
After a particularly frustrating day I reminded myself that at least I don't
work at Mahalo.

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mcknz
I'll pretend to be surprised here. _GASP_

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redorb
I think the fairest solution and surprisingly the one not used here would be
to "Grandfather" the revenue sharing pages in ~ but not allow any more pages
to be built on that model.

I am sure that it was thought of and discussed internally and then they went
with the "I bet we can take it a little farther and never pay recurring feeds
again.." which will save the company a lot of money per month..

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slouch
meanwhile, on twitter...

"@Skitzzo here is the truth... <http://jc.is/cyTdfu>

jason links back to his announcement on mahalo of the new system that now has
50+ comments. the truth is certainly in there.

"The terms of service of Mahalo always had people wondering if something like
this could happen. I actually encouraged other people to join Mahalo and
defended Mahalo on other writing sites like Absolute Write. I just hope those
people will forgive me."

"The entire guide system is based on the premise of writers being so desperate
that they'd be willing to sell their time for a few dollars an hour with no
rev share to provide long-term quasi-passive income."

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interlock
This company is dooming it self a little more every day. Bravo to them! Time
to make a competing product and fill the void they're about to leave.

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suitcase
Not necessary, there are already tons of other linkfarms and spammers that can
"fill the void"

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jasonmcalacanis
This is all 100% false.

We did change our model from revenue sharing to paying writers, but we did not
steal any money or not pay anyone. Also, we publish under Creative Commons, so
folks are welcome to do whatever they like with the content provide they shoot
us a link back.

This is just false, and in fact probably libelous, stuff.

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dillydally
There is no reason to down vote this comment. I know the HN collective
dislikes Jason, but there is nothing wrong with it.

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shareme
a word..

HuffingtonPost TechCrunch Gawker Mahalo

what do these have in common?

They all change writers contracts whenever the business favor winds blow in a
different direction..ie whether we like it or not Jason is using a standard
industry practice.

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melvinram
From what I understand, the difference is that JC specifically promised
revenue sharing.

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jasonmcalacanis
We did not promise revenue sharing forever. We said we were going to _try_
revenue sharing and we, of course, reserve the right to change our model.

We tried hard to make revenue sharing work, and it only worked for 5% of the
audience. So, instead of pretending that freelance writers wanted something
they told us they didn't, we pivoted and we're moving to a more About.com-like
flatrate with a bonus system.

Now we have a line of folks out the door who want to work for us.

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greyfade
I'd never even heard of Mahalo until now.

Why am I supposed to care...?

~~~
Thanks
If you dont care, why read/comment?

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lambda
Why do we get articles about how much Mahalo.com sucks every day here at
Hacker News? Why don't we just ignore them? I'm serious, I don't care about
Mahalo, I barely even know what it is. Why do people keep posting stories
about it? Is it just some weird kind of reverse-psychology marketing or
something?

~~~
hackernews
I think for the most part Mahalo represents the growing problem with Google
and aggravating anyone doing SEO work.

To many searches on Google turn up a first page full of optimized pages
focusing on advertising rather than the content. Sites like Mahalo make it
very difficult for the little guy to optimize and get value from Google. Kinda
like trying to get anything on the Digg home page.

