Who is going to continue writing and creating the content at that rate?
Here is a general guideline of what freelance writers online can earn:
- Article feature writing: $40-$122 per hour, or $.20-30 per word
- Reprint articles: $20-$1,500 per project, or $.10-1.50 per word
- Magazine column: $75-$2,500 per project, or $.37-2.50 per word
- Ghostwriting articles: $30-$200 per hour, or $.60-10 per word
- Arts review: $60-$95 per hour, or $.08-1.20 per word
- Book reviews: $25-$900 per project, or $.15-1.50 per word
- Rewriting: $20-125 per hour, or $50 per page
- Content editing: $25-125 per hour, or $.06-.16 per word
I know from experience from years of writing online now, that the starting point for a new writer is right around .03-.05 cents per word. Which would put a payout of around 50 bucks or so for a 1k word post.
What I'm failing to understand about Steemit right now is do they want this to be just a mass social media website? Do they want it to be a website as a "to go" to website for quality content?
Changes reducing author rewards hurts the majority of the writers, the handful who are always getting upvotes regardless of their post will still go on, just making less. But the majority of writers are not even getting noticed or getting rewarded even close to the rates above.
What incentive does a writer have to power up a measly .56 they just made from a post they spent a full day writing and creating? Or where is the incentive to keep writing with payouts that low?
There are probably writers here that do not write to earn, but I would suggest the majority do.
We agree on the end results, not on how we get there. And I am 100% positive that you get this one wrong. The problem is the money in the Steem system do not grow on trees. For the money to come there should be solid logical financial reason to purchase steem (and power up). There is zero reason to do this right now. more detailed explanation here. Demand for steem from curators will do 2 things - increase the price of Steem (and so the author rewards) and diversify the curation in the hands of thousands of people (as oppose to the current 100 or so whales. Whales qualified to do curation mainly by being at the right time at the write place and or being software developers ...)
And no there is no need for the writers buy steem and power up. Their are what you yourself described them - hired help wanting their $X per word/article for their talent and effort. Actually the current system trying to make them long term 'investors' in the system by paying them half of their pay in steem power is quite ridiculous in itself. (paying them all they earn in SD is a way to effectively double their pay).
So to sum it up - writers will get as much as possible, but that depends on the money coming in the system. The pure desire "They should be paid more" is not gonna increase their pay.
Your comment about paying authors in SBD (or at least liquid STEEM given the new limits being added for SBD stability) and not trying to force them to be investors makes a lot of sense to me. Is there any reason to think, in general, that a writer wants to be an investor? That a writer makes a good curator? I think the answer to both is no. There is probably not a good justification.
If they want to invest - in order to curate or otherwise, this should be their voluntary choice. As it is now, they are forced to become "invested"/investors for 2 years with 50% of their pay/author reward earned in the Steem system.
I would be completely onboard with an author cut down if that change would happen for sure. You both have pretty much said what I personally as a writer am thinking. I don't really want to invest or curate, I enjoy the writing process, but I won't lie and say I do it for pure fun with no profit in mind.
I would be interested in what @dan and @ned would think of giving the authors pure SBD instead of the split. I imagine they want the split for steem stability and longevity forcibly though.
Exactly right. The problem isn't the percentage of rewards going to the author. The problem is terrible curating results largely due to bots and trying to pile on whale trends. Actual writers pretty much avoid this place. We see the mediocre and relatively awful content atop the trending page on a daily basis, but those who keep putting it there don't care...because it's not about quality. For most of the voters, it's only about gaming and getting paid.
Changing the rewards to give more money to bots and gamers won't resolve any issues related to bringing in quality creators and bringing up the value of the site based on the content.
There doesn't seem to be much incentive for good writers to be here and lowering payouts to writers won't improve that. It seems to me that we can have either really good content or really good curation gaming, but not both.