That said, writing a good blog takes a lot of time, and note that the expected value for any particular blogger will be relatively low. If 100 bloggers apply (which we expect to be a lower bound given the traction), it’s $5k for the work of a part-time job over a year.
I worry that this creates a weird dynamic. Only people who are financially well-off already can afford to invest a lot of time for a small probability to win a lot of money. These are normally not the people who need money the most. And if these people started blogging because of the money, they might not be very motivated to continue once they get this $100,000. At the same time, some talented writer who can’t afford to spend a lot of time on blogging will continue to not be able to do that. Also, I hope that you will give feedback to applicants to prevent someone from putting a lot of time into this hoping that they get the money and then never getting any money. I guess I’m surprised about this $100,000 or nothing granting approach, it doesn’t seem optimal to me.
Just to illustrate, my thought process after reading this post was that maybe I should reduce my hours at work and start a blog. But then I thought that I’m really privileged to be able to do that and that this format further rewards privileged people. And that if I got $100,000, I might take some time off from EA work and blogging which I wouldn’t do otherwise.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding some things. It’s also unclear to me how developed a blog should be before you apply.
for an example of a different model, drew devault, who’s fairly well-known in the free software community, offered $20 to anyone who started a blog, with another $20 if there was an additional 3 posts in the next half year. it seems to have resulted in a number of new blogs, including several that are still active now, 2.5 years later.
I just want to pipe in to say that I think this is a cool example; the structure of “extremely small prize for doing the thing at all” seems like a nice way to build up the funnel of new blogs in a more even-handed way.
I worry that this creates a weird dynamic. Only people who are financially well-off already can afford to invest a lot of time for a small probability to win a lot of money. These are normally not the people who need money the most. And if these people started blogging because of the money, they might not be very motivated to continue once they get this $100,000. At the same time, some talented writer who can’t afford to spend a lot of time on blogging will continue to not be able to do that. Also, I hope that you will give feedback to applicants to prevent someone from putting a lot of time into this hoping that they get the money and then never getting any money. I guess I’m surprised about this $100,000 or nothing granting approach, it doesn’t seem optimal to me.
Just to illustrate, my thought process after reading this post was that maybe I should reduce my hours at work and start a blog. But then I thought that I’m really privileged to be able to do that and that this format further rewards privileged people. And that if I got $100,000, I might take some time off from EA work and blogging which I wouldn’t do otherwise.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding some things. It’s also unclear to me how developed a blog should be before you apply.
for an example of a different model, drew devault, who’s fairly well-known in the free software community, offered $20 to anyone who started a blog, with another $20 if there was an additional 3 posts in the next half year. it seems to have resulted in a number of new blogs, including several that are still active now, 2.5 years later.
Very interesting structure. Will investigate incorporating it into our plans in the future.
I just want to pipe in to say that I think this is a cool example; the structure of “extremely small prize for doing the thing at all” seems like a nice way to build up the funnel of new blogs in a more even-handed way.