Blogmutt: Crowdsourced Blog Posts for Companies, Quick Money for Writers

Kira M. Newman October 31, 2011 Tweet

Rather than counting pennies with Google AdWords, bloggers have a new option to make money: Blogmutt, which was showcased at our Tech Cocktail Boulder mixer.

BlogMutt writers create posts for companies that have no time to blog using suggested keywords. Companies then browse the crowdsourced entries and pick one post per week.

BlogMutt’s challenge is to strike a balance: to be valuable enough for writers but cheap enough for businesses, which currently pay $79 a month for the service.

“Our potential customer needs us because they are so busy. Because they are so busy, however, they don’t have time to focus on us,” explains Scott Yates, who has already worked on two startups with cofounder Wade Green. Yates says that some businesses don’t even have time for their 5-minute signup process. With this in mind, BlogMutt plans to auto-insert blog posts into company blogs, rather than simply emailing them over.

As for writers, some may be less than enthusiastic about the Boulder startup’s motto: “We work like a dog to fill up your blog!” BlogMutt, which has attracted 35 active bloggers, gives writers no byline or ownership of their content, and pays less than $10 per post – and only if a company selects it.

“This is not something a former New York Times journalist is going to jump at,” Yates admits. But he thinks it can appeal to bloggers who write quickly and don’t want to endure back-and-forth with editors.

BlogMutt may not be for everyone, but it is certainly a viable option – especially when aspiring writers are already blogging, for fun or for practice, for no money at all.