escape to insanity

So today was the day that Newsvine announced its December earnings for users. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, I'll give you a crash course right now.

Newsvine is a community-oriented news site. Top stories are pulled directly off the major wires, such as the AP and Reuters (pronounced “roy-ters” if you're one of those people that's been calling it “rooters” all along), but the major difference between Newsvine and every other news site on the intarweb is the community. People can register as users and seed articles they find on other websites. The idea is that your local paper, or news sources not picked up by the major services, might have an article that other people would want to read but might not know where to find. You can seed that article to Newsvine – basically posting a link to the original and a quick summary – so others can enjoy it. You can also write your own articles – citizen journalism, opinion pieces, rants, whatever. Not quite like a personal blog, but better.

The kicker is the revenue model. Newsvine has a small number of ads displayed throughout the site, on each article and seed posted. Revenue from ads displayed on articles pulled from the wires obviously goes to the company. Revenue from articles and seeds that you post, however… that's a different story. You get 90% of any ad revenue generated from articles and seeds in your own column. The other 10% goes to the person who referred you (or to the company for site maintenance if no one referred you).

Basically, you get money for just submitting content — either writing your own original articles or pointing people towards other content. Now, granted, the amount of money that typically results from all this is relatively tiny. No one is making a living off of their Newsvine activity. I think the top contributers earn on average maybe around US$400 a month. Sure, that's a considerable amount, but that's for literally hundreds of thousands of articles submitted each month, and $400 a month is not really enough to let you retire.

In any case, as I said, today was the announcement of December earnings. In previous months, since I've been an active user, my earnings were nothing to brag about. My first payout was a modest 12 cents. My second month dropped below even that, to a meager 3 cents. My November distribution shocked me by being more than my total accumulated earnings up to that point, bringing me to a whopping 63 cents. With that, I couldn't even get a can of soda from the vending machine down the hall. But now… now I'm rollin' in the dough. Oh yeah. Apparently Newsvine had quite the surge in activity and visits in December — several people are reporting considerably higher-than-average earnings this time around. I made an amazing total… of… are you ready? US$3.62 for the month of December; my total accumulation is now $4.26 thus far (apparently it's rounded up). Of course, I can't actually cash out until I hit $10, but still.