Citizen journalism is monetizing through the spidery limbs of the massive network that is the internet. Before the World Wide Web exploded, one could possibly only earn money as a journalist by selling articles, pictures or leads to print newspapers and magazines.
The advent of blogs created the dynamic intermingling of local with global perspectives, while empowering each blogger into the status of a self-published opinionist. Gradually communities with editorial capabilities like Digg and Newsvine emerged. Citizen Bay is one such website which promotes journalism from the ground up.
Driven by user-generated content and interaction, Citizen Bay allows you to make money online by submitting news articles, original media and opinion essays about your city and neighborhood.
An excerpt from their FAQ reads:
How do I earn money on Citizenbay?
There are two ways to get paid with Citizenbay:
(A) Every day the top 10 most popular news stories attached to each primary city are rewarded with money.. “Most popular” stories are ranked by the votes of Citizenbay users. To be rewarded, a news story must have been voted on by at least 15 different users.
An author/publisher can earn up to $5 (USD) per day for each article written/published :
- $1 if the article is without attached media,
- $1.5 with 2 photos attached,
- $3 with podcasts,
- $5 with videos,
- or $1 for each news article seeded
The maximum payout is $100 per author/publisher a day. The author/publisher will be paid at the end of each month, if earnings for the month have reached a minimum of $20, or at the end of the month in which unpaid earnings reach $20
(B) Recurring long term revenue for Ambassadors : Ambassadors are entitled to get a recurring revenue from the advertising attributable from their posts . Bronze ambassadors will get 50% of the revenue collected, Silver 75% , Gold 100% . Payments will be made once a month at the end of the month.
DOSH DOSH REVIEW
Citizen Bay is rather new and so there is understandably a great lack in traffic and exposure. I registered for their program and found that there were only two other users for my city, Toronto. No events, opinions or classifieds were listed and the city page is almost a clean sheet of empty web.
Nothing a little marketing and growth won’t change, I guess. I really do like the way how the community is divided according to geographic locations. Being grouped into specific cities keeps the content relevant and motivates users to interact with each other.
If you spend time in several cities, you might find it vaguely nostalgic to read about your favorite haunts. This of course, is hypothetical and will be an actuality when Citizen Bay picks up on the traffic and gets a lot more users involved.
Screenshots of New York, the most popular city in Citizen Bay:
News Section.
Events Section.
As you can tell, the color scheme changes when you select the different tabs. Submitting articles, events and opinions just takes one click and the forms are pretty easy to fill up.
How much you earn with Citizen Bay very much depends on the community around you. You’ll need votes to propel your posts into the group of most popular users, including the cultivated revenue-sharing Ambassador position.
This isn’t too difficult if you have a big network of friends in the same city and should be achievable when Citizen Bay is at early stages of site building. The difficulty of earning money would possibly increase as the website becomes more popular and well-known.
What’s Cool
- User friendly navigation
- Good potential for a strong community
- Strong journalistic ethic frowns on spam/self promotion.
- High maximum earning ratio ($100 per day)
What’s Not
- No referral bonus
- Lack of traffic = weak earnings
- Strict Ambassador prerequisites
- No traditional forum for user support & interaction
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