Tidal publisher dashboard
Tidal seems like a no-brainer for such publishers. Instead of paying for each piece of content from a source such as Demand Media or Contently, they pay a monthly fee for access to as much content as they want.
Lack of compensation for their work makes the system seem like less of a good deal for writers. But Myers says that the company focuses on content from blogs people write for fun.
“For them it’s the exposure, opportunities for promotion, events,” he says.
Bloggers who syndicate with Tidal get dashboards to track where their content is posted and how much it is seen. Although their full blog posts -- not excerpts -- are posted on publisher sites, those sites do link back to the original posts. Myers says that "traffic does leak back," and writers keep all ownership of their work.
Without an excess of quality posts to populate it, Tidal would lose its appeal among publishers. Its success depends largely on whether passionate bloggers are willing to make the trade of content for visibility on these terms. Throughout the beta, more than 5,000 of them have been.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Auris
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
