> There's hardly a post you couldn't write in a day of hard work

I get paid a very high rate to edit and clean up articles written by techies who have this viewpoint.

When you are imparting technical knowledge that you know conceptually, it's easy to just jot down a few thoughts. They make sense to _you_, after all. But in most cases, experts don't recognize the assumptions that a reader might have, such as "what this is" and "why it's important." Like writing code, there's a difference between "make it work (at least the compiler doesn't crash)" and "make it wonderful." That's just the same for writing.

Personally, when I write in-depth articles, I spend a minimum of three days on it. It usually includes researching the topic, interviewing other people who know something about it (or wish they did), and writing the prose. Then I edit the prose. And I edit it again. Because I do my best to be clear and understandable, and to leave out the parts that people skip.

this is interesting. could you give me a link to the kind of post you're talking about? If you don't want to link here you can also email me at the address in my profile.

Here's one example -- though I could give you hundreds.

Object Storage versus Block Storage: Understanding the Technology Differences: http://www.druva.com/blog/object-storage-versus-block-storag...

The authors really know their stuff. They spent that "just a day" writing down what they wanted to say. I spent two full days editing it for readability, querying them about technical details ("I'm not sure what you meant when you said... Could you clarify this point?"), and ultimately making them incredibly proud of the result. (Which was very popular in terms of pageviews, because it's good and useful data.) It still was their voice and their expertise; I was there to help them get the message across.

A good editor is like a good hairdresser. When she is done and you look in the mirror, you aren't surprised. But you think, "Yeah, that's what I WANT to look like!"

I'm paid a lot. I'm worth it.

If there is research involved, each sentence or paragraph could easily take an entire day. E.g. a couple years ago I wrote a post about deaths caused by drug use/misuse, and just getting an idea of how many deaths are caused by smoking involved reading through several chapters of the Surgeon General's most-recent 800 page report. So I figure more like one post every 50 - 150 hours, for something 2,500 - 6,000 words in length.

That said, even a monthly salary of 100k+ per month isn't completely crazy given that there are magazines that cost 100k per year to subscribe to, with dozens or hundreds of corporate subscribers. That's obviously not the market that most tech companies are going after, but there is precedent there in general.

Nobody makes a salary of 100k per month. That is $1.2 million per year. The CEO of IBM, a company that had revenues of $80 billion in 2015, made salary of $1.6 million in 2015.[1] If you want to include stock or options or a revenue share or bonuses or whatever go ahead - but that's not salary and your figures are completely, utterly ridiculous.

>That said, even a monthly salary of 100k+ per month isn't completely crazy

yes it is.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-ceo-ginni-rometty-gets-a-...

>Nobody makes a salary of 100k per month. That is $1.2 million per year. The CEO of IBM, a company that had revenues of $80 billion in 2015, made salary of $1.6 million in 2015.

Actually lots of people do. In TV, for example, even for a small European countries, such as that I know of, you can make like $500K per year if you're one of the 20-30 "stars" of the various network channels (head presenter, show host etc).

In the US: "In the depths of the recession in 2009, there were still 236,883 individuals who earned more than $1,000,000 in the United States. We know from other research that, by rough estimates, 90 out of 100 men and women reaching this income level are self-made with little to no inheritance. Almost all have college degrees. Men dominate the field, and almost all own or started their own business or work as an executive for a large business".

I wouldn't call 230,000 people "nobody".

In the US news business, $100k/month is strictly the domain of TV on-screen personality presenters; i.e., not the reporters, but network affiliate anchors who are referred to in-house as 'the talent'. Absurd sums of money when you look at the rest of the newsroom staff salaries, but this is all about ratings, sweeps and very local/regional popularity.

> Nobody makes a salary of 100k per month.

The founder of the last startup I worked at made 100k per month and wasn't even the CEO, and that was pre-product and pre-revenue. He just raised a bunch of money on a pitch deck.

I'm definitely not saying that's common, but it's not unheard of either. Inside Silicon Valley there's a tightly prescribed set of norms that tend to be followed, but outside of there money tends to change hands a lot more quickly and fluidly. That's the benefit of being in a place like NYC, because people tend to be motivated more by self-interest rather than by trying to look cool or fit in, so it's a lot easier to pitch folks on stuff if you find a novel but rational opportunity.

I find it very hard to believe that was a a base salary. (Of course, I could be wrong.)

Of course it's possible to make a lot more than that! Just not as a salary. It would be interesting to know the details of their package. Also, how come you happened to know?

I know because it was publicly traded. (They raised a bunch of money and then bought a shell company.)

That wasn't the exact base salary, but that was basically total compensation not including stock. (So including a few hundred thousand dollars per year in an expense account and an additional couple hundred thousand for serving on the board.)

"If there is research involved, each sentence or paragraph could easily take an entire day." That's not how writers or the publishing business works. Presuming you made real-world top dollar, $2.00 a word, your $12,000 dollar article would bring you $40 an hour. Odds are you'll actually make a buck a word, so you're already down to $20 an hour. You can dream of a world where writers make 100K a month from projects like this, but with 30 years in the business I don't know anyone even close to that.

> You can dream of a world where writers make 100K a month from projects like this, but with 30 years in the business I don't know anyone even close to that.

I've never been, but if you go to some of the big leadgen conferences then I suspect that you'd meet or at least hear about a lot of folks like this.

>If there is research involved, each sentence or paragraph could easily take an entire day. E.g. a couple years ago I wrote a post about deaths caused by drug use/misuse, and just getting an idea of how many deaths are caused by smoking involved reading through several chapters of the Surgeon General's most-recent 800 page report.

Journalists for established media do all that (and more) as part of getting the facts for their articles, and still take in something like $2-$3 per month or less.

At my peak as a free lance tech writer for various computer magazines, I was making .40/word. That was pretty high on the scale for freelancers. And since then the bottom has dropped out of the market since print articles are largely dead.

Well, no, that is _not_ high on the scale for freelancers. Far from it.

Compared to many of the writers for the stable of publications I wrote for, it was at the higher end. Perhaps a named writer could pull more in at a better publication, but this was a very frugal and profitable (for awhile at least) group of magazines.