> Are you in ANY job market currently?
Nope, working on my startup. When working as a consultant though I usually look at how much what I'm going to do is going to increase the paper valuation of the company, and then target making 10 - 15% of that as cash. That way the employer gets 85-90% of the upside, but they're also the one bearing the risk since there might not be any future payout.
For one, the logistics involved are infinitely simpler than for the video, which needs a team of at least 3 and usually 5 to 10 people, plus expensive equipment, props, a script, voice over talent and more.
Second, way more people can write decently than produce a decent startup video. Supply vs demand, etc.
Third, nobody much cares for a piece of writing. A two-minute startup demo video can catch millions of eyeballs. A writing will mostly go unnoticed.
Seriously, I've written for some media outlets and did some technical copy for a few companies. If you think you can get anything like $5K per piece, you're in for a very big surprise.
>E.g. look at that guy who was shorting Lumber Liquidators due to the toxic materials issue. That ended up blowing up anyway, but would you claim that if he had paid someone a couple hundred grand to create really compelling content around that issue (think Groklaw) that he would have been unlikely to see a good return?
He'd pay people "a couple hundred grand to create really compelling content"? Are you in ANY job market currently?
That's of the scale of the whole advance for a very popular book author (think NYT Best Seller list level, and not even all of them) -- not copy writers kind of money by any means.