I remember, I think this was in an RSAnimate video from Dan Pinker[1], and one interesting fact was that once you offered people money to do something, they had far less motivation to accomplish the task. I think offering money for the lessons creates the wrong tone--I'd personally rather create something for free than have a possibility of getting paid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

I think you have framed the problem incorrectly. If you are given the option to either make your course paid or fee you include people who are motivated for different reasons. If you wanted to create a free class, would the fact of having an option to create a paid course motivate you any less? I think that codecademy should create a structure similar to Apple's ibooks platform where you have the option to create paid content if you so wish.

Codecademy is smart - they realize that collecting use/accomplishment data on high-quality lessons carries much more upside than trying to sell the content created on their platform.

How is this smart?

Either you get money directly, or your left trying to monetize -accomplishment- data? Are we expecting the ad-market targeting newbie programmers to explode or something?

Etc = http://trybloc.com, http://CodePupil.com ... Anyone know others ?

http://udemy.com/ http://codelesson.com/ (from both ends, earn money as a course director, spend money as the student :-))

Personally I haven't tried it yet but I saw an interview Kevin Rose did to the founder on Foundation and the idea seems promising (also gave great insight on how to rate and encourage your employees but thats off-topic) It kinds of add badges, achievements, challenges and more stuff to try and make the learning experience and process a more enjoyable activity.

Treehouse - http://teamtreehouse.com/

Exactly. I really love CodeYear look forward to every Monday and the new lessons. But some non-profit approach would be a nice option so that people could donate money directly to the course creators. On the other hand the lack of other courses makes me stick to it and not switch horses all the time.

What would be a good way to have crowdsourced content that pays its creators a fair share?

Honest question; I am looking for insight in this area.

Payment could be tied to a semi-annual or quarterly code contest where students compete in different "events". This could all be live-code-streamed. Judges are a collection of ______ (fill in the blank). The better the students in a particular course do, the more money that course creator gets. Funds for this prize could even be kickstarted, or funded by non-profits in the free-education domain, or through other means (prizes could even be free services from relevant start-ups?).

Just an idea for a jumping-off point.

...allow people to add a flatr button to their content?

Just one thought.