After months of being in read-only mode, Suite 101 has its writer system back up and running...along with a new payment structure. Here is what their support page says:

To qualify, you must be in good standing, and have accumulated at least 25 readers in the past month. As a rule, if you write meaningful, engaging pieces, your audience will grow – and as it does, so will your fee.

Regular readers Payment1000+ $1000

500 $500

250 $250

100 $100

50 $50

25 $25

Unlike many sites, we don't track (misleading, manipulable) vanity metrics like uniques, pageviews and impressions. Instead, we look at visitor behavior to filter out hit-and-run traffic and form a more sensitive understanding of what people are really reading.

The results are interesting, and ring true: visitors from search engine results, while more numerous, seldom actually read articles – and even more rarely return. Success in search engine results rarely correlates to actual readership.

This fee, devoted solely to readers, not traffic, therefore favours great writing over SEO copywriting.

They had this payment structure when I first started writing for them back in 2006, and I prefer it to the many incarnations that came after. I no longer write for Suite 101 because of their poor management and waffling over how they are going to run the site, but at least this is a step in the right direction.