Comments on: Reality Check: Blodget’s Latest Calacanis Infomercial

By: Get People to Put Your Message on Their Site | Managing Greatness

Get People to Put Your Message on Their Site | Managing Greatness — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:17:41 +0000

[...] while, make sure it’s somebody the community has marked as a common enemy. I wrote a somewhat negative piece about Jason Calacanis last year, and I was about to bury it as an unpublishable rant when I decided he’d earned it, [...]

By: Aitir's Blog » Spam vs Mahalo: Matt Cutts Explains the Difference

Aitir's Blog » Spam vs Mahalo: Matt Cutts Explains the Difference — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:49:26 +0000

[...] the recession as an excuse to can the in house editorial team and outsource that to freelancers (which are paid FAR LESS than the amounts he hypes publicly). Given that many of the pages that have original content on them only have 2 sentences surrounded [...]

By: Mike Rhoads

Mike Rhoads — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:46:19 +0000

They try to make a habit of posting a report for each payout so there are probably some more up to date ones floating around. I have heard that the earnings numbers have gone up since I left at the end of November. As Jeff mentioned, none of those listed were employees when the payout was made. I'd say that specific earnings claim at the time was a realistic estimate.

By: Gil Reich

Gil Reich — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:22:54 +0000

Fair enough. Thanx Jeff.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:08:15 +0000

Ssmacd, like myself, is a former employee who moved to rev-share.

Yes, Jason tends to exaggerate his numbers as most of us already know, I think he was simply being enthusiastic about the idea, which I don't think is a major scandal. Regardless, we have over a dozen of us making that much and many more writers are moving up in the ranks. I know a lot of people don't like Jason and Mahalo, but I've been working remotely with them now since 2007 and have no complaints, I have always got paid and the in-house staff works real hard to keep Mahalo growing.

By: Gil Reich

Gil Reich — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:20:54 +0000

Thanks Jeff. You write that none of those are employees, but the highest earner on that list (SSMACD) was identified by Jason and Henry Blodget as an employee in Blodget's August post. Even these numbers indicate that Jason's “We will have 100 people making $10,000 a year within 4 months” is off by at least an order of magnitude, no?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:37:10 +0000

Right, the list Mike provided was from October and none of those users are employees, those are all real remote writers and researchers for Mahalo. Now here is the list for last month's payouts, you can see how the numbers are steadily improving.
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/mahalo-answers-co...

I am also a former full-time -paid-by-the-hour employee, but moved myself to the rev-share system because it allows for a greater opportunity to grow my earnings, in fact in my first month on rev-share I earned more as an employee.

By: Gil Reich

Gil Reich — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:00:32 +0000

Thanks for the feedback and the data, Mike. Can you tell me which of those are employees? Is there any more recent data? It's hard to extrapolate too much from those numbers, but what still seems clear is that statements like “We will have 100 people making over $10,000 a year within four months” were off by about two orders of magnitude. The “best answer' on the page you pointed me to is Jason's “It's fairly clear from insider our organization that there will be 100+ people making $50,000+ a year in a short period of time.” It's now 5 months later, how are we doing on that? If you or anybody else has more data on how much Mahalo paid non-employees since then, I'd love to hear it. On a related note, do you agree that somebody that makes such dramatic predictions should follow up periodically to show that he was right or apologize for being wrong? Otherwise he develops a reputation as a champion self-promoter who shouldn't be trusted.

By: Mike Rhoads

Mike Rhoads — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:51:23 +0000

I am a former employee. His claim also takes into account the money earned via the task system (http://www.mahalo.com/tasks). Money earned via tasks is not included on that leaderboard. I don't know if they have a public leaderboard for that yet, but here's a list of the payouts I made in October: http://www.mahalo.com/answers/mahalo-answers-co.... These totals include revenue from all sources (Answers, tasks and rev share)