Demand Media has entered into a partnership with Hearst Group to produce content for two of its publications, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Houston Chronicle, Erik Sherman reported last week in a Bnet.com article. The move, in which Demand will create articles and videos for SFGate.com's real estate section and Chron.com's small business section, advances the company's reach into traditional media.

Sherman reported that the normal rate offered by Demand for a few hundred words of outsourced article is US$7.50 to the writer and about $3.50 for copy editing, but Mike Taylor, an author on the MediaBistro Blog reported that Demand actually pays an average of $15 to $20 per article, with price variations depending on the kind of work and level of distribution. Demand pays $30 for videos.

"At Demand's current pay rate, I'd be making almost a buck an hour," The New York Times' David Carr wrote.

Demand conducts analysis of consumer search patterns, and commissions freelance material in order to attract traffic from Google and other search engines, and therefore drive ad revenue, the Bnet.com article explained. "Part of gaining better placement in Web searches is having millions of pieces of content on sites. However, the cost of doing so would be prohibitive at normal freelance writing and videography rates, hence the strategy of working with people willing to take low payments for all rights to their work."

MediaBistro's fishbowlny blogger Drew Grant noted that: "Demand creators would probably argue that their objective isn't to create news; that there are enough print and Internet outlets for that as is. The fact remains though that "seeding" web traffic is the entire goal of Demand's pieces, and whether or not an article is "relevant", "factual", or even "well-written" is only the point secondarily to how many clicks it will get (for both the writers and the site owners). And considering the difference in pay, this may be too steep a price to pay for even the most starving freelance writer."