Always Trying to Improve

As business owners, we often have to experiment and try new things. It's important that we constantly try to improve so that we can expand.

On one of our projects, new writers often complain that the payscale of 1 cent per word doesn't allow them to earn at least minimum wage. So, after much thought and consideration, we changed it to a per hour scale. I'm not going to lie here; a per hour scale would have also allowed us larger profits to reinvest into the company if the experiment had gone our way. We could have hired more per hour editors, done more advertising, blogs, and side projects.

Unfortunately, the experiment itself didn't go well. The writers had to meet a minimum per hour which wasn't a problem. Production increased quickly. But once writers were no longer paid per word, they stopped paying attention to what they were writing. It no longer mattered if one of their PDs got hacked by 50%, they still met quota. In fact, some writers weren't even writing the PDs; they were merely copying and pasting what was done previously.

So, for now anyway, we're back to the old per word payscale for the entire team. I am wondering, though, if we should introduce writers on a per hour pay scale for their first week of writing, then go to per word after the first week. This way, the writers have the stability of hourly pay during training with the better per word pay once they have their feet on the ground. It is something to consider, anyway.

Many of my readers are business owners. They're either one man shows, or they run full teams. How do you constantly try to improve upon your business?