In this post, I move away from the high-level concept of remuneration and move into the everyday implementation. So, let’s dive right into the mix by covering writing that utilizes the concept best.

First let me give you a less conceptual and more practical-succinct definition of remuneration in writing:

          The awareness and consideration for readership, before the act of writing, in terms of an informal exchange of readership’s time reading your content

Let’s put this in terms of dollars and cents. The federal minimum wage is $7.25, which equates to $0.121 a minute or $0.002 a second. You can assume, minimally, that a person who spends 2 minutes reading your blog post will have paid you, yes you, around $0.25 or the price of a gumball. For that price they are giving you pageviews, potentially positive comments, resharing, and building up your name. The average amount of time that a person spends on a homepage is anywhere between 30-40 seconds before leaving the site, clicking a link, or getting the info they wanted. That means the content on your homepage is worth, again minimally, $0.06. Most people with a website equate pageviews to a certain amount of success and they should, these pageviews give a certain amount of validity to your work (or your marketing company’s work).

Arguably, the most important question before you write or put anything on your site is: What value am I giving my readership? If they are paying you with their valuable time, what new knowledge are you giving them? You want your readers to feel that what they are reading is valuable if you plan on getting them to return or even recommends you to someone that needs your services. If they are paying you, you need to give them something of value.

You can give your readers value in a few ways, but I have two that are my go-to’s in terms of easy writing. The first is explicate a terms, concepts, events, etc. Explain to your readers the who, what, where, and when of something you can nearly assume they don’t know anything about. I’m not talking about writing blog posts like, “Top 5 reasons why Ice is slippery” kind of writing, that’s too common. Assume your readership is at least a high-school or college graduate not an expert in your field. Pick topics that explain something only you can explain.

The second way is the “why and how”. This is where you get to add your comments, your expertise. This is where you can give a short contextual paragraph about a subject, then blast your readers with new knowledge coming straight from the horse’s mouth. Take this post, the one you are reading right now, as an example. The first third is giving a contextual frame for me to drive the subject into examples that I am making up from my experience teaching writing. Everyone ‘s an expert at something and everyone has opinions, share them.

If you’re not sure about style, tone, and quality, that’s okay. Writing takes effort. I suggest looking at the Plain language guidelines: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/. Just browse them and see if it helps. In the meantime, consider your audience and how much they spend on you. You might find that you get more than you give.