Blogging, Money and Motivation

Andrew Boyd, when talking of money and blogging, recently asked the question, “I am … wondering how enabling an enabler [like money] needs to be before it becomes a motivator in and of itself”.

The reasons people are motivated to start blogging are numerous, but essentially fall into two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation:

• Intrinsic: because I have an internal urge to start blogging to meet some personal and social needs. The rewards gained from blogging are also personal, like satisfaction, but can be thought of in terms of fulfilling some base-needs.
• Extrinsic: because everyone in my group blogs. The rewards gained from blogging are identification with a group, respect from peers.

This picture becomes interesting when we start to involve money in this equation. I’ve written a few papers on pay and motivation and know that money is usually seen as a reward for effort. It was Adams in 1965 [1] who first articulated that when the balance between money and effort is not in harmony with a person’s expectations you start seeing people try and restore that balance, either by changing their cognitions or by changing the way they behave.

The body of psychology literature describes this change in cognition or behaviour very well. It tells us that a person’s motivation can move from intrinsic to extrinsic when you start to pay them. The larger the financial reward, the more likely people become fixated on obtaining it, rather than fulfilling their other needs and having the rewards of fun, satisfaction and social connection. Essentially, the having of the reward becomes a means to an end.

For blogging, this suggests that while a lot of us do it to meet a number of personal and social needs, if we start getting paid to do it, we run the risk that we’ll no longer think of blogging as fun, enjoyable and a way of connecting with people. Like getting paid to do something that you once considered more of a hobby, getting paid to blog can mean you’re going to start concentrating on the paycheck.

M

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[1] Adams, J.S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. Adv. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 62:335-343.