Source: simplyseleta.com via Chiharu on Pinterest

Who Won Money from elephant Last Month? Results.

Congratulations to our star bloggers from December, 2012.

It’s been a good year for elephant (read Waylon’s Year in Review) and, as a community-created, editor-curated site, we owe much of our newfound stability to our writers who have dared to open their hearts and reveal their stories. In an effort to improve our overall quality, we’re now offering $$$ to those writers who rock elephant. Last month we paid a total of nearly $3,000—a lot of money for us.

In December, as an end of the year thank you, we offered $500 to anyone who blogged 10,000 views and $250 to anyone who blogged 5,000 views.

Here are the winners:

$500:

Tara Lemieux: 10,532
Kate Bartolotta: 23,408 (staff & social media volunteer heroes have to get 25% more readers to qualify)
Chris Grosso: 20,676
Candice Holdorf: 10,703
Waylon Lewis: 62,324

$250:

Ben Ralston: 9,161 (staff & social media volunteer heroes have to get 25% more readers to qualify)
Rebekah McCaskey: 6,860
Jennifer S. White: 5,287
Karl Saliter: 6,138

Total: $3,000! That’s like a new employee!

This month, we’ll do it again, with refined criteria:

If you get x number of readers in January (you must let us know by noon MST on February 1 by e-mailing [email protected], we’re not responsible for contacting you and will not do so, this is already a lot of extra work and $$$ for us), we’ll pay:

> 5,000 readers in January = $200
> 10,000 readers in January = $400
> 20,000 readers in January  = $550
> $108: Bonus: up to $500 (donation via Waylon) in $108 increments for blogs focused narrowly on bicycle, wellness, green, Buddhism, yoga philosophy or interviews (original, in-depth), spiritual materialism, adventure, breaking news, photo blogs or that Waylon subjectively marks as “of special quality that makes all of elephant proud and is of benefit.”
> There will be a modest handicap on any posts featuring kittens or sex of 10% views.

Again, those on staff or social media have to get 33% more traffic to qualify and may not share via elephant more than 2x. If you win, as Waylon did, but don’t want the money, and are just writing for fun and to share quality information through our platform, and appreciate the links and presence we give you via our site, editors and social media…and want to donate back to elephant’s writers, we’ll use your donation to give bonuses to writers in the next month. This month, therefore, the total bonus is $500, a donation from Waylon.

Keep in mind: submissions are subject to editorial review and turnaround times vary from 24 hours to, well, more.

elephant journal’s writer guidelines.

Submit a story.