Writing has always been a passion of mine and I was very excited when I found out I could share my writings with others by becoming a writer for the Odyssey. Along with this if my article received the most shares out of the writers in my community I would receive 20 dollars. This cash incentive was really nice because it pushed writers to deliver the best content they could possibly deliver. It created a sense of competition within each community as writers competed with each other to see who could publish the 20 dollar article.

As of recent, there has been talk of removing the weekly cash prize and instead focus on the cash prize received through article views. As it stands now in order to earn that same 20 dollar reward you must get a minimum of 15,000 page views in a month. I can personally tell that as a writer achieving that benchmark is not an easy task. I’ve been writing for close to a year now and I can say confidently that if you take all my page views and combine them, chances are I won't have 15,000-page views. In order to get close to hitting that mark a writer must release a series of articles in that month time span that go viral. As a writer getting a hundred shares on one article is an accomplishment within itself, so you can imagine how hard it is to get enough shares to the point where one can achieve gets 15,000-page views.

Personally, I believe that this is a ploy to save money and undercut the writers for Odyssey. With the 20 dollar incentive policy, it was guaranteed that someone in each community got paid. However, with this new policy, the amount of writers getting paid each week greatly decreases as most will not meet the basic 15,000-page view quota. Also if the weekly incentive plan was kept Odyssey would be making at least 3 payment a month to each community, with this new policy only one payment a month will be made and there stands a chance that no payment will be made if an article doesn’t catch fire and rack up page views.

I’m a firm believer that the more appreciated a person feels the harder they will work. The writers are the backbone that supports the framework for Odyssey. I enjoy being able to have a voice through my writings, but I believe there should be some serious revision to the incentive program that put the writers first!