This was spotted a couple of days ago on craigslist: Bend blogger needed. Excerpt:

We are a media organization seeking partners for our localized blog roll out this Summer. We are targeting small-mid sized cities in the US.

What you do: This position would require 4 postings per week and editorial control over a blog on Bend and surrounding areas. We are open to specialized blogs or having our editors write their own mission statements, but the general theme is usually news, events, and commentary – pretty wide open.

What you don’t have to do: We do not ask, but do allow, our editors to pay for site maintenance, spam control, search engine optimization, marketing the blog, managing ads, fixing bugs, managing site analytics, and other site administrative duties.

Huh. I’m all for more blogs about Bend, but this one sounds kind of weird. They "do not ask, but do allow" their bloggers to pay for spam control, maintenance, and stuff? Does that mean this "media organization" isn’t going to do any of that themselves? Wouldn’t that be just the same as a person starting their own blog and dealing with that stuff anyway?

So, they start a blog, but: you get all the hassles of running it, they get to keep half the ad revenue, and you get the option to buy it from them after 6 months.

There’s such a low barrier to entry on blogging these days that this deal doesn’t really seem worth it. I mean, think about it: a domain name will cost you about 9 bucks on GoDaddy.com, and you can start a Blogger site for free (with that domain you just bought), and plug in Google ads of which 100% of the revenue comes to you.

(I guess it’s not that much of a mystery to me; a word for this particular deal does come to mind…)