malachite - 11:09 am on Nov 8, 2005 (gmt 0)

Greg, while I can't advise you what you should charge for unique content, the site that wants exclusives obviously considers your writing has a value.

As one site is willing to pay you, it doesn't make sense to give your articles away to the other site just to get a link.

Do remember though that by allowing one site an exclusive licence to publish your work, this means you cannot also publish the same articles on your own site. You retain copyright in any event - they would be purchasing a licence. If you plan to go down this route, consider granting them a 6-month or one year licence, after which the "exclusivity" runs out and you are free to publish the articles yourself on your own site, by which time you would (hopefully!) be out of the sandbox.

An alternative which may benefit all parties would be to publish the articles in full on your site, and to allow both the other sites to publish EXCERPTS only on their sites for free, with a link to your site and crediting you as author, giving their readers access to the full article, but giving you the benefit of the traffic. This may help get you out of the sandbox a bit quicker. This is certainly how I'd do it, thus establishing myself and my site as an authority on the subject.

If you want to make some money out of your writing, a second alternative would be to allow the site which is offering to pay, to purchase a time-limited licence as outlined above on a select few articles, and to publish the remainder on your site. You could then allow them to link to the remaining articles for free.

Whatever you decide, don't make the mistake of granting anyone exclusive rights to publish your work in perpetuity for peanuts.