Now now, I'm sure you all know about the period where Kat joined in on the site and ran it with me, but there is quite a huge difference beween that and regular staff members. Kat was a good friend of mine, I had knew her wayyy before I opened my site. She wasn't a "staff member" to me, she was my friend.
Staff on the other hand, aren't really considered as 'friends' of the owner. Why on earth would the owner of a website hire their friends as 'staff'? How degrading is that? The level of respect you have to have for someone to dub them as a 'staff member' is just distasteful. (What a great friendship you have there)
So you enter a site as a staff member. Whoo pee! Good for you. You're going to be wasting all your precious time on graphics for someone elses' benefit. What do you get for it? Just the recognition of working for that particular person on that certain website. But in reality, you don't get much. Actually no, you get nothing. Let's keep it truthful here. Now, if you're getting paid to do it, I guess it's a different story. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about FREE LABOR.
When people go to that site, they're just going to be looking at the owner as the creator of everything, you not included. Sure your name might be under the purple polka dotted background, but when people use that background, it's going to be from "Jess's backgrounds". People don't care to look at specifics. They look at the site and connect a person to that website. Person being SINGULAR. One!!
If I hire you as staff here, do you think people are going to remember you because you added 10 avatars on Tuesday? No. When people refer to a site (like mine) they might say: "Yea you can find them on Jess's site". Where's your name in this? I don't see it, do you?
I don't understand why people would want to be hired to create graphics for other people. It's like you're working for another persons fame and fortune. Why not work for yours?
The people who usually come up with the "STAFF" idea are in my opinion, lazy, strange and aren't even deserving of the recognition and traffic they recieve. I mean COME ON they're going to hire complete strangers as staff for their site based on their graphic ability and online/updating availability. Someone who is really looking for a true owner and helper would have a fellow friend help them out, not hire someone based on a silly application and a few chats on msn. I just think they just hire people to get them more hits and possibly make them better content then they could ever make. They don't look at these staff members as apart of the site, or even friends - just workers for the site.
Also, the idea of time limits on these staff updates is ridiculous. In addition, all your content must be approved by the owner. So now you have to re-do the 50-some backgrounds you made because the owner didn't think they were up to par with their standards. On top of having to work for someone else's fortune, you are now set to a dreadful time limit in which you must update with 50,000 ridiculous things that you maybe don't even specialize in, which, if surpassed, might cause you to be kicked off. Now all that work you put into that website has gotten you nowhere. It's over! You didn't update with 50 avatars and 600000 backgrounds for those 2 days you were assigned. Tsk tsk.
That person will now ride on all the graphics and great work you've put into the content. After they've successfully gotten rid of all their staffy members, they can now have the site to their little old self, basking in their new found content that is completely theirs.
If you're considering applying as staff, please - don't. What I suggest is to make your OWN website, something YOU can be recognized for. Don't work for other people for free labor. If you are working for someone, they better be paying you in gold bars or something.
If you're considering hiring staff - just, don't. Staff is a horrible (and subtle) way to announce the downfall of your site. Hiring staff (to me) is basically saying, "hey, I'm too lazy and I suck at certain graphics so I'll get other people to work for me and make them for me and I'll take all the credit." If you need other people to get YOUR site somewhere, you don't deserve to have a site. And realistically, you won't be getting anywhere anytime soon. And if you do (which is strange), well then u suck and lets be affiliates.
LOL JK. Comic relief~