The problem is not that publications are failing to pass on their enormous profits – it’s that they don’t exist. Very few organisations are making big dollars out of content marketing in its current form. A sponsored post on its own rarely has the pull to pay for itself through traffic alone. That’s not an excuse. Writers should be paid their worth. I think I’m worth at least as much as your next mid-range word herder. But what constitutes a ‘decent rate’ is unsustainable, because the working parts are still out of sync at a market level.