(written by christopher)
My big challenge right now is to get a number of good writers.
I am several years into building my site… we are Google News and Bing News approved, I have an extensive training and support system for writers, a set up that delivers a reliable 50% to 60% adsense adshare to writers, and the site is well optimized to get the most out of adsense.
What I am lacking now is good, internet savvy, writers. Writers that can write smart, clean, news stories and analysis in exchange for an adsense adshare.
I know there are qualified writers out there who can and will do this. Look at hubpages – there is some good content there, and they do it for adsense adshare – and they don’t even get much traffic or support. My site is much better to write for!
I’ve been trying to recruit writers through freelancer.com and a blogging jobs forum. But for the most part, they don’t have the talent, experience and stick-to-it-ness to really learn the ropes and put out some good articles. I also have a ‘write for us’ page on my site, of course.
But I need ideas for where to find good writers, or an innovative way to market for good writers, that will write as adsense partners.
Got any? 🙂 Any thoughts, ideas, would be appreciated!
1. a referal system, so that writers who refer their writer friends can get 10% or more adsense share on their referrals, this part should be taken from yours, not their friends, make it clear so they can refer their friend by writing articles without feeling they're robbing them. This is the only way to get the snowball effect and ease your own promotion efforts.
2. a sense of community. The success of hubpages, squidoo, etc. is largely due to their forums, comments, author pages, rewards badges, etc.. Everything that helps the authors to feel part of a community of like minded people and also being able to get recognition (badges, stars, etc.) among their peers.
I like the idea of badges and more visible rewards too. I do have author pages and google+ author links too, but I can certainly do more with the forum and badges angle, and allow for more personalization of author pages.
I'll have to think through the referrals idea. Part of my challenge is I can't accept everyone that way hubpages does.
To keep our status as an approved news site, we have to maintain a certain writing quality. I don't know if turning down referred writers would be an issue. Perhaps if I just made clear ahead of time that not all writers would accepted.... hmmm, that would be a bit of a buzz kill though.
Thank you for the ideas, helps to have someone chip in with some fresh ideas when I get stuck!! :) You are a good idea man!
If anyone else has thoughts to add, please do!
Chris