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My marketing team and I are working with a new local online newspaper to build a SEO campaign as well as a recruiting campaign to bring in writers. We are pretty well versed on SEO, but I was wondering what would be the best way to go about pitching this to writers. Right now the newspaper is willing to share ad revenue with select writers who they feel will be long term quality contributors. However they also want to bring into the fold people who are willing to do unpaid writing. Ideally they want to convert those unpaid writers into paid writers via a revenue share, but after a period of time where they can evaluate their work.

I have seen a lot of sites like Bleacher Report and Patch and various other local for profit online papers recruit unpaid writers. What is their plan of attack? Email people? What might be a sample email pitch? Direct calls? Other than Twitter and LinkedIn, how can we find writers? When I was at another marketing firm, we had a similar project and the team did a lot of email pitches. And with no luck. I am very interested to hear what unique ideas people have found to work for such a campaign.

THANKS!

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Also, does anyone have ideas on revenue split? Any thing that they have seen that worked for them? Thanks! – AAC Aug 26 '11 at 19:32

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Here is how I would do it.

Let it be a chance for them to establish themselves as an expert. Pay them with:

  • an author box
  • an author page
  • a chance to brand themselves
  • rely on intrinsic motivation and focus on specific areas

Of course, you could let them add a link in the author box to support a charity/local event/etc as added incentive. Something like the article sites, but for local.

EDIT Here is a footer from the blog copyblogger.com. I added the local charity bit, but you can see how the authors are rewarded for their effort.

Here is a footer from the blog copyblogger.com. I added the local charity bit, but you can see how the authors are rewarded for their effort.

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Great idea Chris! A donation box or something along those lines is a nice idea. Last thing we want is people to think we are making money off their backs for nothing. We are also thinking about pitching it such that revenue share comes in after a set amount of traffic and advertisers come aboard. Being transparent may help in recruiting unpaid writers in the beginning. – AAC Aug 26 '11 at 20:39
I think Chris had the best answer of the lot. The key to implementing this will be to market your own site effectively to writers. Writers should believe that your site is worth contributing content to. And you will need to be liberal about permitting self promotion, including links, social networking buttons, etc. – user2757 Aug 28 '11 at 20:12
What are your thoughts on the marketing? Promote revenue share? Promote a cause? That is where I am confused. How to best market to people who might not get paid for several months. And would you suggest reaching out to bloggers who already have small blogs? How would I find writers? Go to writing forums? Any forums you can suggest? – AAC Aug 29 '11 at 18:52
I wouldn't even think about revenue share. Then people eventually expect money and never rewrite if they do not get any. I propose using the author box as payment. If you're site has enough draw - being the go to guy for one the areas provide a lot of potential benefit. For instance, if you were the guy providing the fishing updates every week and you had a charter company then your business promotion aspects would be far more payment than you could pay me for views on fishing tips for January. – Chris Kluis Aug 29 '11 at 19:36
My own thoughts on marketing are as follows - You need to find writers that "need" exposure from your site. This would imply that bloggers that are trying to get established, freelancers, and others who want to generate attention for their content or their services would be natural candidates for your site. I agree, don't even think about revenue sharing - keep the initial offer clean and focused on exposure for the writers, so as to avoid later disappointment. You should also be liberal about usage rights, such as allowing the writer full permission to republish elsewhere. – user2757 Aug 29 '11 at 21:57
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up vote 1 down vote

Regardless of the method you use to get people to write for free for this publication, I don't think is a good idea... You will get what you paid for, in this case, nothing or something of low quality.

How about starting by offering a flat amount for each article that is published? at least you'll be paying people something and that way you might be able to get more writers to participate and also find writers to work with in the long term. Good luck.

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The goal is to have everyone paid and not be a cheap content farm. However initially until we build out more advertising and partner relationships, it will be hard to accomplish with unpaid contribution IMHO. – AAC Aug 26 '11 at 1:18
If it's true that you get what you pay for, why is the Huffington Post using that very approach? There are plenty of people with great ideas who are willing to contribute their content in exchange for exposure (and inbound links). Guest posting/writing is a great way to increase visibility and build an audience. – JonDiPietro Aug 30 '11 at 0:22
I agree that guest posting/writing is a great way to increase visibility and build an audience... However, this is not about that, this is about "unpaid" content writers which is not the same. The motivation is not going to be there, and money is always a good motivator. – Ricardo Aug 30 '11 at 2:50
up vote 3 down vote

I learned in human ressource seminars that its better to pay nothing than just pay them little. Voluntary work sometimes has an intrinsic motivation. People do it because they enjoy it. If you pay them for their work, it has a diffrent notion. They will write for money, and for little money! So they will loose motivation to spend so much time for just a little bit of money and forget about their intrinsic motivation to write just for fun.

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This was supposed to be a comment to Ricardo. Now its on top of his answer. I'm new here. – Alinski Aug 26 '11 at 19:56
up vote 1 down vote

Kudos to Chris and the others for their answers.

The thing here is that this is a LOCAL online newspaper. Hence, your pool of potential writers is actually limited. You can't just hire a writer in New York to write about what's going on in Yorksville, Idaho (I made up the name).

How small is that town? Is there any local college in the area? If so, you may want to approach it. And by that, I mean actually showing up there and organizing a brown bag lunch, workshop or presentation. Maybe the local chamber of commerce? And association of retirees?

It shouldn't be too difficult to find a few good writers. They don't have to be world class writers. Bear in mind that locals don't read local newspapers because of the style of the paper, they read to find out what's going on in their town. Nobody expects a Shakespeare columnist. Focus on must-haves, not on nice-to-haves. A very successful owner of a local newspaper said that the key to his success were three things:

  • Names of local people
  • Names of local people
  • Names of local people

I would also add: pictures, pictures, pictures.

Good luck.

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@ A. Garcia. The paper we are working on targets a regional metro. Meaning that it is targeting about 8 "towns" that total a population of about 500,000 people. Are there writer forums you suggest we take a look at to try an reach out to people? – AAC Aug 30 '11 at 4:38
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A Garcia - trust me I understand local. I used the fishing column as an example of a hyper local guide offering free advice with payment being branded the local fishing expert. Colleges are always great and if there happens to be a junior college or college with a journalism school... GOLDMINE! You can then even ask the professor to make publishing part of their work assignement. I've used student groups a ton in the past. The students and teachers appreciate real work. I appreciate free work (oh and cheap recruiting). – Chris Kluis Aug 30 '11 at 11:41

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