Where are all the writers to fill up these blank pages?

April 25, 2009 1:17 AM

How do I find writers for a site when I can't pay them anything yet? I've got a few sites I run with wordpress software behind them and they're all fairly mature and fall under different categories of success and usefulness. I just cannot run them all. Is there a site for disenfranchised writers of any skill to list themselves so I can pluck them from the masses?

None of them are successful enough with adsense ads to let me pay anyone just yet.

Yes, they're blogs, they just aren't the usual. One is a niche site for workers in the video game industry, another is an open-source FPS project that needs more generalized gaming stuff which is familiar to users of that project posted to the front page.

I've gotten a few writers already from my friends, but, they don't have the same kind of drive I do to write about these subjects. I end up making the majority of posts.

Or am I just asking for too much and should I attempt to do a better job myself? We are talking about only a few sites here with maybe some thousands of visitors a month between them.

I would prefer to find folks who are at least decent enough to write well, but I do not really care what they write about as long as they are interested in it enough to keep writing.

posted by TimeDoctor to computers & internet (22 comments total)

As someone who has maintained a smallish blog for a long time (over five years), I can tell you that finding other writers has been the single most difficult thing I've ever tried to do. I have two awesome co-bloggers now (one for a year, one for three), and I consider myself & the site extremely fortunate. I've also experimented with several other folks over the years and mostly had experiences ranging from deep disappointment to extreme frustration.

Unless some commenters on your existing site show a great deal of passion (and are also up to your standards in terms of writing quality - not an easy thing), then I think you're going to have a very difficult time of this. While I'm sure other blog-owners have had all kinds of experiences, I'd be surprised if many folks found new writers who weren't already active community members at the sites in question. (I'm also an administrator at another blog, and all of our new editors have come from the ranks of users over the years.)

And even if you do have some great community members who might want to step up, as I say, finding people who have the same commitment that you do is hard. People really need to care, and writing often and for no pay requires a tremendous level of desire.
posted by DavidNYC at 1:52 AM on April 25

Open them up, let anyone write an article about those subjects. It worked for metafilter =)
posted by bigmusic at 2:39 AM on April 25

Think about what might motivate the sort of writer you're looking for. If you can't pay anyone then you need to ask what you can do that will make people want to write for your blogs. Blank blog pages are not a scarce resource, so you're not offering anything there. Does your site get a lot of traffic from a specialized audience? Is it somehow associated with somebody famous or ulracool? Writers can write for anybody for free. Why would they want to do it for you? Unless you can answer that, you're going to get precisely nowhere.
posted by jon1270 at 3:24 AM on April 25 [3 favorites]

You do have to be careful if you end up taking submissions from random people -- as jon1270 said "Why would they want to do it for you?" is an important question to answer but sometimes people wanting to volunteer a post have answered that by wanting to direct readers to their blog or gain some search juice by littering their contributed post with SEO friendly phrases.

Friends I know that take reader submissions often have to turn down half of what they get because the submissions are almost entirely self-promotional and spammy.
posted by mathowie at 5:23 AM on April 25

I wrote for a website (not a blog) for several months for no pay, for two reasons. Firstly, it was a hugely popular site, at least for its area of interest, so I knew I was getting exposure. Secondly, there was the promise of pay down the road, which did come (not much, but this is writing we're talking about). You need both these conditions to get good contributors for your sites.
posted by hiteleven at 6:43 AM on April 25

What about freebies? I know of a site that talks about cartooning and drawing, and writers can get review copies of books at least in return for writing about them. Would apply in spades to any kind of technology review.
posted by zadcat at 7:28 AM on April 25

You can't pay them, and it doesn't sound like you can offer them something that might be worthwhile for them (i.e., mass exposure).

This is such a strange question that I don't know where to begin.

"Is there a site for disenfranchised writers of any skill to list themselves so I can pluck them from the masses?"

Well, sure. It's called the internet.

I think you'd have to be a lot more specific with regards to traffic and the type of ad set-ups you have for this question to be answered in a better way.
posted by bardic at 7:39 AM on April 25

There's a subforum called "Non-Paying Markets" on AbsoluteWrite.com where you can post this kind of gig.

That said, you may well get what you pay for. On the other hand, you might find someone competent and new to web writing who wants some links to other people's sites to add to their portfolio.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:42 AM on April 25

If you were renovating a house to sell, would you ask the question: "Where would I find plumbers and electricians to do some of the renovations who would work for free until I sell the house?"
posted by Elsie at 8:48 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]

When I see job ads that say "I can't pay you yet" to me that says "I won't be able to pay you ever." If someone is interested in the same subjects you are, why wouldn't they just start their own blog? The way I look at it, I can write for myself for free.

I often see these ads in the gigs section in Craigslist, though. Try the biggest metro area closest to you (or maybe SF or such) and just see what happens. Likewise, like others have said, if you have some loyal commenters, enlist them.

Even if you can't offer money but just "exposure," links back to people's projects/sites/other blogs (not just on some "about page" but right in the posts themselves) can be a form of payment. (Or if you can do some sort of content exchange -- they write something for you, you write something for them, although that doesn't really get away from the whole "time" issue.)

But really, you just may be better off spending more time on these blogs yourself. And if you don't want to, ask yourself why you're doing it. Maybe it's time to abandon some of them.
posted by darksong at 9:24 AM on April 25

You can't pay them, and it doesn't sound like you can offer them something that might be worthwhile for them (i.e., mass exposure).

Heavily seconding bardic.

If you want quality, dedicated, passionate writers, then take out a business loan and pay them.

Otherwise, what would your writing talent have to prove that you actually value their writing?

And if you can't pay writers, give them a stake in AdSense revenue.
posted by trotter at 10:55 AM on April 25 [1 favorite]

Good answers all around, I feel like marking-as-best-answer on pretty much every one and had to stop myself at what you see now. Thank you all for the kind critical help.

To answer the specific question about the traffic, which I didn't want to do in the OP.

I run:
http://www.ioquake3.org/
164,193 visits/year

http://www.timedoctor.org/
33,907 visits/year

http://www.gameqablog.com/
a paltry 4,827 visits/year but I've pretty much given up on this one.

and the only one of those that isn't using wordpress is this very specific site:
http://www.icculus.org/lgfaq/
193,376 visits/yr

Right now I really want to improve timedoctor.org and ioquake3.org, with various special pieces of content they get tremendous traffic, but both need more writers. Last year I rebooted timedoctor.org but didn't spend enough time on it which is why it has such low numbers. This year I'm spending way more time on it and I'm seeing much better numbers.

I think the lgfaq is limited more by the audience though I still need to figure out a way to get user-generated content into there.
posted by TimeDoctor at 11:57 AM on April 25

Just by way of comparison, my "smallish" site which I described having great difficulty in finding other writers for had 154K visitors in March, and those numbers were achievable only after years of unstinting commitment. Based on your numbers, it sounds like your sites are about a tenth the size, so I think it would be proportionately harder to find writers.
posted by DavidNYC at 4:39 PM on April 25

I've blogged in exchange for free stuff. My blog's editor provided some decent-looking business cards & an @blog email address, and encouraged me to ask companies and service providers for freebies and keep whatever I reviewed.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 6:19 PM on April 25

re:davidnyc yeah that is what I know but try to keep out of my mind so that I can keep producing; that really I just have too few readers and goals that rapidly outpace what I can actually scale up to :/
posted by TimeDoctor at 6:29 PM on April 25

re:pseudostrabismus: yeah I think the free stuff may be the way to go, I certainly have plenty of opportunities for people to receive things but sometimes I don't have the right people for that. like I get some free games and could certainly get more for review if I tried, just that when i've done that in the past the people I give them to have flaked out on their end of the bargain and produced absolutely nothing in return for the free games :/
posted by TimeDoctor at 6:30 PM on April 25

Sorry, TD - I realize my last comment might have sounded like a serious wet blanket. But I think you came to Ask MeFi for clear-eyed advice, rather than hugs, so I just wanted to be as realistic as possible.

What I will say is this: You should only write because it makes you happy. Very few people make a living from just blogging, and almost no one gets rich. Don't get me wrong - I love having commenters and healthy levels of traffic. I love the interaction. But when I started my site more than five years ago, I naturally had almost zero readers. But I wrote because I enjoyed it. If you stop enjoying blogging, or if it starts feeling like a chore, then it might be time to stop, or at least take a break.

One more specific suggestion: You may be spreading yourself too thin with all those sites. I know plenty of people do it, but I can't imagine trying to maintain more than one blog on my own. You may want to spend some time thinking about which site makes you happiest and just focus on that one site. It may also be that you can combine some of the sites.
posted by DavidNYC at 10:00 PM on April 25

None of them are successful enough with adsense ads to let me pay anyone just yet.
Does it mean that you count on "making a little money for yourself but not enough for your contributors"? This is wrong. If there is only 10 cents coming in from the writings of your contributors, it should be transmitted directly to them. Google Adsense let you do this: each contributor has his/her adsense identity and receives the revenue generated along their text. If you are promising "future earnings", freebies are not enough: you have to be clear and precise about the money paths, present and future.

And, generally, the best place to find writers for your niche topics is among your readers or among people they know. Have you asked them?
posted by bru at 9:01 AM on April 26

I just checked out your timedoctor.org site... and I'm just wondering what audience you're aiming to serve? What is your goal with the site? I assume you want to generate enough traffic so that AdSense can pay for the effort to create the site -- but I think that the math doesn't quite work out unless you have a really popular site with general topics... uh, sorta like Metafilter...? So are the posts on timedoctor.org supposed to be sorta Metafilter-esque?
posted by mhh5 at 12:18 PM on April 26

re: bru
No, that means nobody clicks on the ads and every two or three years when they finally go over $100 in my adsense account I get a check which I usually spend on whatever compadres I have writing with me or paying for the hosting of the open-source projects which take up the vast majority of the bandwidth (and adsense hasn't yet even come close to meeting).

I am 100% clear and upfront with those I work with. The day may come for there to be some profit but it certainly not today and as others have already pointed out my prospects aren't great. The "to let me pay anyone" includes myself. I spend more on others than I do on myself and while I don't know if it is a good idea /at this time/ I would certainly split the minimal revenue stream available if it seemed wise to do so.

Currently, I suspect that the various sites I have will forever be in the territory of produced with the intent of a large audience but lacking whatever it is that draws folks in enough to get them interested in writing in the same style.

I will indeed put a call out for more readers to become writers as so many have suggested, and that is still a good idea even if a few that I've got from that pool have turned into flakes.
posted by TimeDoctor at 2:28 PM on April 26

re: mhh5 yeah I've had trouble coming up with any description of what goes on timedoctor.org beyond stuff that impresses itself upon the other writers and myself. My real inspiration for it is jwz's livejournal, of all places.
posted by TimeDoctor at 2:30 PM on April 26

In my experience with this kind of thing, the only time these sites seem to recruit people is if you have writer friends who are willing to do it. Random folks submitting to a guy they don't know for free? Slim pickins, if any.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:20 PM on April 27