Sandra G asks:
I am currently building a community review based site for my niche and I was wondering how to seed it, do I pay people to write reviews and if so, what are the guidelines such as how much to pay per review? Or should I hold a contest, the most quality reviews in a given time period wins something, money or a prize?
Great question and one I think a lot of people will be interested in hearing the answer to. I will try to break it down to each section.
Paid Content:
I have always had a massive problem trying to find authors to write content they were not very familiar with. It just never works. While I understand the need to want to seed the site I feel this method will leave you frustrated (and broke).
Revenue Sharing:
Going blind and not knowing what your website is about I would say revenue sharing is probably your best bet to incentive users to start using the site. There are several ways you could do this but the easiest way is to run the users ads on pages they wrote. This would be fairly simple to setup on almost any content management system.
Contests:
I am a huge fan of contests and I think to get this site started and get the initial word out contests might be a great way to get people to the site. Things like revenue sharing might push them ever the edge to write content though. Contests can also be a great way to make a site go viral through the “buddy system”. Basically you refer a friend to the site and if they win you win. Works very well.
Naturally Interested:
Again not knowing anything about the niche its hard for me to guess on some of these issues. One thing from my own experience with fighters.com - We placed ads in craigslist in major cities all over the united states and we were flooded with requests from people who wanted to write for the website for free. In closing I just want to say I am a little concerned as to why you are having issues seeding the site with reviews. If its something you are truly passionate about I would think you could just keep writing reviews yourself. Maybe its a much bigger niche then i am thinking though. Hopefully some of my answers gave you something to think about!
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 102 comments… read them below or add one }
I would echo the post, if you’re passionate about it, writing reviews is easy. If you aren’t, maybe you should reconsider running the site, as you’ll probably get bored of it quickly.
I agree, but at the same time, even if you love something there’s only so much of it you can do without going crazy. I love working out but if I forced myself to spend 24 hours a day every day at the gym it probably wouldn’t be as much fun anymore, you know?
When you’re paying you don’t always get the right person!
you are better off writing your own content
sometimes you love to write about a topic, you start a blog and then you start other blogs or services or anything and run out of schedual – Paid content is not bad if it is of same quality (or better) as you will write yourself.
Several paid articles are definitely not bad. But those should be ordered privately and not like the blogger proposed, as I understand, to everyone who wishes to write a review.
I concur! Trying to motivate oneself to write about a topic one is less than passionate about sure doesn’t lead to prolific writing!
True, if you’re not passionate about it enough to seed the blog, then maybe it’s not right for them, unless it’s just a blog that they are using to set and forget it to collect a few daily adsense clicks… then are trying to multiply that over many blogs.
but maybe they just don’t have a good formula for writing that produces good content day in and day out.
I like that word “formula” especially when applied to content writing….point well taken.
formula for what?
Yup.. Writing shouldn’t be tough if you are passionate about it…
Yes I agree. But then again if you love something enough, you’ll always find your way to writing an interesting or creative article about it.
Yes I agree. pay people to write reviews is the bestway to have quality reviews. $50 one review is enough.
Contests are a great idea, you don’t even need to spend a lot of money, just give away an iPod or something and you’ll get a bunch of people wanting to help out.
I’m gonna have to agree with you on this! I’ve seen contests change a blog or website getting maybe 5 visitors a day to somewhere closer to 1,000.
As long as you’re giving away something everyone wants. Not mickey mouse stickers or something like that.
Yeah, people are suckers for that. They’ll do whatever it takes to get it!
I’m currently giving away $100 to the reader who submits the best 500+ word article on anything related to small business or entrepreneurship.
We’ll see how it goes!
Matt
Good platform to promote a contest from! I am going to take a look at your site right now! Cool experiment. Would love to see your analytics from this exercise!
on which website?
Yup, if you site attracts a large number of readers, then you won’t have a problem getting a sponsor for your contest prizes and increasing your traffic in the process.
I would agree, paying people doesn’t work because you will get a lot of people that will say a bunch of useless stuff and expect to get paid.
Contests usually work because there’s something in return for people to share their unique ideas…
Even so, You would probably be surprised how many people just enjoy talking about what they know, so you might end up finding people who will write just for the heck of it!
I agree Patel, paying for people to do reviews is risky and will generate often dishonest and in accurate content. I think the best idea is to have rewards for the most voted on reviews and then have other readers vote for the reviews to gage the winner.
But good content writers write good reviews which attracts visitors
Not always, It also depends on how you market your content. My marketing all the big bloggers came into the view!
Yes true, especially if they’re able to produce keyword rich content. Then their articles are always amongst the best ranked pages on search engines.
Damn, Jeremy, you’re just pumping out real content that helps people all the time. I love these “tips” posts. Keep it up!
I’ve got a DIY site… diyreviews.net, that I just started a Guest Author program on. Since the site is still young, I am using an Adsense rev sharing plugin, that rewards authors with an equal share of impressions, based on providing 10 posts to the site. As readership grows (Only 22k views in the first 3 weeks)… I hope to monetize in different ways and allow authors to use their own ads on their posts as well.
ie: You provide 10 posts – you get an Author page, and your adsense pub id, goes into the system, and it rotated equally among all authors.
I have only had one signup thus far, so I cannot say it has been a success yet! Still working on it though!
M
Great idea Mark! I’d be interested in the plugin you’re using. Is it custom built or publicly available?
@ Ed – Its just named “Adsense Revenue Sharing Plugin” LOL I got it from: http://www.maiq.info/work/wordpress/adsense-revenue-sharing/
It works by displaying only 1 Pub id per page, which keeps it within the G-adsense TOS.
Sounds like a great plugin. Will have a look!
I’ll try it also
This plugin was interesting to me, too, but when I checked it out, I found that is only compatible up to WordPress version 2.5.1… Looks like it isn’t planned to be updated or supported any longer. Too bad!
Danelle Ice (Homemaker Barbi)
Jeremy,
The title of this post seems grammatically incorrect. But maybe you did it on purpose. =P
Nice analysis of each incentive.
Nice post Jeremy. I’d sure like to see how you wrote that Craigslist job posting. One of the things I’ve found to be very successful in the forums that I run is giving simple recognition to people who post high-quality content. For example, on my forum for coin collectors I allow members to nominate other members for “thread of the week” by simply clicking a button at the bottom of a post. At the end of the week, the nominations are tallied and each member who got nominated gets a note letting them know how much their posts were appreciated. I think most sites could use some sort of recognition program to help encourage people to make great posts.
I like this idea for blog comments. Maybe a tally of most replies to a comment, a winner for the week.
I’m running a contest and it’s always tough getting the word out. Plus you have to go where that niche is to find those people and if you’re picking a niche you know little about that can harm your chances also. Good Luck with it.
If you need “user generated content” to seed your site I would go with paid content. While I had mostly bad experiences with paid content, too. I had good experiences when I used it just for “user generated content” and got good ugc-quality-content.
You always have good ideas. Keep up the helpful posts!
I think if you give people what they want and cut the BS the interest will be there.
I have to agree
I would say if you are not passionate about the subject you are writing about.. Then chances are you won’t make it in the long run..
No, I am not agree on this, if you marketing is good than you can get good visitors
Awesome post… Right in line with some questions that I have about getting my blog into better shape…
Thanks Shoe…
I’d imagine a really good place to get clients for this would be trade shows and conventions. Especially home and garden trade shows. Those shows are freakin dead these days and most of the companies already paid the non-refundable price for the booth setup.
I’m sure they’ll be all ears.
^ Uhh… mb wrong post. heh
paid content is always a huge failure in my eyes
Yes, 95 times it fails out 100
I wouldn’t advise on paying for content either. With all the possibilities out there to get traffic, content or whatever, a little bit of creativity will do much more than money!
People are always willing to pay money for the excellent idea and pastime.
But there are hardly those who share good ideas!
Shoe, still looking for a response from you on the Facebook offer from the newsletter.
Shoe, you should be able to subsidize a few of those coupons yourself, considering the google juice you are getting … your post announcing that the coupons would be in the newsletter appear 6th for the search kewords:
facebook coupon
I really like the contest idea, but I’m struggling with one right now. I don’t have a big budget, but I’m giving away a $100 dollar gift card to a niche related store…something people should be all over. All they have to do is subscribe to the newsletter. Easy right…I can’t get people to sign up. Not sure what the problem is.
Well I would go out buy the gift card take a picture (better yet a video) of it and post it up on your site. If your visitors don’t trust you then you are not going to get far.
How much traffic do you get? Maybe you’re not getting enough traffic to make a difference.
I like the idea of revenue sharing. With this idea and local affiliate, I have a lot to try!
Don’t think paying for content is the way to go.
He should write his own posts
Hi everyone,
One of my partners in developing the site sent in the question and I just wanted to clarify what the site is about. It won’t be a blog where we will be writing reviews on products, it will be reviewing businesses in our niche. Unfortunately, I don’t want people to come to the site and see that it’s a ghost town and as much as we would love to write reviews all day, there are 4 of us and writing reviews all day long isn’t possible. Since this will be a user generated content site, we need to kick start it somehow. I have heard that paying people for content can be good but mostly bad. Holding a contest for the person who writes the most reviews sounds more likely but seeing as how this is our first UGC site, we were looking for ideas.
I really appreciate Jeremy and all the others who commented, you’ve given us a lot to think about and I will keep you updated on our efforts.
Everyone is doing a contest these days. lol. Even the bloggers that supposedly “hates” contests are starting or promoting them because they incentivize.
-Mike
Thats because they are cheap, easy and offer great publicity.
Yes and also everyone loves to win free prizes
Because everyone wants visitors
People are naturally attracted to “competitions” and “games of chance”. We all have an inner gambler somewhere, and the word “competition” is definitely a keyword that get the juices flowing!
Haha, I totally agree. But somehow I am not too fond of these recent MarketLeverage contests! The contest should not involve anything difficult!
im just about to ask same question with Sandra G, thx for ur answer !
I don’t really care if my visitors leave comments I just wish I could get them to click my adsense ads each time they visit!
you tell very honest bos……yes, me too
Paid content and paid reviews is good sometimes. But you have to select relevant reviewers and writers who knows their job very well and have a good understanding of your niche.
are agree with you
But still contest is best to get visitors
I love to organize competitions! The main task – to make a good deal of competition and good prizes to winners. -)
I’ve seen contests change a blog or website getting maybe 100 visitors a day to somewhere closer to 3,000
It means contest is very powerfull tool…
Yea contests are great ways to attract more visitors to a site
how long contest will give traffic effect for our site…a month? two month?……how often doing contest bos?
I also think that blog contests are the way to go in order to make your blog popular. The main issue with that strategy however is – what happens after the contest ends?
I can’t stand revenue sharing sites! there is no way that writers can really track their true earnings. The website owner can make $3000 but instead of giving you 50% they can give you like 10%. I think people are catching on to the revenue sharing scam.
I look forward to the honesty of people. I try to do business as honest. I think there are still honest people on earth. -))
a good point to talk.
If you’re running a contest and trying to get the word out, one possible way would be to use PPC to promote it.
Thank you for another great post Jeremy, you’re just pumping out real content that helps people all the time. I love these “tips” posts. Keep them coming.
If you don’t mind me asking what did the Craigslist ad you were running look like?
It sounds like you got a good response for people that were willing to contribute for free.
I am just looking to see how you worded it so you didn’t give away to much about your plans in the ad.
I have seen some contests make blogs go from rags to riches (I mean, making then popular). It depends on the prizes you are giving away and the way you promote it.
From that list all i care about is Contest, you just can’t missed that one because that is the thing that everyone wanted
I agree with you about Craigslist. It can be an excellent marketing tool if done right.
Craiglist is a great tool to market your site
I agree it can be a great way to promote your site
yeas you are right on that point. its really great, i know it from a friend of mine.
I already use it…..free good tools…
These are great tips, I agree with them all. Especially contests. Contests are a great way to get your well known and to get people to join in
I agree! I mean if you are really passionate about what you are writing about then definitely a plus. Also I agree with the craigslist comment also! Good read
These are really good and even better.
This read is very interesting and will make others realize lots.
Very good ideas. I will be implementing a few into my site!
This is yet another very informative article Shoe. Will help a lot of us bloggers out there trying to make it big. Thank you!
Yes, Sandra G. Promoting a contest is a proven and winning Web promotion strategy to drive visitors to your Web site, RSS news feed or Weblog. Also, you should post original Weblog entries yourself to improve your online Web presence.
Yes, paid reviews and paid content are both outstanding choices for Web promotion; however, caveat emptor: you get what you paid for. Cheapness equates to poorly written articles with which I wouldn’t dare line my little Rottie’s play pen.
Consider outsourcing work to veteran reviewers and writers, each of whom has the total command of the English grammar. If you heed this advice, you should fare well.
Best regards and take care.
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Thanks!
Steve
very natural ways bos….need more extrem…..
i did have some positive and negative experiences with paid content. you just have to find the right person/s for the job. Goodluck!
I agree Shoe. Contests are an excellent way to incentivize (is that a word?) users to get content to your website. Promote the contest well in advance to gain apprehension and excitement and you will see better results.
You always have good ideas. Keep up the helpful posts!
I’ve actually been thinking about doing some revenue sharing for content.