How to Solicit Freelance Journalist/Writer

I couldn't disagree more.

The guy is saying he has no money.

What do you want him to do lie or pay the writer to write until his bank chases him outta his home cos he has no money left for the project?

C'mon get serious will you and have some compassion.

JeromyS, I think you are on the right track. Some people are just pessimistic in nature. I'm usually one of them :p

But not this time. I think you can and will find someone.

If I were you I would advertise this position in your local community. There are many people that are both passionate and willing to do this kind of work.

In fact what you can do is run a competition for the best weekly article. Post the offer at high schools, old folks homes, writing clubs, colleges, sports clubs etc.

The winner gets his/her article on your site and they go into a draw to win some kind of prize ($100 voucher from Amazon) at the end of the year. You can then turn this into a daily competition.

There are so many company's and organizations that do this, just emulate them.

Don't listen to people who are being outright negative about the idea.

Most of the time I find it's usually writers who get their back up about this sort of stuff because they some how believe that if their competition is offering FREE then there is going to be no work left for them... they'll never admit it though.

Good luck and let us know how you go.

If only your philosophy would work, what a wonderful world it would be.

However, any budding journalist or writer who has any business sense is going to be pounding the pavement to find paying clients and building relationships with those paying clients in order to have them be loyal and repeat paying clients. They'll be marketing themselves both on and off line.

They'll also be working on building up their portfolios with their work to boost their value with potential clients.

There are also many other things they'll be doing to ensure that they are a success, but posting for free on an unestablished site with no market indicators of success and profitable return on their time and talent, probably isn't one of them.

That would be like if I were an unestablished young upstart freelance writer wanting to start my business and asking a web developer to build me a dynamic website in trade for exposure to their name/business from all of the people who come in droves to ooh and ahh over my profound writing and marketing ability and for perhaps a percentage of the money I may or may not make.

Do you see where I'm coming from?

I certainly can't blame a guy for trying though.

Nice try and Good luck.

Terra

I wonder if the OP is confusing his nascent site with a giant aggregator like the Huffington Post. People do write for free there, but it gets enormous amounts of traffic and has name recognition.

See the difference?

If you don't have money to pay writers, you sure don't have money to buy traffic to get the site off the ground.

fLufF
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The problem isn't necessarily the lack of up front payment. Given the right proposition, a percentage of future income could prove to be far more lucrative.

The issue is that this is a project starting from scratch. If I were looking at it, the things that would worry me are:

• You have started a project without planning appropriately. If you haven't planned this very well, I have little confidence that you will have planned the next stages of the project well, and it will ultimately fail. The other possibility is that you always intended on approaching someone to write for free/future % of income, and if this is the case then you're not an attractive partner to have.
• If you genuinely don't have the funds needed to pay for some initial content, then how can you persuade me you have the funds to pay for other essential requirements that the project will demand? For me to get paid, you need to succeed, and having no kitty does not inspire me with confidence.
• It's your community - why would you not write the content? If you genuinely expect the site to be profitable, why are you willing to throw leave that cash on the table?

You may very well have an excellent business plan, and I wish you the very best of luck with it. However, you may be hard pushed to convince a talented writer that this is an investment worthy of their time.

Good luck!

I am starting grass roots, it makes it tuffer, but not impossible. I could pay a writer, but for a very short period of time without revenue. What I am suggesting is intended to be potentially beyond just a job, do x for y.

Thanks

That is a good idea, yes, we have a small college. That is what I am thinking, hopefully. I certainly have put a lot into it, time, planning, money.

I have a plan for the site, it is being redeveloped right now. Local advertising is primary source initially, but intention to expand streams (based on model).

nascent, had to look that up I know clearly what my plan is, I am just one guy, father, working full time already and already challenged to make ends meet, I wish I had a budget to work with, but it hasn't stopped me from trying. I know what I want to build and I know the model works, because I see it operating with huge success not far from me. It would be grand to have a team of developers and a official business plan and prospectus, but I don't have any of that.

Now there are some good ideas! Thank you for these and your thought into it. I can totally see something like this working quite well.

Thank you, and your right, this is a tuff sell. But I have had a lot of planning and research into this, but maybe you are right, maybe it is financially out of reach....but yet I still believe in the project as a whole, just to figure out the details, and make it real!


Thank you everyone! I appreciate your feedback!

Jeromy