A Question to all the writers out there?? Would you do this...

Absolutely.

I think that that is a great idea.

But, could I trust you? (Nothing personal)

I am sure writers with nothing to lose might.

There have always been article directories that have shared adsense revenue with writers, and few of them have managed to survive the test of time.

And I never played with any of them.

Hi LMC,

I think it's a very good idea and it's a win win situation for both you and the writers. You won't have the headache of managing loads of content and at the same time the writers will be able to make some income.

All the best! Oh and if one of your websites is in the IM niche, please pm me! I would love to write content for ya

You've got a good idea but u must hire serious workers. And obviously you have to update content to keep it at the 1st page

Jayzee

How can you guarantee that?

If you could, then yes, I'm sure you'd get some writers to sign on. But experienced, quality writers are less likely (in my opinion) to take you up on this, and the inexperienced, low-quality writers who would may have the effect of bumping your site out of that number one spot.

Not saying it won't work, just tossing some things out there for you to think about.

This is an issue that I guess youre faced with when running so many sites - maintenance.

Steve, you mention 500 sites, but how many out of that 500 need to be regularly updated?

Surely it couldnt be all of them?

In principle yes, I'd do something like this.

It would depend on how much money could be made/what the percentage is versus how much content I am required to put out.

If the numbers were right for both parties I don't see why not. I actually like this idea, I haven't seen it suggested or done in this format yet.

Hey,

No it's not all of them, really it is my new websites that I need more content for, with the recent contextual changes in G's algo, content is becoming increasingly more important for newer sites.

How can I guarantee income?

Being really good at what I do.

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I guess what would really need to be created is a backend center for the writer to come in and track all the sites they are producing for, and there income, see what we see in regards to clicks and sales.

hmmmmm....

I just wish I had a force of 500 writers

Sure this would work as long as everything was transparent and on the table. When it comes to money you'd want to have a 100% foolproof way for both you and your writer to see how much revenue is generated.

A shared 1shop or Clickbank account would work well for this. Something you can both login to and see sales. For a skilled writer I'm betting you might have to offer more than 20 to 30% but I could be wrong. It likely depends on how much money is coming in.

I think it's a great idea with a ton of potential!

Well,

For example a simple solution is giving them access to my Commission Junction account as a link creator, they would be able to see sales and revenue to the site that is pertaining to them.

hmmmm... the more I think about it, the more I like it...

I guess I could increase the split... the whole system would be a win win, if they want more money, they target more keywords for us to market with in their writing, as the marketing side of things we would tell them good topics to write on... optimize and market those new pieces of content...

now I'm just publicly brainstorming.

I can do it but I will rarely do it. Why? It's a matter of trust. I have to trust you in order to earn your trust. The question is, who wants to be seen as a fool if anything goes wrong with the business arrangement?

And is it practically possible in this virtual world? Maybe it's not just for internet security reasons but for the fact that experience has taught many people some bitter lessons.

How many percent of transparency is enough to run such a JV? I don't really know because it might never be a 50-50 situation.

Steve, are the majority of your sites .shtml? or are they dynamic, using CMS?

Ramone,

80% of them are dynamic with author backends for writers.

Well yes, that is what is happening now...

However, I have hire someone purely to manage my VAs, go figure right...

I would love to create a system where I have no content worries, so the partnership would enable those with no web design, seo, or marketing experience make money on the web.

Sounds like it would be the perfect JV for those people that are always moaning about how they are willing to work hard writing articles but can't get their sites to rank in the SERPS.

Lee

Depends. Ultimately, who owns the content? If you and the writer opt to go your separate ways, who owns the articles that were written?

Dan,

Now that is something to think about.

Do the writers get to audit the books?

A 50/50 split sounds a little more fair to me. Your site wouldn't keep ranking without their content; their content wouldn't get them noticed in the SERP's without your site.

Definitely find a way to ensure you two are paid equally, preferably automatically.

Sort out the rights issues: what happens if they decide they want to stop writing for you? When do they lose the 50% they earned? Do they keep earning a certain percentage? What happens when you hire a new writer -- paying 50% to each means you're making nothing. But you can't penalize the new writer, either...

Lots of issues to think about.

Most people are looking at this in a short sighted way in my opinion. What I see here is the opportunity to learn first hand from someone doing it right.

Anyone who has great work ethics and is willing to work hard should see this as the opportunity to study Steve's sites and style, look at his conversion, be acquainted with his niches and learn how he spots profitable niches. This is what I see in this proposition as it would be dificult to write articles for his sites and be compensated without having access to most of this information.

In your free time when you are not writing for him, you would copy his method. And that is the greatest compensation. And as far as marketing is concerned, Steve has been so willing to share as much here a possible that I am certain if you had the right work ethic and the right attitude, once you earn his trust he will have no problem helping you with that aspect.

instead of all of the hassle of who writes for what when and where just take 20 - 30 % of your monthly take and outsource a heap of articles ?

Steve, I think you could be on to a workable idea. You've got some issues to smooth out, such as copyright ownership and the trust factor (trust is needed in two directions) but I think with the right writers it could work out well for you.

Good luck.

I think something like that would be pretty doomed from the start for most people.

For the writers, most people might signup for a deal like that initially, but after a few weeks they would start to complain and feel like they were being taken advantage of.

Way back when, I had a website in a particular niche that was monetized with Adsense. I wanted to start selling physical products, but wasn't setup as a business...so I just contacted people on ebay to dropship for me. Since their prices were so low, I was ok paying them the Buy It Now price and having them dropship to my customers. For the first few orders, they were happy. After that, the guy got mad...because he was doing all the work and I was making more money. This is even though he was making more than he was selling them on ebay.

For the owner, I think it's not even worth it either. You can just pay a project manager to come up with article topics, send them to the writers, and then upload them for you.

Hi LMC,

I know last year there were quite a few writers doing what you suggest. However, it was the writers initiating the deal.

They would ask if the website owner would install the free Adsense revenue sharing plugin on their website, set it to show their own Adsense half the time on new articles, then effectively take over the writing side of things.

I remember there where ways of setting the plugin to only display Adsense in rotation for the guest blogger's articles, but it was quite awhile back, so I am fuzzy on the details.

Cheers,
Colin Palfrey

Edit: I remembered it was Donna Anderson selling the course to writers, and at least some of them had done quite well at it, if I remember correctly.

I'd almost prefer to see a retainer plus commission, even if the commission was at a lower rate. Alternatively, some sort of guarantee of income, which may not be possible.

The reason is, if I'm writing for a site in exchange for profits, I may not have time to write anything else for anyone else. If the site doesn't pay enough, it will affect my income.

I will admit to having done this once, I created the content for a site in exchange for a cut of the income, but it didn't work out at all as the site was shut down before it started earning. I'd be hesitant to do it again without something other than a share of commission up for grabs.

I would do it, but how can sales be tracked on my end?
Not that you would be dishonest, but there would have to be some co-account on clcikbank or adwords or amazon, I would think.

As a professional writer, I say "no way." I have over 25 years of experience ghostwriting non-fiction books, website content, news releases, brochures and about anything else you can think of, and I would run from this proposition. IMO, only inexperienced writers would go for a deal like this. Why do I say that?

1. It's a percentage deal, and established writers work on retainer. Over the years, I have had dozens of people say, "I have a fabulous story which I'll tell you. You write it up and after its published we'll split 50-50." Of course, that's nonsense. Ideas are dime a dozen, writing takes time and talent. Plus, there is no guarantee it will be published or that it will sell well. This deal is the same sort of thing... an unlimited amount of writing for an unknown income.

2. The writer has no control over the business aspect of things. The sites will succeed or fail based on the business skills of the owner, not the writer. If anyone wanted me to consider an offer like this, I'd want to see a golden track record, and I'd probably run a credit report on them anyway. Successful entrepreneurs usually don't need to give away equity.

3. It is unrealistic to think that one writer could write/update 500 sites. Even if each site had as few as 1500 words (highly unlikely it would be so few), that's 750,000 words. That's the equivalent of 12.5 novels (the average novel is 60,000 words) that needs to be written in a relatively short time period. Not many people have the ability to write that many words with any consideration for quality. I'm a journeyman writer and my best year was 5 non-fiction books totaling 310,000 words. Yes, a whole year.

Then there is all that time, as the OP says, of uploading and tracking content. That's not writing, that's entry level tech work. Someone trying to write 750,000-1,000,000 words or more won't have time for this sort of thing.

Sure, you can break out the job to may writers, but that means less money for each, so it's not too practical.

Average/overseas writers get 3 cents/word for the common website drivel, but good writers get 10-15 cents per word or more. If actual sales copy is involved, that is worth far more. Really good sales copy writers get $1 (or far more) per word. So what kind of writing does the OP want?

I understand the OP is just trying to get feedback, and I appreciate that. He has gotten all kinds so far. This is my feedback based on lots of experience.