Thoughts on getting content written for free

How many of your professional services do you offer free?

My question is: How viable would it be to build your entire site by getting article "donations" from other people?

U will never build authority site then
reason: ****ty contents...

Plenty of blogs build their content this way -- even smaller ones. To be successful, you'll need to offer something in exchange, such as high traffic and/or PR do-follow links (which I'm assuming you're already doing). In fact, the higher your offer (traffic, pagerank for example), the more submissions you'll receive.

I guess it can work. Aside from having free content on your site, you are gaining friends in the blogosphere who can help you in promoting your stuff. In my case, I have met a group of people in the blogosphere and they read my every blog post.

Just be sure that you can generate good traffic to your blog/site.

Curtis, what could you possibly offer me, or any other self respecting writer that would match or exceed the value of our services?

Think about it;

3-4 hours research and writing for a pissy little backlink on an unknown website so you can make money off of our work?

Aint going to happen.

-Chris

I think for once someone is talking about getting free content without wanting to be skeevy. I could be wrong, but that is my opinion and that is how I took it.

Guest posts are part of marketing. That means a freelance writer shouldn't consider them the same as client work: they should be scheduled in your marketing hours, not your billable hours.

However, the fact that you are building a new website makes this a little iffy...why would anyone want to market on a brand new site.

Get some content. Get some traffic. Then when you have numbers, you can have a solid offer for guest posters.

If you want some sort of incentive to use...hmm..Inhave been racking my brain for the right thing, and I don't know your niche so I don't know what would work.

I occasionally take guest posts on my blog. However, I have very high standards and I find that most offers of guest posts are for crappy junk. The first time I took a guest post, I made the mistake of not making it clear that I reserve the right to reject it if it's poorly written and ended up wasting an inordinate amount of time redoing the thing to make it readable.

Now, with that introduction, yes -- you can get quite a bit of content through guest posts. However, I would highly recommend that you don't rely on that exclusively for three reasons:

1. It's not guaranteed that you'll always get guest posts that you want.
2. Your readers may be turned off if they see that you never post any of your own stuff.
3. If you get a reputation for this, you could be hit by Google as a link farm (and yes, I know it's not really a link farm, but any time you do something with total automation, I get nervous about Google getting annoyed by it).

My suggestion (what I plan to follow anyway) is to go with 50/50 split. Use a healthy number of guest posts to keep the amount of work to a minimum, but also do plenty of your own stuff so that you keep your site looking like a real authority site...

Eric

P.S. the higher your PR rank, the more likely people are to ask to post a guest post on your site.

If you offer some sort of incentives to your visitors it shouldn't be a problem.. It can be as simple as a point systems like yahoo answers has.

It's possible, but not practical.
As soon as I saw the topic, I knew the article writers would go into "attack" mode, because it is how they make their money. I totally get that, and I'm not trying to flame anything (Hence the quotes around the word attack).
As has been pointed out already, most authors would want more than a couple of links in exchange for their posts. For a new site, most people would not be willing to do it, because even the backlinks would not have much value. With your existing, established site, it is probably more likely as evidenced by the person who contacted you. Now that you've had one, it has opened the door for others, so your workload may decrease for your existing site.

It's nice to have a different voice to break up the monotony, but if you do it too much, the original voice becomes lost in the crowd. It's like going to see a great orator, and having them be one of hundreds who each only say one or two sentences. You'd be disappointed if not confused. Do you see what I'm saying?

Whatever you do, I hope it works well for you.

Best Regards,
Jim Waller

You need to have some standards for the article and the links.Otherwise your authority site will just be a link farm.

Ever heard of private blog networks?

Hello, welcome to 2010.

I mean if anything, see if it would work. It doesn't hurt to try something new. Personally I have never even thought of such a unique method to internet marketing such as the one you just described. Who knows, you might be able to build links, authority, and generate a solid and consistent income easily.

I say go out there and try it. I don't think you're going to find any good writers who'll do it. But you never know.

I think it's a great idea. Like you said, people (myself included) post articles to Ezine Articles without compensation.

You would get better response if you offered more than an outgoing link. Perhaps, if you have a big Facebook following you could post about the article itself and perhaps a post about the author as well.

Of course, you want to have the option to decline any content that doesn't meet your standards.

Start a forum...Even the writers that say they would never write for free actually do write for free on forums....Check above for proof.

(And forums can do very well in Google.)

You won't be getting anything free from me buddy. You want my skills and experience - show me your cash.

That's why I run a business, not a charity.

I'm having difficulty adding anything much to Chris Worner's post above, but ...

They don't really rely on that "as a business model". Or, at least, it depends on what you mean by "as a business model". But to the extent that it's true, it explains why article directories are barely a viable business model at all, at the moment (and are closing down all over the place), and why so many experienced people here think that even Ezine Articles may not survive (I don't actually agree with that, myself: it seems clear to me that they will survive, because of their management, longevity and widespread reputation, in all of which regards they're true exceptions).

And no, it wouldn't theoretically "work for smaller sites as well".

All IMHO, of course.

Thanks for this discussion, I really was reading what you said guys in this topics. Please let me add something.

The "guest poster" articles are free because you didn't pay them for writing but they get "two keyword-focused links to his website in the article" as you mentioned in your post, they get permanent backlinks from your website as a result and this is a long term payment from you.

In case you have a budget for buying articles and avoid this, go ahead and forget this method.

And if you don't have use it carefully and avoid black-hat websites that link from you or you will get infected as a result and put your website in trouble and maybe get banned even you don't know the reason.

I am speaking only for myself, but as a professional writer, and one not in "attack mode" - here are the issues you face:

You are somewhat correct in what some marketers and writers perceive might be one of the better uses for EZA. And let's suppose they are right, and they get clickthroughs to their sites and their articles also get picked-up by other high ranking blogs and web sites.

Top tier writers do use EZA for lots of reasons. But here are the flaws in your thinking and you and a couple of others have already touched on this:

You don't have an authority site - this one thing makes what you propose a simple decision for someone that writes high or even average quality content.

Why bother putting my content on your site? It's hardly an even exchange for better writers. I get a weak backlink for content that has high negotiable value - I don't think this is something I would consider at all.

You have no traffic - a new site, and you have not even mentioned how you plan to drive traffic to it - except through using the free content you want to receive.

It appears you want good content to attract visitors to your site, but a lot more needs to happen to make it attractive for writers to submit work for a link.

You received an acceptable article from a writer - congratulations! I am serious - this is a good thing.

Still, I would not consider doing it and neither would other top writers. My requirements are for sites to have at least a decent PR for me to submit work to them.

There are simply too many other productive ways to make better use of the content I write - whether it is for my use or use by my clients.

Obviously, the question for you becomes: do you need top quality content written by very good writers?

Honestly - though arguably - you don't.

Perhaps average content can help you a little in the beginning. But long-term, I have to conclude you would really suffer as a result of having less than very good content.

The question of having excellent, original content as opposed to a large amount of weak to average stuff is being answered with an emphatic "YES" for the great stuff by my clients. Judging by the prices for even basic, average content, this appears to clearly be an upward trend in pricing and value.

This is long overdue. Great content drives everything successful on the web.

Someone has already mentioned the "link farm" label Google may slap you with. This factor, along with a lower quality scores, are just some of the considerations you need to evaluate and work out. The "link farm" label is the one that is scariest to me.

Additionally, among many issues that EZA is facing is that they are "flatlining" as far as their traffic and rankings. Much of this has to do with the excessive amount of "spun and junk' content they have allowed for so many years. It is finally catching up to them.

In many marketing plans, submission to EZA is not a top consideration any longer - this is just reality. They will exist and survive, but their model will have to evolve a bit. If anything, they need to have much higher standards and raise the quality bar substantially.

At some point, it may be even be in EZAs best interests to drop their "pay to build their site" model. This has always been absurd to me and they don't have the kind of juice to collect fees from writers that continue to build their site and get them top rankings too.

Add their Adsense income to their current model and they've made lots of money awfully easily for the past decade.

As a professional writer, one of the best things to happen was Panda - and the future looks even brighter. There are some harsher, even more punitive measures Google will be applying to site owners that fail to adhere to what they have stated clearly and simply from the beginning:

"Give visitors a great user experience."

This has never changed - Google has never wavered about this singular purpose for existing.

I am glad to be where I am and doing what I do right now. I write, deliver and use the great stuff - this eliminates any worries about Panda, Farmer or anything Google does or changes.

Still, you have an idea - I've heard worse ones. Think it through a bit more and who knows?

I write articles to find an audience for what I have written.

If you are a new site, you don't have an audience, therefore, I would not be interested in giving my content to you.

how about offer them any advertising revenue sharing? Something like what squidoo does.

Building the site from user-generated articles is viable. As you've read, though, getting the flow of user-generated content of any useful quality started is the tough part.

You might be caught in a classic Catch-22. You need an audience, or something more valuable than a couple of links from a still-obscure site, to draw good quality content. But you need a decent amount of good quality content to build the audience.

Forget about the idea of posting a list of keywords for your donated articles - I can pretty much guarantee you'll get buried in digital compost.

Your best bet, at least in the beginning, might be to take a proactive approach and look for up-and-coming writers looking to build a record of being published. Offer them that chance, and if they can contribute acceptable quality content on a consistent basis, you can offer them a title of some kind. "Field Editor" or "Senior Contributor" are a couple I've seen in print pubs. "Field Editor for BigNicheSite.com" looks good on a resume or, depending on your niche, a journalism school application.