I'm just curious about whether anyone here runs a collaborative blog of one kind or another, and what you think of them. We do this with the six figure challenge blog, and it seems to be working well for that. But that's because it's about five people, so obviously we'd all be contributing. What about more general blogs on a niche subject? Would you suggest going the revenue-sharing route with a few bloggers together, or just doing it on your own? I'm thinking about testing it out on an indie music blog, but I'd like to hear from people who are already doing this before I make a final call if possible. Thanks. Jenn
I tried a collaborative tech blog a year ago with a couple of friends.. divided the workload and posting schedules. Definitely made it easier to run the site because one person focused on design, another did promotion and one specialized in content research and everyone rotated posting duties. We divided Adsense revenue, not much but it was a satisfying experience. I was actually thinking of setting up an indie music blog myself but thought too much work was needed to make it successful (ala Pitchfork).
Personally I could never do this, I still can't do group projects in school. I don't believe that others' work is as high quality as mine, and its sort of true. I'm first in my class and get worse grades when others work with me on stuff. On a blog, I'd think that the other person isn't a good enough writer, or has bad grammar/flow.
Austars, I was always a lot like you. I don't like having to trust someone with anything in my business but me... to my detriment sometimes. Just to clarify... autorave, I'm not talking about sharing design work, promotion, and content. I'd be setting it up, hosting it, maintaining it, promoting it, and creating content. Content is the only thing that would be collaborative, and any shared pay would be based on posts (using a basic revsharing plugin), so it wouldn't be any extra paperwork for me or anything. It would also be easy to cut people off if needs be, b/c it would be a joint ownership (at least not in the indie music one I'm thinking of trying it with). Down the road if it worked out, I wouldn't mind partering with someone more thoroughly on something business-related, but I don't want to jump right into that. I'm mostly just wondering if the hassle of having other regular contributors set up would be worth it for the benefit of more frequent posting. I wouldn't earn on their post pages at all, but it might drive enough of an increase to the blog in general to make it worthwhile.
I think it would be worth a shot. Sometimes multiple bloggers can give a blog a more exciting or dynamic feel. What ad programs are you planning to run on the blog?
I'm just going to be using a revenue-sharing plugin (for wordpress). It's working ok for the six figure challenge blog, so I don't see a reason to change. It means people are getting paid for what they write, and not for anything I or other writers do, and it keeps the general pages for admin ads, because I'm taking all the cost, management, and putting in more promotional effort than they'd have been able to handle on their own or afford if they simply went it alone on the blog. It also makes it simple for them to leave if they want to, or if I need to remove them for some reason, but would allow their posts to still earn from them, so they know no one else is simply taking over the rev for their work. I work with one person already, who I'm trying to get on board for the indie music blog. I'd like to start with just the two of us, b/c he's outstanding and I know he cares more about the artists than the money (let's face it; an indie music blog isn't going to bring huge earnings immediately). That brings up another question though. If a writer isn't a webmaster, and has no adsense account, are they able to sign up based on a collaborative ad-sharing site? He could probably sign up easily, b/c I think I'm officially attached to my zine and not that blog (it was my second site, but I let it die for a while). However, would that be a problem if we had other writers sign on? I suppose I'd better hound google to be sure. I know they could just set up a blogger account and post a few things to get approved, but it seems silly to force them to set up a fake site they don't plan to maintain. We'll see.
I run a 'soccer' blog where I basically do everything. I cover news, do the design, cover the hosting and everything else. I ask for regular writers because the sport is very much about opinions and I felt that my own views can always be somewhat muddled. People responded and the blog is much better for it. It's been hard keeping writers because as first they see it as novelty and it soon wears off. You'd have a much better chance if they were to get paid for it. But variety is the spice of life and I try to have a different writer for each part of the blog. Ie. I have someone who does home match reports, someone who covers away games, someone who does strictly opinion pieces, someone who does this, that... I'm still the main contributor and post it in every day - Religiously. It's a labour of love that's turned into a good revenue stream but the community soon built up around it. Paying would definitely work
I won't buy blog posts outright. The reason is because, like with yours, it's more of an opinion/commentary thing. When I assign projects, I pay for them, but I keep that on the zine. This is more casual, and more of a place for people to plug indie bands they happen to like rather than ones that go through the scrutiny of having everything reviewed by me and / or my assistant editor before we consider it. I'm still thinking I'd like to keep it as just him and myself at least at first to get traffic built up. Then maybe I'd pull in other music writers I've worked with and trust. I'd pay outright if I wanted to buy something from an actual industry insider periodically... just not for opinion-pieces and general commentary outside of them taking any ad revenue. On another note, for those who have done something collaboratively, have you worked with one other person or many (or both)? Any preference on which model might be better? I suppose I"ll just have to jump in and do it to really find out. I just like to pull as much info as I can before I dive in and do something wrong. Thanks for the feedback so far.
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