What to Offer Freelance Writers on Your Planned New Writing Site

You plan to create a new writing site, but there are already so many out there, how can you make your writing site better than other writing sites? Your goal is to have the best online writing site ever.

 

To get writers to not only flock to your site and submit many articles to your site, but to also have writers calling your site the best online writing site ever, you’re going to have to give them good reason to.

 

Research before fully embarking on your project should include:

• Studying other writing sites and their blogs and forums
• Reading reviews written by writers who are members at those sites - or who are no longer members!
• Reading the comments of visitors to those reviews

Your findings will most likely indicate that writers like different aspects of different writing sites – explaining why so many freelance writers submit their articles to more than just one site.

 

Logic dictates that you should offer freelance writers as much as you can, all on one site – on a site owned by you.

 

What makes good writers not even consider joining a new site, or make them leave that site?

• The site is only for writers who reside in a particular country
• There is a fee to join the site
• There is no payment option that the writer can use, or may have difficulty using
• It appears that some members abuse the choice of being able to vote down an article
• People may be struggling to get a Google Adsense account, and this is the only form of payment a site offers
• The site does not allow previously published materials
• The minimum length requirement of the submitted articles is quite long
• Members are not allowed to use their referral links when linking to other sites
• Members are not allowed to link to their own sites or other sites from their profile
• Spam isn’t dealt with quickly or properly
• There are no comment moderation options
• The writers name or date of article does not appear on the published articles
• There is only one way a writer can earn an income from submitting articles to a site
• Users are not also allowed to upload images to an image section, or bookmarks to a bookmark section (because these sections don’t exist on a site.)
• The earnings potential or payment structure is pathetic - and it’s obvious the owner of the site has the potential to make a huge fortune from submitted and published materials
• The site is untidy and difficult to navigate
• The pages take a long time to load
• There are hardly any FAQ, guidelines or tutorials
• Management takes more than 4 or 5 days to reply to an email
• Answered emails do not provide solutions to a problem
• Writers do not retain copyright or full rights of their articles
• It is expected that a tax form be submitted when some writers don’t even earn enough, or writers live in a country that requires tax details only after a person is earning enough
• The site publishes poor quality articles
• A writer has to earn quite a high amount before being paid
• Writers have to wait a long time to receive earned payments

Different ways that writers can earn an income from some writing sites

• Page views of their articles
• Ad revenue sharing
• Affiliate sales
• Selling their articles, with or without offering full rights
• Winning prizes
• Activity bonuses
• Voting up other articles
• Referring new users
• Referring visitors to any page of a site
• Making use of referral links and linking to their own or other sites

Can you create a site that eliminates all or most of the problems listed above, and that also offers freelance writers and those wishing to make extra income online more than just two or three different ways to make money? It may take a lot of planning and be quite expensive, but if you can do it, and can satisfy the wants and needs of every freelance writer out there, imagine how they would go mad submitting articles and promoting your site. You may just end up with the best writing site ever!

 

Original article on, and © copyright Teresa Schultz 2010