to put an ad asking aspiring writers/reporters/reviewers if they want to work for free for me?

[TheMagnificentBathykolpian]

Before I actually do it I'd like to know if folks think this would be taking the piss or a good deal.

I am building a tourism website. atm it makes nothing. I'm just building it.

It's a HUGE job!

I was wondering about inviting people to contribute reviews, or reports or articles on attractions etc.

I wouldn't pay them, cos there's no money (yet!) but they would gain experience, they would have their by-line, building up their cv and experience, and if it became commercially viable, then I could start paying people for articles.

Is is exploiting? Or piss taking? Or unreasonable? Or just a waste of time because nobody would ever be interested?

What do you think?

Well as a writer myself my motto is no money no words.
But I'm not starting out.

I too run a number of sites and blogs and tbh am inundated with writers who wantt to do it for free as experience. Some really can write well. So you could avail yourself of those writers. You do however, have to kiss some frogs to find a prince.

I now pay all my writers decently because a. my businesses make money and b. I need writers I can rely on.

May we know what your website is called?

Web development firm? There is no web development firm there is only little old me I pay BT for web hosting and I paid them to do the first set up for me. They gave me joomla and set me off with a few pages of utter shit I had to redo. I have full access to the back end of the website, and use this joomla to create each page and do everything myself. I've added loads of pages, links, photos, slideshow... I do it all myself.

Which is why I am looking at some help, tbh it's a massive job. But I am going to pay. Thanks to you lot for the reality check.

No. I don't want to be accused of trying to advertise. If you want a look, then I will pm you by all means - you can give your opinion on it!, but please don't link it or anything.

Okay, yes do pm me. I'm always looking at review sites.

In that case, since you haven't invested any significant money or skill time in it yet, you might want to consider the ways you can monetise it in the future from the get go (you know, have an overall plan of how it works as a business proposition vs. just something you're doing as a hobby thing - e.g. you say it's about an area so I assume you know it very well and are well placed to provide the content... but is there money to be made? Is there a niche that existing tourism sites are missing?)

Interesting what you were saying about online spend fgaaagh. I did a bit of work with an owner of a manufacturing firm recently. He casually mentioned his firm spends £50k a month on Google Adwords. And this was just an independent firm, one I'd never even heard of. I was like, wtf???

Oh yes. There is. Where I live is a big tourist area, but there is nothing that deals specifically with it. I want to make it everything you need if you are staying in the area. Plus information for local people too.

I hope to make the money from people paying to advertise - eg holiday lets, restaurants, local businesses etc.

Eventually, I'd like to make it so people can book holiday lets directly through us, for example.

I have many plans.

What I lack is money

But atm, it is a hobby rather than a proper business. That will come.

mdowdall thing is, that might be really good or really bad. you can't just look at the budget on its own. is he getting £100k of business (that CAN BE LINKED BACK TO THE SPEND!) from that, or is he getting 0.5 million?

That's really what my own industry lacks. We often take a lovely budget and spend it. There's no real attemptt to show what worked, why it worked, exact specific return on investment.

And that's where the internet can trump print media. or TV (I've never worked in TV though).

We're fighting a losing battle, in the more traditional marketing fields, if we think the ad agencies from 20 years will still be in business in 20 years. Many of them are already buying up internet arms or setting them up. The problem is that they're 10 years too late.

My own brother established his agency back in 1999? Maybe 2000? It was the height of the dot com bubble. Whilst he comes from a tech background, he's hired in marketing folk where he needed them.... the bigger marketing companies that I've been exposed to over the years are only in the last 5, 6 years realising that the industry isn't the same any more.

Quite sad really, to spend my entire life in (print) marketing and within 10 years its spend allocation has changed beyond recognition... if Mad Men were set in 2011, it would be in an internet marketing agency that Don would be working

I would suggest that the people you hope to approach to advertise be offered the "advantage" of being able to submit a 500 word article about their establishment/place of interest. But get a professional to do the home page and other non-establishment specific writing.

p.s. one of the large clients that my brother handled whilst i worked there was a cereal company (national brand but family owned, don't want to say any more - you'll have them at your local supermarket probably) and I was at the money they spent on one thing that i sat in the presentation for... it was something to do with eating healthy, and kids

they spent an astonishing amount of £££s on their online promotion, more than any other avenue. and that's for a company who'd spent 100% of their budget offline (in the channels i'm more familiar with) just 2 or 3 years before, now they spent £90% online because they could track it. scary amounts of cash tho!

OP I forgot to say good luck with it, how rude!

To be honest the online business is not as it used to be. My work is drying up because the sites I used to write for are not selling so cannot afford to pay me to write promotional articles. It's all very well putting your prices up once you are a pro, but if the work isn't there then you won't get anywhere.

I normally charge between £15 and £20 to write up to 500 words on anything from designer jeans to retail psychology and that includes the basic research (sometimes they'll send me books for research) and high SEO. Even at that price I will find that someone has undercut me. Few sites are arsed about high quality content, they just want someone who will fit in all their keywords at a rock bottom price. It's the way it goes.

Everyone needs to make a living and if I want the work these days I have to lower my prices. One client has gone bust and another is about to go under, both selling gifts and clothes online.

Perhaps I should join an agency???

LeQueen - I had one client send an article back to me because it was too well written! He said that he didn't understand some of the big words I had used such as enthuse and was worried that the visitors to the site might get put off. The article was on designer menswear.

The very next week I had someone asking if I could write them content on scaffolding, for 40 different towns in the UK, all with the same 15 keywords but each article had to be completely different. Sometimes I really do feel as though I've sold my soul.

But it puts food on the table so I mustn't moan

How do you other writers get such prestigious jobs whilst I'm here writing about scaffolding and kids clothes?

well Rhubarb0 when i worked at my brother's seo place, he was crying out for decent folk, i honestly cannot stress to you the lengths he goes to to get decent employees. and this was after the web industry crash in 2000, i worked there from 2003 to 2005 (basically after SAHP and wanting to get back into work!). although, they only had a couple of in house copywriters - they mostly outsourced that side because i remember dealing with the billing for their regulars. he mostly hired the adwords people, SEOs, technical folk who dealt with troubleshooting, or training people who went to customer offices and actually trained their web teams on best practice stuff... that sort of thing?

or, if you have a wider skillset you could always try to get a more general position in-house at an agency? I know my brother's firm is still recruiting. he moans enough about trying to get good employees (my DH is also in IT so they like to moan a lot together )!

Rhubarb - I do most of my work in internal communications, so writing for corportate clients' employees as an audience. A little bit of marcomms but none of the content farm work cos it's just too badly paid. I get most of my work through networking or through subbing to agencies - not employment agencies, but design/communications agencies who use freelance copywriters. Get in touch with some of them, do a couple of articles for free and if they like you they'll use you again. Good luck!

Word of advice - if you were to go the aspiring writers / reviewers route you could be setting yourself up for a whole lot of trouble in the plagiarism / copyright infringement area.

My company is frequently getting websites closed down which have copied our content, and I'm not talking just a paragraph here or there, who had paid 'professional' SEO companies to write original material. So I would kind of expect those not being paid to do it as well.

N.B. This is not a slur on all content writers just the unscrupulous few!

oh yes i forgot to add, my brother's agency hired his on a retainer basis, basically he hired them for a few hours a month guaranteed, anything above those hours were paid on top... but if he gave them less work, they still got paid their retainer fee.. maybe you could look at a similar setup?

I'm sure that was a very very standard arrangement, at least that's my perception, with the relationship between the actual SEO company and the content writers (which is an area my brother's firm never got into, mainly because he himself is from a techbackground i assume). Definitely look into approaching similar firms with this type of deal if you haven't already!

Sorry "hired his on a" should have been "hired his freelance copywriters on a"

Treas - there's an app for that!
But seriously, just take one of their paras, put it into google and if it's copied the article will come up.

fgaaagh - can you pass his company details onto me? I'll PM you my website.

Good point treas - if I was working for peanuts I'd be tempted to do a cut and paste job...

I work as a media buyer for an advertising agency specialising in travel and tourism so here's my twopenneth :)

To make a website commercially successful you need to attract advertisers. To attract advertisers you need to be able to prove a strong, affluent audience.

To attract a strong, affluent audience you need to have comprehensive and well written content.

The travel and tourism market is awash with websites so you need to have something really well put together, easy to navigate and with top quality information and features to attract people to it.

You're not going to get that if you ask people to send you features/articles for free. You will need to invest in the website from the outset if you want it to be commercially viable.

PM me if you want me to go into a bit more detail :)

I don't know - my dp is thinking about entering the world of journalism and would probably be up for helping as it will help his portfolio. If you are serious then feel free to PM me and I can pass it on to him! You may also, if you contacted uni's etc get some jounalism students willing to help...