How To Choose A Blogger For Your Blog?
I am converting one of my niche sites into a blog. It’s getting consistent traffic and I thought it’ll grow a lot bigger if there’s consistent flow of new content. From the looks of it, there’s really good potential. What better way to do that than turning it into a blog?
But the topic of the website is not really my thing. When I started the site a few years ago, I discovered that it’s a topic that is easy for search engine ranking. So I decided to build a website on it. I searched the Internet and bought a book to learn more about the topic. Then I wrote my own articles. But it’s clear now that the website can’t grow past a certain point without fresh new content added on a consistent basis.
Heck, I am having troubles adding new content to THIS blog. Clearly, it’s a lot more difficult to add content for a blog on a topic that you are not very familiar with. Even more when writing is not really your thing. Yeah, I can write. But I make the silliest mistakes and typos. And I don’t recheck what I write.
So that is why I am looking for a blogger.
How to look for a blogger? In the interview I did with Paul Short in Blogging Big, Paul recommended looking for people who are already blogging. From your candidate’s blog, you know that s/he’s good or not. You look at the way he writes. Paul mentioned that you want to find someone with a personality. It doesn’t matter if he’s funny, controversial, grumpy, silly… What you don’t want is a blogger that simply just ‘reports’ things in a formal way, trying to please everyone. You want a blogger that is not afraid to speak her/his mind because that will later become an attraction.
You also look at how people comment on his blog. If he gets comments, that’s a good sign. That means he’s able to interact with his readers.
When you are going with that method, then you’d have to look for bloggers at Technorati or even do blog searches on Google. You can even look at what videos on YouTube and learn more about the people who submitted the videos.
It’s a good way to find bloggers. May take a bit of time and bloggers which are already successful may be a bit more expensive. But you can be more confident of your choices.
But anyway, here’s what I also did. I went to Digital Point forum and started a thread to look for a blogger. Digital Point is a popular hangout among webmasters and netpreneurs. And there’s a section where you can offer products and services for sale or wanted. So I created a thread there.
Some members at the forum has responded to my “ad” and sent me a private message. And now I have eight applicants to consider. Most of them sent me samples of their writings. And a few are really good. But here’s a problem that I am facing right now.
How can I verify that they really write those articles or posts? Anybody can just point to almost any writing on the Internet and claim that they wrote it.
I am thinking of making them write a new article for me to evaluate. And I am also thinking about whether I should pay them for that or not. I am may have a good blogger who is not desperate for the money and will just think to drop out if I am not paying them for that ONE trial article.
OK, I can do a one-month trial. In fact I am planning to. But I can’t afford to do a trial with 8 applicants or even two. I can only afford one blogger right now.
So any ideas on how I should evaluate all these applicants?
