DTopSpirit - 1:34 am on Nov 8, 2005 (gmt 0)

Hi all,

I posted in this forum a couple of months ago with a question regarding allowing another site to use my articles, and received a lot of helpful answers, so I'm coming back with further developments and more questions.

A little background first - my website is a smallish (100 pages) site devoted to a particular sport that isn't all that high profile. I run it as a player, coach and enthusiast, and sell the occasional DVD of match footage or pay per download of matches - nothing huge at the moment - less than $50 per week. The website is a hobby more than a business really.

As an enthusiast and coach, I also write articles on the more advanced techniques and tactics of the sport. I like to write, so in the last 9 months or so I've managed to put together a collection of articles that I can safely say is probably unmatched around the web - especially from one writer. Being a lower profile sport this is not as hard as it sounds, but it did take me a lot of time (we are talking hundreds of hours here!). I am hoping that my collection of articles will also help attract a bit of traffic which will also help me sell a few more DVDs, pay per downloads etc.

OK, now to get to the point. My site is currently in the google sandbox (nowhere to be found for a search of the sport keywords), and ranking about 910 or so in Yahoo. I firmly believe that eventually it will be able to move up pretty high in the rankings and traffic will improve - but who knows when.

I've got two of the top 10 ranking sites for the sport wanting to use my articles - like I said there really isn't anything else out there like them (oh, the modesty!). One site simply wants to use the articles and is willing to give me credit and a link back to my site. The other site (which was using my articles on a donation basis from their readers, which we are renegotiating) is asking me what would I charge for exclusive access to the articles (just my site and theirs). They currently want to know how much I would charge per 1000 words. The problem is I have no real idea what to charge - I know they use the articles to help with selling equipment for the sport etc, so they must be making some money that way. Also the articles themselves give them excellent rankings on many keywords - as I've seen in Google. But as a top 10 site, they would probably get a ton of traffic anyway.

Finally, here are the questions -
What is the going rate for a 1000 word article in a lower-profile sport?
Should I allow one site exclusive access, or simply allow both sites to use the articles provided I get full credit, copyright and a link back to my site?
Would I be better off waiting to get out of the sandbox etc (at least 5 months and counting so far) and only putting the articles on my site? (These are top 10 sites and could send a lot of traffic my way - and I don't know how long it will take to start to rank where I should be based on quality).
Any other ideas or thoughts?

For those of you with the patience to get this far, thanks and I'm looking forward to any help you can give.

Greg

[edited by: engine at 3:16 pm (utc) on Nov. 9, 2005]