Syzygy - 8:58 am on Jan 19, 2010 (gmt 0)

If I solicit visitors, what would make them want to write for me when they could potentially make much more with their own competing site?

Vanity - nearly everyone wants to be a writer: seeing their own name published alongside an article is a powerful draw for people, and backlinks, of course. :-)

If visitors have knowledge or experience of whatever your site may be about then they are the perfect people to write about it. They can offer unique user or sector perspectives that professional writers can find hard to grasp. That depends on the nature of your site, of course.

Syzygy