Including Paid Writers name in post

[alexsien]

Hi guys,

What are your thoughts on allowing paid writers to show their author name with the blog/articles they contributed to on an ezine site? Or do you advise on keeping them as ghost writers?

My thoughts:

Positive: they writers are more excited and might brag on other sites and/or contribute via comments.

Negative: People might get used to one particular author, or build a community around that author… it makes you reliant on that person. Also, competitiors could find the author contact info and look to hire them for their own site.

Thanks,

Alexander

[ergophobe]

One thing to consider as well - they might work for less and you might be able to hire better writers (nobody who writes for the New York Times is going to write anywhere without a byline unless they're handsomely paid I bet).

Personally, I have never published anything without getting a byline or billing on the title page. I would give that up for a price of course. But if two publishers gave me the same monetary offer, I'd go with the one who was going to give me a credit.

I know of photographers who will let non-profits use their work in exchange for a credit, for example, and I recently let one of my photographs get used for an internal government agency publication (dist. 1500) in return for listing my URL in the photo credit. They had no budget and these people are exactly the sort of people who I would expect to be interested in my topic. That was worth more than the paltry sums people are usually willing to pay for a small photograph.

So I suppose it depends on the writer's strategy and goals too I guess.