Forum Moderators: phranque
I have neither. I do have years of experience as a developer however. What are the options for someone who's technically very able but somewhat lacking in the creativity department?
I don't know what your site is about, but if photos are possible, they are always a big help. Video interviews or video explanations are also very helpful to create a buzz for your site.
Content isn't "just" about writing. There are other forms of content too! :)
For example, viral marketing and word of mouth. People have an insatiable appetite for sites which are genuinely fun and/or useful and/or socially engaging. (Who would have thought?)
If you are not writer material and you want a successful site, you'll have to pay for content, especially if your goal is to make an income.
The business owner who does his own editing, programming, sales, marketing, technical administration, employee supervision, payroll, accounting, licensing, compliance, insurance, answering of phones, sorting through mail (snail & electronic), etc. doesn't have any time left over to do all the OTHER tasks needed to run a business! :)
You could do a series of podcasts and put them online.
Then, for the indexing benefits, have someone transcribe the conversations, and there you go -- instant content.
If its a time constraint, that's another matter. You might consider college kids
who need beer money, but make sure they don't just plagiarize. [Copyscape helps.]
If you have sufficient interest in some topic, I think you could do some good writing. -Larry
Remember that users can create content too.
Yes, but they need some incentive. I see so many empty sites where the webmaster is just waiting for it to be filled up with content by visitors, and it just isn't going to happen.
You need to pose questions for the knowledgeable people to answer, and answers for eveyone else to read and maybe disagree with or add to, to get a response. So you need content to get content, which puts us back where we started.
I do have years of experience as a developer however.
Then build something nobody else has built before: a custom system tailored to the needs of content writers who want to make a profit. Give them a rich console of feedback and analysis tools that tell them what their ROI was on past work, and where they might best spend their future work time. Automate absolutely everything for them that you (and they!) can think of (e.g., I want to select some of my pages from a treeview control and push a button to add the word "widget:" at the front of each of their title tags).
Once you've got the world's best system for content writers, go out and sign them up. Take 15% of the cut for yourself, tell the best writers "why write content for someone else when you can keep 85% of the revenue yourself, retain ownership of the content, and get to use the coolest, most automated content development system on the planet?"
If you can hook up with someone who really understands the creating-content-for-money processes, you could make a killer system and sign up some really good talent.
IMO :-).
