Getting people to contribute

a.k.a free content!

[hdpt00]

I am in the process of starting a fairly large content site in a general niche.

Now what I was thinking to get some content was to email the webmasters that are authorities on the topics within the niches. I was going to offer them a backlink in every article they write as well as a page about them and their site.

Is there anything else I can do attract people to write content or things I should be aware of?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Rosalind]

I can't see this strategy succeeding until you have a site that already has a respectable amount of traffic or authority in its own right, or a decent PR. The better these are, the more people you will be able to attract to contribute to your site. Writing articles is a lot of work just for a backlink, so that link had better be worth it, and the best thing you can do to improve the value of that link is to work on the content and quality of the site first.

The other big problem with allowing other people to write for you is that they may have conflicts of interest that they won't declare. For example, I recently came across an Amazon reviewer who gave out nothing but 5 star reviews, all for obscure writers who happened to be published by the same small press. I'd be very surprised if that wasn't someone who worked for that publisher, writing under a pen name.

On the internet you really don't know who you are dealing with, and there are commercial gains to be made by manipulating reviews and editorials on seemingly independant websites. If you want to do this you'll have to check out your sources carefully or accept the risk that many people who volunteer content could be biased and less than trustworthy.