How to Hire Bloggers and Start Your Own Blog Network - Part 1


by Iszuddin Ismail - Date: 2006-12-15 - Word Count: 665 Share This!

Looking at the number of blog networks that are around, I wonder what it will be like to start one of my own. I am sure you are familiar with names like 9rules, b5media, Gothamist, Weblog, TechCrunch and more. Yes, they are all blog networks.

Now, don't get the wrong idea here. At the time of this writing, I haven't started a blog network of my own, but I wanted to know how it can be done.

While browsing through a list of blog network that I found online, I came across a familiar name -- Paul Short.

Paul Short and I were advisors at a private forum about a year back. Paul and I each have our own unique expertise when it comes to running an online business. I do a lot of list building and affiliate programs, while Paul is a master at blogging and search engine optimization.

And little did I know, over the past one-year or so, Paul has been quitely building his own little blog network. It's called Gomaud Media.

When I learned about this, I sent Paul an email and asked if he'd help me with this issue. I want to know how to hire bloggers and build a blog network. I wasn't sure that I'd be doing it, but I sure want to learn how it can be done.

So he replied and later we got on the phone talking about that one thing -- how to hire bloggers and start a blog network.

The call lasted for over an hour. And Paul shared interesting things about starting your own blog network. One of the things was about where and how to find a good blogger to blog for you.

It's hard training people how to write and how to blog. When you want someone to blog for you, it's best to get an actual blogger. Maybe there are few things that you can teach the blogger, something about how many posts they should do a day and things like that. But in general, you want somebody who is already blogging because they are already familiar with the technology and the culture.

And to do that, you can look at sites like Technorati and Digg. These two sites index the content of blogs from all over the world. What you need to do is just search for blogs within the niche that you are pursuing.

Now, here's a tip when looking for a blogger. Look for a blogger that has her/his own voice when writing. What I mean by this is that they must have opinions on things and not just sit on the fence all the time. Why? Because bloggers like this will attract a lot more readership. People would always want to know what you think.

Now that you have your blogger, you can start building your blog.

How do you work with your blogger? From what I understand, if it's your blog, you need to prepare the blog, do the hosting, get the domain name, do all the designing, do all the optimization, install all the plug-ins, do all the marketing ... and your blogger, will just login and blog.

And how much do you pay a blogger? Well, there are lots of models that you can use. But for Paul, he offers around $5 per post and expects around 60 to 100 posts. But when revenue from the blog grows to a certain level, they might go into a revenue-sharing model. But I guess, by the end of the day, you need to discuss this with your blogger and agree on something that the both of you are comfortable with.

I think that's a fair deal.

Of course, Paul and I talked about more things during the call. We talked about how much to pay a blogger, how to promote your blog, how to monetize your blog and a lot more. But I can't tell you everything that Paul shared with me without having to write a novel.

But I think, getting a blogger is a step closer starting your own blog network.


Related Tags: blogging, blog network, hire bloggers

Paul and Iszuddin (Kidino) talked over an hour about how to hire bloggers and start your own blog network. They segmented their discussion in seven topics - 1) choosing a topic for the blog, 2) preparing the blog, 3) working with bloggers, 4) writing your blog, 5) promotion, 6) managing your blogs and 7) monetizing. And one interesting thing that Paul shared was about a little-known monetization tactic that is bigger than Adsense. To learn more about starting a blog network, head over to http://www.BloggingBig.com.

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