Smashing magazine is running a contest to find new professional writers and is giving a MacBook Air as a prize.
While I was contemplating whether it would make sense for me to participate in the contest, I started thinking about the general issue that a high profile/traffic blog or site encounters: how to find and recruit new talented writers. And then an idea came to me that might prove to be a solution completely in sync with the current trend of ‘social everything’: crowdsource blogpost writing.
How on earth would that work? Well, not much to wonder about, because it actually works.
Let me explain:
Blog posts and the comments they attract have long been considered in unity. The post might be correct or not, might be complete or not, might be original or not. Regardless of what it is aspiring to be, comments tend to ‘correct’ it. Commentators might have more information than the writer and they can contribute it. They might also pin point errors, either in the thinking or in the referenced material. They might add insights to aspects the author has never considered etc.
If you have even a small blogging experience then all the above is common ground to you. But how does this relate to new blog posts?
Simple. One has to initiate the same process before a post is published.
How would that work in detail?
One option that I considered is this: the publisher (i.e. the blog or magazine owner) makes known his intention to utilize crowdsourcing, and invites interested writers to contribute.
Writers register (if they haven’t already) in a private wiki and offer whatever they think fit on a case by case basis. Contributions can take many forms:
- Submitting an idea for an article
- Submitting a draft article
- Correcting an article
- Complementing and or documenting an article
- etc
Fees for the work contributed can be based on the words submitted that were included in the final post. We are not talking a lot of money here, but we are not talking a lot of work per individual either.
A bonus system that will increase the per word remuneration based on the amount of past contributions can work out the incentives needed to keep people hooked in. The remuneration of the submission of ideas has to be different though. Could be a flat fee or a percentage of the total article cost.
If you like the idea, well, let’s crowsource this post and make it better. No money will be involved though, just the glory 🙂
Photo by emdot
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