For the last couple of years I was spending my hobby time on building a blog in a rather narrow niche - a particular aspect of software development. As many other hobby writers I found it difficult to write regularly and would happily receive some assistance. I keep my site open for the readers and sometimes site visitors posted own articles, but it was never enough.
Therefore since about a year ago I am permanently looking for the freelancers on the topic. I posted ads on Performacning job market, another blogger job board, even contacted authors of the other blogs in the niche. This way I was able to find several writers including the good ones, but never I managed to get as much regular writing as I wanted.
Your skills are wanted
The reason is simple - there are not many writers in any specialized niche. When a person is a professional in his area, he is likely to earn his living from the day job activities and is rarely really interested in freelance writing (unless he is professional in freelance writing). He might like the idea of earning few extra bucks and becoming a known authority in the niche, but chances are that his interests will erode over time.
Certainly, there are excellent writers in any niche, but to get those you got to pay a lot. As a result I believe there are many mid-to-low budget bloggers all the time willing to get more writers on the board. These authors can be novices in blogging, might not commit to the strict schedules and still be very valuable - it is their specialized experience that makes their work attractive. For instance, when I manage to get an experience software developer writing on my blog, I am more than eager to provide him with blogging related advices and even to do the whole editorial part of work.
Got profession - got blogging money
The bottom line is simple. If you have skills in pretty much any area, you can easily earn extra $5-20 an hour by freelance writing in a relevant niche blog - the writer's skills are not important. If you want to explore the opportunity:
- advertise your willingness to write on the Performancing job market or some other blogging related job boards
- contact the authors of the blogs in your niche. Looks for the blogs that do some advertising, but are not exactly big sites with real journalists
- if you are a software developer, contact me at artem.marchenko@agilesoftwaredevelopment.com
Picture cortesy of e-magic @ Flickr
Looking for specialists - The other way round :)
I always experience it the other way round :)
Monetization: Look for specialists - Offer content development
(In moderation queue at the moment of comment publishing)
Both perspectives are valid
I guess it depends in whose hands is more passion for the success of the whole adventure.
I am focusing on the case when the one who wants it most is the one with a blog already. You seem to be focusing on the situation, when the passionate one doesn't have much web skills.
Certainly, both situations are valid. It's just so that apparently I experienced the lack of authors more, than you did. That might have something to do with the the level of specialization welcome in my niche ;)
You guess right
A) You are right and I immediately saw your (!) point.
B) My situation is so obviously the other way round that it was a sudden inspiration for the meanwhile published article.
I can write, take pictures and do in-depth research on any topic one after the other but I would love to have more specialists willing to pay me for my content development skills in the long run.
My performancing.com blog is a perfect example where I started to develop my brand new English meta content blog totally from scratch. Just for the fun of it.
5$ an hour?
How about charging per article, not per hour. I feel like an indian just rephraising a piece of news.
Bogdan: that comment is
Bogdan: that comment is treading the line. The East Indians are hardly the only people doing that (and you might ask yourself who it is that created that market, before you make comments like that again).
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