Besides the creation of the content for a standard website page, there are two other widespread aspects of the world wide web that cater to the writer’s services. Internet blogs and forums are as content driven as any other website but their style differs in that, on forums especially, the user is creating the content for the site. To a lesser degree, since many blogs are personal projects, you will find fewer of them which invite comments from their readers.
For blogs the ideal posting is a link to another interesting and topical article on the web with a short description or review of what the user will find when they view it. Internet forums are more community oriented, with regular users commenting on the specific subjects and replies to other user’s comments. They are designed more for sharing information and ideas. It is a place where someone with a question can ask people familiar with the topic what the best solution might be. They are very similar to the old style bulletin board sites that spread in the 1990′s.
A blog or forum is like any other website in that they require the search engines to find and index their content so that people searching for a particular topic can find them. Since the content is being written daily by the users there is less ability to optimize the site for keywords. However, a new blog or forum which needs to build a large enough base of useful information may hire writers to create topic specific posts for their site. These people will be paid to create various threads relating to the subject matter and begin a dialogue. This is especially effective for new blogs or forums that need enough content to be found useful and be ranked higher in the periodic “indexing” schedule for the search engines. Once the board has grown in size and volunteer users have started posting, it should carry on without further need of paid posting services.
As well as individual freelance writers who offer their services on forums dedicated to content creation, there are some companies that will act as an agent for a group of writers. These agents will find the forum or blog needing content and then, for a percentage of the article or post group’s cost, will turn the commission over to one or more writers to complete. For beginning individuals, they may expect no more than 10-20 cents per two or three line comment. Once a writer builds credibility with many insightful and informative posts, the remuneration may rise as high as 25-50 cents per post. Blogs generally start at about $1-$2 per 200-250 word description with the link, and experienced bloggers can expect more.
The major problem people who pay for posting services face is in getting writers who post useless, trivial or off topic comments. When hiring posters one must state at the beginning that such posts will not be acceptable or paid for. A blog or forum moderator must also be aware of any spamming posts that are attempted on their board and remove them or face a lowering of the value of their site.