At some point in a blog owner’s life, each of us dreams of growing our blog to superstar status.  I’ve heard that hiring a staff writer is one way to facilitate that growth.

I’m a staff writer – I write articles for pay for other people’s blogs. I’m also a web site and blog owner and I write content for my own sites.  I often wonder if I should consider adding new writing talent so that I could grow my blog and sites faster - and if I did, what that would mean.

Many of you, in addition to being our wonderful readers, also own and/or write for blogs and sites.  Since I am curious about the subject of staff writing, I thought that some of you might be as well. To satisfy my curiosity on the topic, I decided to query some real live bloggers who have hired and used staff writers during the past year. To do so, I submitted a query to the Help a Report Out (HARO) site, asking for potential interviewees.

Once I got some responses, I asked about the benefits of using staff writers; management tasks related to use of them; payment and legal aspects of their use; and the blog results seen from using them.

Here are the generalizations I made from the responses I received. Of course, this is by no means a complete, scientific, or even a thorough analysis. The few responses I received (see the bottom of this post for their names) included just travel and personal finance related blogs and one addiction assistance site – so I have no idea if they are representative of the general blog or site owner population.

Here, though, are my observations based on their responses.

Why and when do bloggers start using staff writers?
The three big reasons sited for starting to use a staff writer were:

• You want different voices on your blog expressing different viewpoints.
• You run out of time to do everything yourself.
• You need expertise from others in areas where you have none.

Most blogs don’t reach these need to hire milestones for awhile after the blog starts up, but some have hired staff writers within just a couple of months of first publishing their site.

How many staff writers are typically used?
There didn’t really seem to be a ‘typical’ number of writers. Sites responding use 3 – 10 staff writers depending on their need at the time.

What are the benefits of using a staff writer?
The biggie, of course, was the owner time saved. Also listed were:

• increased owner ability to focus on things besides writing
• access to expert writers for different specialty areas – enabling the owners to use the staff writer’s diversity and expertise to support a section of the blog
• absence of a payroll – no need to pay to keep a writer employed and
• absence of real ‘employees’ – you are contracting the work out to an independent contractor – meaning you don’t have payroll taxes, benefits and etc to consider.

What are the drawbacks of using a staff writer?
Responders listed quite a few drawbacks:

• You may need a process to manage them and their articles.
• You may not get a good one.
• They may leave after submitting one article.
• You may have to work hard with them to get the content into the shape you want.
• You may have to provide the subjects about which they write.
• You may not feel they represent your blog’s ideas and views.

What expectations do owners have of staff writers?
When hiring a new staff writer, the responders indicated that they looked for the following qualities and traits:

• unique and personable content consistently produced with quality
• timely submission of scheduled articles
• the ability to function with great independence – handling ‘their’ section of the blog completely
• a certain number of quality articles produced per period
• the ability to write from a topic area provided by the blog owner, doing any research needed and
• a good work ethic.

Blog owner do’s
To successfully use staff writers, these responders suggested that blog owners should:

• Screen writers carefully prior to hiring.
• Pay attention to US tax laws – if you pay a contract for hire more than a certain amount, you may need to submit a 1099 for them.
• Think about developing a process to use in editing and approving staff writer posts.
• Be flexible – writing is an art, not a science.
• Set up guidelines and goals for your writers and hold them accountable to them.

Blog owner don’ts
One of the things mentioned in my responses was that if you supply topics for the writers, don’t drill down into too much detail. If you do, it is likely that you will stifle the writers creative ability and the work won’t be the writer’s best quality.

Staff writer do’s
The best of the best of the staff writers will go above and beyond merely creating content. Here is what the best should do according to these blog owners:

• Submit posts on topic and on schedule.
• Consider optimizing for search engines when you write.
• Expect to participate in growing the owner’s blog or site.
• Promote the articles you write for the owner with your social media and other outlets.
• Pay attention to detail.
• Listen to what the owner is asking.

Staff writers don’ts
Some of the things that drove the responding blog owners crazy are things you should avoid as a staff writer:

• Don’t try to publish something elsewhere that you sold to a blog owner.
• Don’t disappear after promising to write for a blog.
• Don’t necessarily expect to get to write on any topic you want.

Finding and hiring a staff writer
Possible sources are recommendations from friends, family or other bloggers, readers of your blog or websites such as Odesk. Owners look for writers who not only can write, but also have expertise in the areas for which the owner wants them to write. Interviews via email and submissions of previously written articles for the owner’s review are typical.

Andrew Schrage from Money Crashers vetts writers thoroughly.  He says“we are not only looking for people that can write well, but who also possess certain intangibles like a positive attitude and passion for writing. We want them to have a vested interest in the long-term success of the website and have a high level of commitment”.

Three of the five responders did NOT use a written contract when hiring a staff writer. If used, specifying duration, pay, payment milestones, and expectations, in addition to clauses related to cancellations and disputes are important pieces to have in a contract, according to Mark Jacobson from PushofHope. Content websites, such as Odesk often have standard contracts available for owners to utilize.

What’s involved with management of staff writers?
After you hire staff writers, be prepared to spend time editing, formatting (sometimes including finding and adding images), and reviewing their posts as well as working with the writer to get changes made and/or giving the writer access to the platform to load the content. Obviously, you will also need to pay them!

Some indicated that they spend time training new writers and believe that it if you can provide training you get a better product. Mark Jacobson from Push of Hope says “Once you’ve picked your writers, work on nurturing a longer term relationship with them because if you treat them well, the more they work with you the stronger the connection and the better the quality of work is.”

There is a good deal of difference between blogs as to how many posts they expect from each staff writer each week or month – from one a month to three a week among these responders. The good news for the writers is that most completed articles are accepted and published – after final edits of course.

Paying your staff writers
Before you decide to hire a staff writer, make sure your cash flow is such that you can continue payment going forward. You don’t want to go through the exercise of finding, training and setting expectations for a writer and then not be able to keep a good one because you can’t pay them!

For the most part, writers get paid based on their experience and expertise, although two of the five responding blog owners pay the same amount to all writers.

Writers can be paid per article, monthly or even when they bill the blog owner. Odesk and Paypal are popular methods of making payment.

Increases in amount paid to a writer are possible. According to Schrage, “Those that go the extra mile and continually produce unique, insightful, quality writing are definitely rewarded regarding pay.”

How do blogs change as a result of using staff writers?
Owners report that due to the influx of ideas, viewpoints and quantity and quality of writing, their sites have grown in traffic, membership, sales and range of readers.

These results can be somewhat esoteric, making you wonder if you should spend the money.

Wade Shepard from Vagabond Journey puts it well when he says, “In an era where the dollar value of any particular piece of online content is rapidly declining it is often difficult to justify paying staff writers — especially when you’ve calculated that you will probably not make back the money that you pay them years — but having other people with different perspectives, areas of interest, and expertise going into your publication gives it a value that is sometimes beyond their content’s practical worth.”

Are you a staff writer? What experiences have you had? Do you use staff writers?  What do you do differently than above?

Thankyou to my responders!
Nik Mody, Co-Founder MHNSAVES.COM. A new way to travel, SAVE. EARN.GO.

Vagabond Journey Travelprovides articles on world culture, news, wildlife, geography, environmental issues, and photos from around world each and every day.

Robert from The College Investor.

Mark Jacobson, www.PushofHope.com.