After 7 months as the sole content creator for PickTheBrain.com, I’ve decided to open up the site to other writers. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time (it wasn’t an easy decision), but I’m confident it’s the right one and I’m excited to move forward.
Here are my primary reasons.
1. Diversity
Based on the quality of the comments, I know there are intelligent people interested in contributing to the discussion. Having multiple voices will bring diversity to the site’s content and style. It will allow the site to cover topics that I know little about and will help readers discover other talented writers.
2. Community
Having only one person writing is an inefficient way to share collective wisdom. I’m not an expert on everything and I learn a ton from the comments people leave. Allowing others to contribute will create a greater depth of knowledge.
I want to give readers the chance to have the spotlight. Not everyone has the opportunity to write for an audience of several thousand readers. Although most people aren’t driven to update a blog on a regular basis, I’ll bet every person reading this has at least one great article inside them. Now you have the opportunity to share it.
3. Quality Content
Writing content is hard, time consuming work. Given the degree of quality I expect and the fact I have a full time job as well, something had to give. At times the pressure to produce content has made me miserable. I started PickTheBrain.com in search of freedom, not self imposed slavery.
The options were 1) stop posting as much, or 2) find help. Recruiting additional writers will allow the site to share more content and take some pressure off me. I still plan on being the primary writer, but not having to do it alone will allow me to write more inspired, stress-free articles.
Why Write for PickTheBrain.com?
You now know why this move is good for me, but why should you want to post your hard work here?
- The Joy of Sharing – If you’ve had a life-changing experience or overcome an enormous obstacle, sharing your knowledge could change the lives of thousands of people who face the same problem.
- Exposure – For a beginning blogger, building a readership is a challenge. It’s tough when no one knows who you are. Writing for PickTheBrain.com will allow you to reach thousands of new readers and gain some visibility in the blogosphere.
- Links/Traffic – When you contribute an article, you’ll receive credit and a byline with a link to your site. This will send you a healthy dose of traffic and PageRank.
- Money – For those of you who’d rather receive monetary compensation for your efforts, I’m perfectly happy to pay for great content.
Writing Requirements
My biggest fear with inviting other writers to contribute is that the quality of the site will decline. To avoid this, I’m going to be extremely picky about what I publish. Please don’t be offended if I decline an article or send it back with recommendations.
Here are the main requirements for content submission.
- Original – Anything you submit must be your original writing that you still hold all rights to. Please don’t submit articles that summarize or repeat another source.
- Unique – The article you submit cannot be duplicated on any other sites including your own, and while the content remains yours, you are granting me the right to keep it on this site.
- Relevant to Self Improvement – I plan to be very flexible on this but all articles should be somehow relevant to self improvement. Extra points for anything that’s intellectually stimulating.
- I reserve the right to edit content in any way I see fit before publishing it.
- Send your submissions to john@pickthebrain.com, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
I hope you’re as excited as I am about the benefits that new contributors will bring to PickTheBrain.com. If you’re interested in writing but aren’t sure about a topic, here are some suggestions I’m particularly interested in.
- Mental development, meditation, concentration, or any other way to train yourself to think more clearly
- Personal productivity and motivation
- Art, science, philosophy, and literature
- Health and fitness
- Personal finance, marketing, and entrepreneurship
- Education and self directed learning
- Better writing and blogging
I look forward to reading your submissions. Adding new voices will help PickTheBrain.com develop into a more robust community than one person could create alone.
Excellent!! Wonderful idea. I think you are very generous to invite others to have an opportunity to exploit (in the positive sense) your success with PickTheBrain. I’m going to work on something and see what happens! Now…a question for you. I work for state government and am a political coward. Any chance I can disclose my correct personal identification to you, but use a pseudonym for “publication”? To say what I want to say regarding certain issues, I need to protect myself. Thanks in advance for considering this dilemma!
[...] Write for PickTheBrain.com … Personal productivity and motivation; Art, science, philosophy, and literature; Health and fitness; Personal finance, marketing, and entrepreneurship; Education and self directed learning; Better writing and blogging … [...]
Virginia B.,
If you’d like to remain anonymous that isn’t a problem at all. I look forward to reading your article.
John,
I understand your dilemma here. I have considered having guest writers on my site as well, but for now I am still working on building up my core audience.
In the meantime, guest blogging is a great way to do that, so I would be happy to write something for your site. This week is already overbooked due to the holiday, but I will email you directly when I have something for your consideration.
Thanks for offering other bloggers the chance to get more involved in the community!
Aaron,
You’re right, it was a hard decision. What it ultimately came down to was the desire to make the community bigger than myself. This is still in the experimental stages, but from the response so far I think it will work out very well.
I’d love to have you as one of the first guest authors, so let me know when an idea strikes you.
John, I would love to write an article for your website.
I’m going on vacation in a couple of days but when I come back I will work on something. It will probably be on education, philosophy or the arts and how they relate to personal development and being a well rounded individual.
I often wondered how any blogger can keep up the pace and continue to write quality articles. Quite frankly I don’t think they can. Some of the blogs I’ve been reading have become repetitive and boring.
ZHereford,
That sounds like a great topic for this site. I look forward to seeing it.
You’re right about the insane pace of blogging. Unless a site is news oriented, it’s tough maintain great content in the longterm. My hope is that inviting others to write will keep it fresh.
Hi John,
Do you have a preferred word count for submissions?
I’d prefer lengthy posts, of at least 700 words or so, because I’ve found that readers get the most value out of longer articles. Nearly all articles I’ve posted follow this model, so it’s also what readers are accustomed to.
That being said, some short posts are great so I’m open to using them if they work, though I might request you beef them up a bit.
I’d like to write an article someday, though I’ll probably wait until I’m more experienced in those subjects. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything you might be interested in.
JL,
Don’t be afraid try something when inspiration strikes. From your comments I can tell that self improvement is something you strive for, I’m sure ideas will find you.
I will definately try and work on something of high-quality to submit here. Thank you for making this possible.
Regards,
Armand
hi john, congrats on opening up the blog to more writers. i’ve been working with this model for 7 months now and it’s much easier than producing all the content yourself. things to watch out for though are maintaining consistently high quality, and making sure you make clear the tone, style, and topics (as you’ve done above) that you’re looking for.
Ianmack, I share those same concerns and I plan to work very hard to avoid a drop off by being discerning about what I publish and heavily editing. If I don’t get enough quality submissions, I’ll keep doing it all myself if I have to. From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think that will be a problem though.
John, congrats on progressing to the next level of your blog development! Pretty exciting to see how far you’ve gone… But I do hope I wouldn’t see a major reduction of quality articles from you cos I love your work
Cheer, Ellesse
Darn, I wish I could write well.
John,
Are you sure that this isn’t a ‘Dip’ in disguise? Perhaps you’ve touched on either some hard truths about popular and prolific blogs (i.e. they’re outsourcing their initial writing and research in order to keep up to their self-imposed schedules), and you’ve prematurely decided to invite more writers in.
If Einstein’s trick to creativity is to “hide your sources”, perhaps you should employ some VAs to write articles to a guest account you could publish on your own over time, like an idea bin. Your approach is definitely more generous and along the lines of caring more about an outcome than your own part in it (think Steve Chandler), but will you end up becoming a full time editor rather than a contributor?
Perhaps your ‘Dip’ involves finding ways of increasing your own productivity, staying the course until you have enough readers that you don’t have to keep that full-time job (think Steve Pavlina), or some other wild, unreasonable idea.
Those are some interesting questions, Daniel. I don’t really see myself becoming a full-time editor. I started this site as a venue for my writing, so I expect to keep writing as frequently as possible.
You’re correct in guessing that I made this decision as part of a strategy to get through the ‘Dip’. My hope is that adding new voices will help to form a larger community, that isn’t 100% dependent of my personal labor. Eventually, I’d like to develop a site that’s more interactive than a 1 person blog.
Ok I’ve got something ready. I’ll e-mail it tomorrow.
try me for editing contributions, can help you
if you like.
John,
Good idea! BTW – Just so you know, the blog traffic challenge is over and if you want to submit your results here:
http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/index.php/20070701-how-did-you-do-in-the-blog-traffic-challenge/
that would be great.
All the best,
George
John,
I wrote something but every time I try to email it I get a failure reply from the mailer daemon. What’s going on?
That’s strange, maybe my server was having some issues. You can also email it directly to johncwesley (at) gmail . com.
John,
I hope I am not late to the party. I am just seeing this man
Well, I am in for it. I have so many articles that meet your
requirements and I will be sending one to you soon.
Thanks for this great idea, you’ve given me something to also
think about.
Hi all!
Very interesting information! Thanks!
Bye