Boost Traffic to Your News WebsiteLESSONS LEARNED FROM FIVE (5) YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

Author's Experience Worked in an Australian-based company that owns and manages multiple news website for five (5) years in various capacity.

Why Outsource Your News Content?

Relatively low payment of $350 AUD for high yielding 100 news content a month per writer, compared to $4, 000 USD you will need to pay to a local writer

Scale up to 30, 000, 000 while lowering your labor cost

Same quality in terms of talent pool and output but with lower labor cost

Talent Acquisition Source your offshore talent pool from the Philippines and India

Significant number are willing to work "home-based" or "remotely" in independent contractor capacity

Significant number of Mass Communication, Broadcast Communication, and Journalism graduates. For the Philippines, the University of the Philippines and Polytechnic University of the Philippines produce top notch candidates.

Highly trainable

How to Acquire Talent There are many recruitment specialist in the Philippines the services of which you may avail

You may directly post lead generations ads on:◦ Craigslist (high response rate)◦ WriteJobs.ph◦ Freelancer.com.ph

You may also post ads through a third party company incorporated here in the Philippines for a fee on Jobstreet, JobsDB, etc.

Competitive Pay Most qualified candidates are willing to accept $350 AUD (some companies offer $200 USD) or P9, 000 -P11, 000 which is still marginally higher than the minimum wage in or outside Metro Manila (in the Philippines)

Performance-based incentives can also be given tied to the traffic that their articles generate in excess of prescribed quota of 50, 000 -100, 000 per month at $1.75 per excess 1, 000 page views

Most companies classify candidates based on experience and offer lower pay for entry jobs to less qualified candidates

Means of Payment Most writers and editors are willing to be paid via PayPal

In the Philippines, you may opt to open through an agent an account in a local bank (preferably, Unionbank or Bank of the Philippine Islands)

You should provide for a 15 days window between cut-off and payment schedule to ensure continuous service and ample time to process the payment

You may also set up a "No publication, no payment" policy through out your team

Editors A team is as only as good as its editor as he.she will serve as "gateway" keeper between the content submitted by writers, and the public. He must be aware of industry practices.

They are vital in ensuring that guidelines are followed, only content aligned with your brand is published, and only those with traffic potential.

There's a significant number of editors from the Philippines with long experience willing to work at $450 AUD to $600 AUD

Use Metrics Use Getclicky.com to have an overview of your day to day, weekly, monthly overall performance. What I specially like is the "heat map" feature, which is insightful in content development.

Google Analytics gives a credible strong data point to cross reference traffic generated by Getclicky to eliminate "fake traffic"

Webtrends generate greater details in terms of generating custom reports, if you want to limit your incentives to certain geographic locations (or, target countries)

Chartbeat gives you real time data that may help you gauge current audience interest, predict, analyze, and optimize their engagement with your site and its content

Key Performance Index In your contract, you must be clear with the contractor's "key performance index" with predictable outcome is requirement is not met

Results-based orientation is key, and fit the contractor model.

Data to be used (see "Use Metrics") should be readily available to editors and the writers.

Training Most websites uses Wordpress Content Management System (CMS) and significant number of writers and editors are familiar with the system.

For those with custom CMS, training in the form of manual and video (or through screen sharing conference through Skype and Mikogo) should be provided

Poynter News University provides free video lessons, and may also serve as a strong check point that you hired a contractor with the appropriate minimum skills (such as news gathering)

Additional training should be provided in key issues such as copyright infringment, plagiarism, libel, defamation, sourcing, etc.

Stylebook and guidelines must be furnished beforehand and assessments on understanding with coaching should also be provided

Ideal Workload Writers may be expected to produce and to submit five (5) articles a day, Monday to Friday

Editors, depending on the size of their direct reports team and publishing workload, may be expected to produce and to submit two (2) articles a day

Copy editors, ideally, may be expected to check 35-55 articles a day, with contracted payment of $400-$500AUD

Project Management You may use TeamWorkPM for project management that will enable easier tracking of tasks accomplishment and centralize your company files

You may also complement it with an internal blog through Wordpress that will push company news and updates to your remote team

You may use cloud storage or communication methods to coordinate content throughout your remore staff

Know Your Platform A news website is often indexed in Google News

At least 40%-60% of a successful news website sources their traffic from the search engine

While observing quality, best practices to optimize your content for searches should also be incorporated from training up to content development

Develop expertise on certain niche topics and consistently cover these.

For More Information, Contact: Lawrence P. Villamar

E-mail: lawrence.villamar@gmail.com

Mobile number: +639154222936