I’ve been mulling over what to do with Small Business Branding. After reading Rich Schefren’s Internet Business Manifesto and Missing Chapter it hit home (again!) the fact that I need focus, even more focus than I currently have. Because of this I have decided I need your help, my fellow bloggers!
I am looking for two partner bloggers to start blogging on SmallBusinessBranding.com on topics related to Small Business – preferably “marketing” and “branding”, and not “Internet business” or “entrepreneurship” as they are the topics for Entrepreneur’s Journey. I’m looking for two bloggers who currently run a small business or even better – currently coach small business owners or have extensive history managing small businesses – and that doesn’t have to be online business, in fact offline business would be a welcome change of focus. General branding and marketing topics would be most welcome and encouraged – as long as you have experience and education to draw from I’m sure your will be capable of producing valuable content.
Here is some additional selection criteria -
- You must be able to write quality articles with consistency – I’m asking for two full sized articles per week minimum.
- You must have examples of your past work, preferably in a blog format, but any writing examples will do.
- If you currently run a business related blog that is certainly a plus.
Job Details
If you are selected to blog with me you will be required to keep SmallBusinessBranding.com updated with regular content. Two articles per week required (500 – 2000 words each), preferably with a “smattering” of smaller news articles and links thrown in whenever inspiration strikes you.
The blog will be a group blog, with the two new bloggers hired plus me (Yaro) keeping the place going. Initially I will moderate your work.
What’s In It For You
I want this to be about fostering a relationship. I’d like to partner with you on this blogging project so you get the benefits of being considered my friend and blog partner. What that means for the future is difficult to predict, but I’d like to think it would be mutually beneficial in terms of education, exposure, joint ventures potential, networking and of course financially rewarding as well.
If our relationship goes well you will be given an equal share of any profits generated by SmallBusinessBranding.com and will help to decide the future direction of the blog. I will remain the owner of the blog however I am open to rewarding long term hard work with partial ownership.
Your public profile will be enhanced as will your personal brand, being exposed to the nearly 1000 daily readers who come to SmallBusinessBranding.com through the web and RSS readers. If our relationship proves successful SmallBusinessBranding.com will be re-branded to include your photographs, biographical and contact details.
You will be permitted to link to your own site(s) in signatures and within articles when relevant, sending traffic and valuable PageRank to your sites (SmallBusinessBranding.com has a PR6 and good authority in the small business niche).
In terms of content direction you will be free to write on topics of your choosing but of course within the realms of small business relevancy. I will act as content editor initially and will be available to help with guidance and ideas for topics. As mentioned previously, at least initially, I will moderate all contributions.
Applications
If you are interested and prepared to commit yourself to consistent writing of new and original content to help reinvent and reinvigorate SmallBusinessBranding.com into a fantastic small business, multi-authored blog, then please email your interest to me -
yaroATblogtrafficking.com
Please include links to your past writing and details about your experience and education in the small business industry.
I welcome any questions in comment replies.
Note: This does not mean I am no longer going to blog at Entrepreneur’s Journey. This blog is my home.
I would love to apply, but I am not really qualified for the topic and do not want to take on that responsibility.
As such, I find it interesting that you put the job details and what you are looking for at Entrepreneur’s-Journey, but you only link to it at small business branding. You are trying to seperate them out to their own niches, and you are trying to get people for SBB. It seems like you would want to make sure that the SBB subscribers see the offer and that the E-J people would just be let known that it is on the table as opposed to the other way around. Not that I don’t expect you have a lot of dual-subscribers but I doubt that each list is exactly the same.
Just my thoughts since I was curious if you had thought about which post goes where and I am missing a bigger picture or if it was just habit and haphazard?
Hi Blaine – you always keep me on my toes! It is a pity you don’t feel qualified to blog at SBB, it would be good to work with you.
The reason I did the posts this way was because there is three times the audience at E-J and if I forced them to click-through to SBB chances are only about 1/3 would do so.
I was going to re-post the entire article to SBB but then I thought that would be bad in terms of duplicate content so I put a link instead.
I figured that if any readers of SBB were interested enough they will click through to read the ad on E-J, while the other way round the click through rate wouldn’t be so high. So in effect the way I did it should maximize interest without risk of duplicate content.
I hope that makes sense!
If I didn’t have XXX amount of blogs already I’d be all over this. People, this is a HUGE opportunity. Yaro is the real deal. Take him up on his offer.
I might be qualified in about a year.
Just to clarify. No cash?
Money Matador – no cash initially, the applicants will have to prove themselves first, probably after a month of consistent work and a good relationship I will be more than happy to divvy out the profits generate from the blog.
To be honest a cash payment should not be the primary motivation a person should have for partnering with me. I wouldn’t want to work with anyone like that.
Yaro, you might think this is a stupid idea, but you could make smallbusinessbranding an ecommerce type site that prints and makes those free giveaways that small businesses give to their customers. Cups, magnets and so on. There are probably drop-shippers in the US that could handle the production, inventory and shipping.
Just a thought.
What a great offer Yaro.
My first thought was this is a great chance, but I would have to admit I would not be up to the responsibility. Someday, maybe when my typing skills improve to the level of typing I already need to do everyday.
Whoever takes up the offer will be getting a great chance.
Mike – Great thought! Not something I had considered and I’ve been asking around for people’s ideas a lot lately. I certainly wasn’t thinking retail but that would be cool to try.
I’m going forward with the group blogging idea since it’s the path of least resistance and I’d like to partner with some good bloggers, but your idea is valuable and you never know, may turn into reality in the future in which case I will be sure to contact you.
Hello everybody.
This is a great opportunity to be a part of one very interesting project. I’ve been problogging for a while and I’m sure that partnering with Yaro will be quite helpful for whoever gets the job.
I’ve already applied, crossing my fingers
It still might worthwhile looking for a related affiliate program to try. I heard an ad for this site on Aust. radio which gave me the idea:
http://www.brandme.com.au
Followed this from a link at
Problogger.net .
Looks like a fun opp and a good tie-in to my current guestblog.
you can USE some of my http://www.CaffeineMarketing.com articles if you link and credit me, how’s that sound? email me at staff@mankatowebdesign.com
This will be interesting…
Yaro, I hope you enjoy your summer of ciphering through emails of applicants! lol… but I agree with one of the other comments, Yaro is the real deal and whoever this goes to, you have big shoes to fill. Unfortunately I do not have the time to write two articles a week, call me lazy but I’d rather talk about them!
But good luck applicants…
Regards,
Carey Smith
Owner
i2iMarketing
“from idea to implementation”