27 Ways to Get Other People to Create Content For You

by Nicole Munoz

Getting other people to create your online content is one of the most painless ways to save time and ensure your blog, website and article directories are packed with top-quality, original content.

Let’s take a look at 27 different ways to make this happen.

1. Pay Copywriters or Ghostwriters

A ghostwriter usually writes articles, blog posts, eBooks, white papers and reports, and a copywriter often specializes in sales and landing pages, as well as email series – though there is often no difference between the two.

A good ghost/copywriter will increase your site SEO value with professional, original writing – in your “voice”.

2. Pay a VA

Many virtual assistants add copywriting to their services, so this way you can kill two birds with one stone, if you need an assistant too. Just be sure to check what type of writing they specialize in.

3. Guest Authors

This used to be a top way to get others to provide you with quality content – and it still is. But you should know that Google is now penalizing overly-promotional “guest posts” and “guest posters”, so follow these three tips and you won’t be the guest poster in trouble – nor will your guests.

Call them “guest authors”. Seriously!
Make sure their content is original and highly relevant to your audience
Get your “rel=author” tag and validate yourself with Google through your Google+ profile

Sure, it’s a pain to set up, but don’t neglect it. Your validation as a Google-recognized author is like gold in the SEO bank.

4. Embedding Other People’s Material

Ask permission to embed slide shows, videos, .MP3s and other material on your site. This can add richness and extra flavor, if you choose material that enhances and adds value to yours (as well as pleasing your visitors!)

5. Testimonials

If you ever receive great compliments on your services or products, these become priceless recommendations (or “testimonials”) that you can put on your website or in sales letters for that relevant product or service package.

If someone posts a testimonial on a highly public forum, you can technically print it without permission, but always ask (you may get more than if you “sneaked” it in: E.G. a headshot provided and permission to use their full name).

6. Insert Ads

Ads can bring income directly to you through your site, so choose blog themes that allow you to insert ad buttons and banners.

Avoid Google AdSense themes, however. The quality of ads has noticeably deteriorated this year, and you cannot guarantee that your site won’t become tainted by adult or inappropriate material you don’t want.

7. Comments

If you write a hot blog post, you’ll soon know it: It will incite a flurry of comments. Do put some screening in place for comments, however, so that you are not inundated with damaging spam. The Akismet spam filter is a “must”; and it’s a good idea to set your comments options to require moderation on the first post from a poster.

8. Have it Transcribed

Running a webinar or teleseminar is a painless way to create content, but make the most of it by having it transcribed into text.

Then you can offer your transcription as your blog content for that day – or you can offer it as a bonus to a paid offer or signup.

9. Create a “Round-up”

Another way to use other people’s content fairly: Create a Round-up of snippets from different sources dealing with a single topics. For example, “Top 10 Graphic Websites in 2013”; “Facebook Follies”.

10. Public Domain Visual Media

While it’s always best to commission or take your own original photos, finding public domain graphics can be a quick and handy solution. (Make sure they really are public domain, however!)

Here are three sources with multitudes of public domain photos and other visual media such as fonts and clipart…

11. Free Resources

You can insert resources such as calculators and dictionaries on your website simply by copying code into your HTML, such as TheFreeDictionary webmaster tools, which allows you to select options such as “Word of the Day” or “Quote of the Day”, among other features.

Just make sure your free resource is from a reputable site, and there’s no hidden code allowing traffic mining.

This type of HTML resource formatting is a good choice when your host website doesn’t allow App scripts.

12. Apps and Widgets

Better on blogs or websites written in .PHP rather than HTML. You can find apps for quizzes, polls, surveys, quotes – all the features available as HTML resources – and more. You can provide interactive, ever-changing content: E. G. a widget that displays Twitter tweets.

13. Plug-ins

You can do much the same thing with plugins and there is a wide selection to choose from at WordPress.org.

You can also download commercial plugins such as the nRelate related-content plugin.

14. Press Releases

Reprint press releases relevant to your target market’s interests on your website.

15. Intern Created Content

If you decide to take on an intern, one of her duties could be to create content for you.

16. Regular Features

You can create daily, weekly or monthly features that rely on externally-driven content. For example, regular “Guest Column” featuring different guest experts.

17. Using Quotes

One quick way to produce an article: Pick a topic and present “Top 10 Quotes About [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][your keyword]”. Then run a quick search, picking the best quotes from quotes aggregation sites such as BrainyQuote and The Quote Garden.

Don’t select all your quotes from one site, however. Mix and match.

18. Content Curation

Another practice that is quickly becoming a trend: Content curation – present content from aggregated sources. As free curation site, Storify says, “Make the Web tell a story”.

19. Templates

Templates may not be “content” as such, but they can help you quickly and instantly install or display content, doing the formatting part of the work for you.

And many WordPress themes incorporate widgets that add extra content to your site, such as blogrolls and archives.

You can get other templates too, to help fast-track your content creation. (E.g. review templates, blog post templates).

20. Public Domain material

You can build a blog or even just a week of posts around material that is truly in the public domain.

21. JV Partner Offers

You can insert ads from JV partners on your website – and free ones add special value.

Put them in a separate add banner or within your header. Very often, your JV partners will do the rest (sign up, sales or download pages).

In fact, ask them to provide their ad, too.

22. Reader Submissions

Invite readers to submit relevant written material to your blog, with the “prize” being publication (unless your blog serves professional writers, who would expect to be paid, of course).

Three popular types of writing you can invite:

Poetry
“Postcard” mini-writing contests
Asking for anecdotes regarding a specific topic: E.g. “What is your most embarrassing memory about learning to ride a horse?”

23. Reader Photographs or Artwork

Another type of contest people enjoy: Original artwork or photograpy.

Not only does featuring the results give you lots of free content, it also increases reader engagement and interest.

24. “[Something] of the Day”

Another type of reader-driven content that increases engagement: “[Something] of the Day” features.

Try:

Tip
Word
Quote
Horoscope
Thought
Photo

25. Recipes

You don’t have to be running a cooking blog or website to invite readers to share their favorite recipes, if your demographic is female. In fact, all you need to do is post an appetite-stimulating photo and a post that gets your readers salivating.

It’s like the Pet niche: Just as people love nothing more than writing in about their particular, unique, cuddly pet so do many love sharing their favorite recipes.

26. Retrospectives

Feature your own or others’ most popular past articles, photos, stories or other content.

Done right, this tactic can help build and strengthen your online community by making readers feel they have a “say” in your site.

27. Run a Themed Site

Creating a themed site entirely from reader-driven content (like accepting reviews for example) can be a virtually painless way to provide high quality, unique content as a background for displaying ads.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

How to Use Public Domain Content for Digital Books

by Nicole Munoz

One of the easiest ways to get high quality content to turn into digital books for Kindle, iBooks, Nook or any other digital ebook store is to repurpose content that is free of copyright, or public domain works. By using content in the public domain, you can just use content that was created by someone else for your digital ebook. This guide will who you how to use public domain content for digital books.

Locating Copyright Free Works

The first thing you need to do is find the public domain works. While these suggestions are intended to be compliant with U.S. copyright law, you should always do your due diligence to ensure content is in the public domain.

Older Works

Generally speaking, any work that was published before 1923 is copyright free. Because of a law enacted in 1998, works created in 1923 will become public domain in 2019. In 2020, works created in 1924 will have their copyright expire and so forth.

There are certain circumstances where older works, published after 1923 might also be in the public domain.

For more information, review the U.S. Copyright Office guide here:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ22.pdf

U.S. Government Works

One place to look is government websites. Any document published by the US government is free of copyright, but be aware that if documents were created under government contract with a 3^rd party, they are protected by copyright.

You should also be aware that many logos and emblems, while not protected by copyright, are protected by other laws.

Still, if you do your homework right, you’ll find many government websites will have some top notch content up for grabs completely free. From detailed reports on improving health to high resolution photos of the galaxy, from declassified cold war documents to environmental health reports, all of it is public domain. You just have to dig.

Look through the websites of various government institutions that are related to your field. You can also try searching with “inurl:.gov” to do a search only through government websites.

Public Domain Archives

Another place you can look for public domain content are public domain archives. One of the most popular ones is Gutenberg.org. Just make sure you do your own research to check that the content really is copyright free before you use it.

Second Hand Bookstores

One last place to look for public domain works is to try and locate truly unique and rare works that are no longer protected by copyright. These are public domain books that haven’t been digitized and aren’t being used by anyone else right now. If you can locate such a physical book and have it transcribed, you’ll literally be the only person on the internet with that book.

You can find these old physical books at local used and arcane bookstores, as well as some internet stores that specialize in older books.

Make Sure You’re Compliant with the Ebook Store Where You Plan to Publish

Before publishing your works on the Kindle, the iBookstore and the Nook store, make sure your work is compliant with their policies on public domain works.

At the time of this writing, you can publish on the Nook store without restrictions. Kindle stores allow public domain works, but will only give you 35% of the royalties instead of 70%. They also require that the works are either annotated, illustrated or translated to be considered. The iBookstore allows public domain works, but requires documented permission from the creators of the content.

Resources:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2OHLJURFVK57Q

http://www.apple.com/itunes/content-providers/book-faq.html

http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=support

How to Adapt Public Domain Works

Just publishing a piece of public domain work on these digital bookstores is not a great way to get buyers. For one, there’s a good chance someone else has published it already. Also, many of these books are outdated, don’t have photos or use an older or more formal version of English.

In order to launch a public domain work that’ll actually sell, you need to adapt it. By adapting it, you make the work your own. You add value to it, rather than just use what’s already there. You greatly increase your chances of success.

Here are a few different ways to adapt public domain works.

Add an Action Plan

For “how to” books, add an action plan.

For example, Chapter 1 might talk about the basics of how to train a dog. At the end of the chapter, add your own “action plan” that tells people exactly what to do. Do this for every chapter.

You can then rename the book to something more action-oriented. For example, instead of “Dog Training 101,” you could call your book “A Step by Step Plan for Dog Training.”

Add Images

Add relevant images to an older book. For example, if the book is talking about dog training, hire an artist to draw out all the various tricks and positions you want to teach your dog.

There are a lot of different ways you can get images. You can use stock images. You can hire an artist. You can even do it yourself.

Add Step by Step Photos

At least once every chapter, add “step by step” photos.

You know those safety cards behind every airplane seat? Remember how every instruction is illustrated with cartoons, step by step?

Do something similar. If you’re publishing a fishing book, make an image that visually shows how to bait a hook.

Add Sidebars

You can add a lot of value to a book just by adding sidebars. A sidebar could include miscellaneous tips on the side, warning labels, references or just about any way you can think of to help facilitate the book’s content.

One great example of this is the “For Dummies” book series. They make ample use of sidebars to give warnings, extra tips, background information and a whole host of other kinds of information.

You could just add these sidebars to public domain works and make the work your own.

Make Dry Text Fun to Read

A lot of public domain works have great ideas and great content, but sound very dry. You can make it a lot better just by rewriting the text in an easier to read, more fun way.

Sometimes all you really need to do is rewrite old English to modern English. At other times, you might want to add in your own brand of personality.

If you don’t want to do this all yourself, you can outsource it quite inexpensively.

Translations

Introducing a popular work in another language can be a great way to bring new life to a public domain work. By publishing in different languages you can reach different audiences.

Publishing Your Book

Once you’ve found the public domain work, you’ve checked to make sure it’s compliant with the store you want to release it on and you’ve added value by making your own adaptation, the last step is to go ahead and publish it.

Rename the book or give the book a new spin. For example, instead of “Think and Grow Rich,” a popular wealth building book that’s now in the public domain, you might call your derivative work “Think and Grow Rich: The Updated Action Pack.”

Then just package your book, upload it and you’re done!