Problogger.net is a community NOT a charity. people still have to get paid, people have to eat and pay for the roof over their heads. personally its a great idea and darren should have dont this ages ago.

I just world say dont go for the auction angle – it will make more money but I think less interest overal ( and your street cred )

off topic: Hows your new office coming along?

Woo Hoo. :):)

1. sorry you won’t be participating.

2. the $250 is expensive for some and that is unfortunate. However it is relatively cheap when you compare it to what consultants charge for this type of thing. I know of numerous blog consultants who charge $100 to $300 per hour for this type of consulting. The man hours that go into these projects would amount to this being very good value.

3. The community gets nothing out of this? I think you answered your own question – the number of emails that I get from readers saying that they learned something through participating and watching these consulting projects would suggest to me that they are valuable for people who enter into it with the right spirit. Add to that that one person wins an iPod (in the last consult it was a 1 in 50 chance of winning which isn’t bad odds if you participate in a few of these) and there are both tangible and intangible benefits from participating.

4. I’d add that one person who commented in one of our consults recently landed themselves a consulting gig with another blog as a result of their comment. In a sense some people are using these consults as a way to showcase their talents.

5. Am I making money off this? Sure. After I pay Skellie a third, and pay for the ipod I make about $80. I use that money to pay for another guest post a week from Skellie – something that I would argue gives something back to the community as her posts are so amazing.

6. You argue that Skellie does very little for her money – I’d disagree. She sorts through the applications to participate, liaises with the blogger (numerous emails involved). Writes an announcement post at the start of the week. Moderates the comments. Picks a winner. Notifies the winner. Arranges for the Prize to be sent. Reads every comment and picks out the themes, summarizes them in a sizable post and then analyses the site and adds her own thoughts. For all that she earns around $85. Personally I think that that is incredibly cheap.

7. As I said – the $250 isn’t cheap for many – but considering that we’ve had 40-50 people apply who are willing to pay it an we’re only doing one of these per week I’d say that the law of demand and supply might suggest that it’s actually cheap compared with what people would be willing to pay. I’m sorry – but your arguments seem a little inconsistent when it comes to the money. In some parts of your comment you say it’s too expensive, in other parts you say that you think it’s probably cheap in comparison to private consultants and at the end you say that you think that the price is more than fair…..

8. This is a site about making money from blogs. I make money from blogs and make no apologies for it. I’ve worked hard to build up a community/readership here and am experimenting with ways to not only deliver value to that community but also make a little money from it. This is an experiment in that. In some ways I don’t really see this as being that different from making money from a blog through advertising or affiliate marketing. You leverage your audience in those cases too. Every time someone leaves a comment on a blog that runs CPM ads you get another page view (and make money). Every page view you increase the chances of selling something with an aff link or can increase your prices on a sponsor banner. Ultimately it’s about leveraging traffic. My hope with this consulting project is that I not only am able to leverage the participation of readers but give something back (a prize and the wisdom of the crowd).

9. Lastly – ultimately it’s up to the community to decide if they want to participate or not. No one who has left a comment was forced to do so – yet we’ve had many hundreds of people do so. No one is forced to pay the $250 – yet 50 or so bloggers are lined up to do so. I can only really go on these signals when I decide whether to keep doing it or not.

I’m sorry that you won’t be participating any more, your comments have always been helpful. But ultimately it’s your choice to participate or not.

We will no doubt change and tweak how these consults run in future and I appreciate the feedback – but wanted to feedback to you some of what was behind our decisions to run this as we have.

However, this is a community project. We get nothing out of this except the fact we helped someone out and potentially get the chance to be helped ourselves. We can also learn from what other sites are told and apply them to our own.

When you add money into the equation, especially a rather large sum of $250, things change. You are making money off the community and giving nothing back to us in return. Yes, you’ve basically hired someone to do the summarization, which should take an hour or two at most to read through and take notes and another hour or so to write up the notes. The person you hired does absolutely nothing except format a post based on everything we write and he/she gets paid to do it. Why should we do this “community” activity if it’s only benefitting people that pay you money for our work?

Also, the $250 is too much money. Your own polls show that the majority of people make little to nothing off their websites and that a huge chunk gets less than 100 visitors per day. This service, and let’s be up front, this is a paid service, not a community project, does not benefit and would be pointless for I’d wager at least 75% or more of your audience. I get between 600 and 1000 unique visitors and it’s growing slowly, but I would never consider using this service as I don’t think it would justify any minor gains I’d get from it.

I feel the whole point of this “project” has strayed from what it set out to be and is now a service your site offers and does it off the backs of your own audience’s efforts. I’d recommend offering private consultations and consider displaying the results on the site if you wish to keep charging for these reviews as it’s become a slap in the face for the people participating.

This view has nothing to do with having to pay. I do think the price is more than fair. But that doesn’t make it right. You want to charge? Do the job yourself. You want a community project / involvement? Stop charging money for work you don’t do. Any ape can copy and paste other people’s ideas.

abbie

*also dumbfounded and several other really big words.

But we might be in line soon for a review. I’ve received free reviews that helped a little, but you get what you pay for.

Do something with the header. It’s very plain and just blends into the background.

How about a logo to help brand your site?

A picture of you would be nice. Personalize it. It will help you to establish a relationship with your readers and create a sense of community.

Even through the consulting and critique of someone else’s blog, you wiill surely learn something that you can apply to your blog, perhaps enough to increase the money your blog earns so you can put that cash toward this consulting idea.

Also, what happened to the old fashioned “saving up for something” if you really want it? Nobody said you had to sign up for this; it’s an option.

I find the sarcastic comments rather unnecessary—you can respectfully disagree/disapprove of the idea and offer constructive criticism of course, but the fact that they have 20 people signed up means that it’ll probably go ahead anyway.

Like I’ve said above – the money largely goes to readers and skellie. I might pull a few dollars in on it but it’ll be very little in comparison to what I earn. My hope is that any money I earn I’ll be able to use to either run a competition or two pay a guest author or two.

How about this idea? Charge a little bit more, and put the extra in a pool that could be used for a small site lottery?

I’ve already sent email wishing to sign up for the $250, but wouldn’t mind a bit if it were $275 and the other $25 went into a pool like that.

To add to the worthiness, you will get traffic although the consultation might have negative criticisms. The next thing after you have paid for it should be how to leverage on the huge amount of traffic and probably an upgrade of your hosting package? :-)

I would love to pay for the the consultation but I am not able to pay for that like some other people (just a 17 years old student).

Thats great news. Too bad its beyond reach for smaller blogs like us. Here are two cent worth suggestions (each one cent)

Problogger can make it usd 10 for some kind of limited review. That way there will be atleast 25 times more applications and the effort involved will be limited.

Second thing is we for our part, will check every blogger who has commented and send them our review. If everybody does the same, then the commentator gets the review for free. Ofcourse it wont have all the features which Darren is providing but still its free….right?

Tim – I did consider the auction approach (and it might be fun to try it) but didn’t want it to be just about the money. While we do want this to be self sustainable we’ll be choosing one of the blogs that has applied (we’re up to over 20 now) that not only is willing to pay but which we think will benefit from it.

Simon – didn’t see your post earlier – sorry. As Skellie points out – she’s not getting a link back out of it and having done it last time around I know how much work it is. Her job involves selecting the blog, liasing with the blogger under review, posting the announcement post, summarizing all of the comments and main themes from readers (last time there were close to 100 of them) and then adding her own advice. Last time around it took me hours to do it. Knowing how hard Skellie works I suspect she’ll do more work than I did on it and I would like to see her rewarded for that time and energy.

Good luck everyone.