By Kevin McCracken

In my last update, I posed the following questions regarding why this website, reNuz.net, is not meeting expectations outlined in its business plan. Although we've doubled our number of authors, the authors that have signed up are not publishing. We're wondering why?

1. I wonder if the site is getting too much editorial style commentary and scaring away anyone who might want to contribute straight news?

2. Is it possible that the content management system is too complicated for non-professional writers?

3. Lastly, I realize that the age old economic principle of supply and demand may be at work here. Is the site paying enough per article?

After my last update, we surveyed many of our authors, asking them if they’d be more likely to contribute if we paid more per article. They told us that the compensation per article was adequate. The bigger problem was that they didn’t know what to write or had trouble using our content management system.

Since the surveys were given over the phone, we were able to provide instant feedback about what to write. We mentioned that authors could contribute restaurant reviews, product reviews, summaries of local sporting or community events. Articles did not need to be lengthy. A couple of paragraphs and pictures could easily constitute an article. Hopefully this gives our authors some ideas for quick and easy content.

We added a “Publishing Wizard” that simplifies the process of getting articles posted on the site.

The wizard walks authors through all the mandatory steps to post an article.

We’ve added two payment models, and authors can choose between them.

In Summary – we’ve addressed all the concerns that we thought might be holding back our writers.

We’ve also added a new “Site Scorecard” that lets us quickly evaluate the performance of the site.

I am taking it upon myself to improve the lines of communication. I'll be publishing a weekly update, complete with e-blast notifications to all authors. Hopefully this will keep everyone up to date on enhancements to the site and make our author community feel more a part of the reNuz team. If reNuz is going to be successful, it will take a number of people writing and promoting this site. Thanks for your help in making that a reality. If we're successful, everyone wins (that includes our readers)!

Sincerely,
Kevin McCracken
reNuz Developer

Kevin can be reached at kevin@reNuz.net with comments or suggestions.