Blog readers help requests: post at problogger.com
By DJ on May 14, 2008 in Business Tips/Advice
Read this today (when I should have been out doing my daily walk)
How to Respond to Individual Requests for Help From Blog Readers
While we don’t yet have this problem, I do expect that it will eventually happen. I know that a few of the readers here run their own blogs, a couple very successfully, and I wonder how they handle it? Do you set boundaries? When does it become doing the requesters work (paid work) for them? Do you make yourself available for paid consulting? Should you?
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Shelly | May 14, 2008 | Reply
I do this. I pretty much have a standard method for answering requests on my blog. Along with culling all of the “thank you!” and “great job!” comments – which some may be genuine – I basically feel like my blog is a place to help people. So I’ve recently started seeing my comments as a “contribution” area. If whatever comment you’re leaving doesn’t contribute to the “helping hand” theme of the site, I get rid of it/don’t respond to it. (BTW – I’m still working on culling everything out – I came to this realization about 3 months ago, but it’s a slow work-in-progress to put it in action. I wish I’d thought of it in the beginning, so I could have kept up with it better – but now I’m going retroactive on it.)
There is a point where it crosses the line to “doing free work”. But I think that’s something that is a personal level – you can’t really define it. For me, the point of “you need to pay me” comes when anything I say or offer needs personal customization to fit the preferences of the end user. If they take something and apply it, and there’s an error, I’ll fix it – because that fix helps everyone, not just that one person. But if they need help with, say, changing a font color or moving a sidebar – I point them to many CSS tutorial sites. If they want certain custom queries that aren’t already a part of my tutorials, then that’s $$ for me.
But when it comes to issues/problems/bugs – I’m there, ASAP.