Thank you to the many well wishers who have emailed to wish us luck and congratulations with our new home. It has been a very busy few days of moving but we’re finally in and beginning to feel like we’re ‘at home’. We need to find more places for our things and do some work on the house (its a Victorian so has some work to be done) – but overall the main pieces have fitted into place nicely – including an ADSL broadband connection which conveniently was connected the morning after we moved in (after being told it could take 10 working days).
So I’m back and blogging and attempting to catch up on the backlog of the past few days of being offline. All my other blogs have caught up and tomorrow I’ll get back into some ProBlogging.
One thought though as I get ready to go out tonight to a meeting:
I’ve been pondering my last post on ‘what to do when you go on holidays‘ post and one of the thoughts that has come to mind is setting up a ‘blog-locum’ service.
When I go to see my GP (doctor) and he’s away on holidays he gets a locum to stand in and see his patients for him.
I’m wondering if with the increase in ProBloggers if there will one day a need for a locum service for bloggers.
I’m envisaging a website where ProBloggers going away on holiday (or who are sick, on conferences etc) can go request a blogger for a certain length of time, at a certain posting frequency and on a certain topic.
Bloggers then can pitch for the work – perhaps with their fee or an offer of bartering of services (ie I’ll post 10 post for you if you do the same for me – or I’ll post for you if you design a logo for me etc).
The other way to do it would to have more of a matching service where a centralized person matches bloggers needs and services.
Just an idea that I thought might be fun to kick around. I’m not sure that there is enough of us needing such a service yet to justify a business plan etc – but what do you think about it? Would you ever consider getting a locum for your blog? Would you consider being a locum blogger?
PS – if anyone runs with this please let me know. I don’t have heaps of time at the moment to throw at it but would be interested in a partnership!
Blogs are very personal things. It’s a bit like being a locum husband to someone else’s wife. But as the market matures something like that may be useful. At present I think most bloggers would prefer an informal arrangement with people they know.
I guess it would depend on the blog. A purely personal blog (which may be less likely to go ‘pro’) may suffer, as the whole point peope read it is for the person. In that case it would probably be better just not to blog, or use one of the other methods commented on here.
For business or subject blogs, the concept of a ‘locum’ may work better, though you would want to ensure that anyone with control over your blog maintained similar standards in finding and collating material for the blog, in handling comments and communications from readers, and would have a similar ethos as you in what should be published. It’s an interesting thought.
I think the idea has merit, but what I really want to know is how in the world you got your ADSL on in 1 day, the city/ country thing just keeps getting worse….
Good idea, Darren! Don’t know how/if it will work out… I’ll be interested to explore it as well.
And, like Andy said, I think on a personal blog, there probably won’t be a real need. But, in business/pro blogs, yeah… sounds like something that may be useful.
Hey Darren, I think the idea’s got legs. I went away for a week and the resort I was at only had dial-up access (long distance charges) and charged $$$ for high-speed. So I didn’t do anything…that’s OK I was on vacation (holiday). By the time I got back and got re-focused about 11 days went by. If I had someone just making a couple of post that would have been good.
Bartering is a great way to go, and that’s always the avenue I explore first. It will be interesting to see where it goes.
[…] ouple of weeks away from his big one month vacation and he’s trying to nail down the ‘locum’ contributors for his many properties before he leaves. “ […]