Would collaborative blogging work?

Collaborative blogging is an excellent idea. As 'the fool' said, it's virtually impossible for one writer to produce enough content regularly to gain a sizable readership. If you want to start a personal blog, with non-profit motive, you won't have enough problems in running such a blog. However, a commercial blog has to consider several issues before embarking upon such a project.

1. How the expenses will be met and the profits shared? what percentage of revenue will be kept aside to develop the blog so the rest can be distributed amongst the members?  You need to keep at least basic book of accounts to maintain transparency.  Ideally, these accounts should also be audited by a chartered accountant to ensure their authenticity. 

2. It's a good option to legally define the relationship between blog members. Decide whether you want to start as a partnership, a company or a LLP. I know it increases formalities, but it can safe you a lot of trouble in future if something goes wrong.

3. Decide the role of each member in the blog. Will all of them write content or some of them will solely focus on design and development? If a member wishes to take up extra responsibilities will he be compensated for it?

4. How will the major decisions related to the blog will be taken? If you want to introduce a new member, who is going to decide on it? Will it by majority decision or every member will have a veto power, so it has to be a unanimous decision? If the design has to be changed, how you will decide upon it? How will you decide whether to accept or reject the offer of a new sponsor? If there are clear cut rules and guidelines, there will be less chances of a member feeling that injustice has been done to him. 

5. Some people say that full creative freedom should be given to the writers. I am somewhat uncomfortable with the idea. If you are running a commercial blog, there need to be some sort of editorial control. What if a member writes something which diminishes your brand image? What if someone creates a content which can cause legal trouble?

If you choose to have an editorial board, you need to decide how it will be constituted. Ideally, it should be all members except the one who is being reviewed. How will you decide the parameters on which an article is to be reviewed? We should make sure that the standards are objective and unbiased.

I feel 15 members are too many. To run a blog smoothly, it should have no more than 3-5 members, at least in the start. You can have guest posts and few junior writers if you want to. With 5 members, even if all of them contribute twice a week, you will have 10 posts every week. With less members you can reduce the chances of conflicts and problem of delayed decisions.

These were my two cents (or a chawanni) on this topic. I am sorry if my posts seem more cold and rational and less enthusiastic. I am really in favor of this idea, but we just need to iron out some issues.

To continue the discussion, I have seen many such multi author sites. (Only general ones. I am not much into tech blogs as such. Maybe there it is different)  I find most of these sites focussing too much  on writers and less on readers. Internet has emerged as a strong alternative to newspapers and magazines. But I think still blogs don't seem to be giving books and entertainment magazines  serious run for their money. So I am exploring if something can be done to tap all the good talent available on blog-o-sphere to deliver quality content to readers freeing writers from the tyranny of publishers.

Of course, lot of people may suggest computers can not replace paper books. Even I love paper books. But with the emergence of tablets, kindle etc. even traditional books are moving electronic. So aren't good blogs a better option than electronic books?

Quite a novel idea, though it would require a lot of 'hard work' not only in setting it up but throughout to extract it to the full. As with many who has pointed above, i too share the same view that the success of the venture would depend largely on the love, dedication and passion that the contributing members would have towards the project. Their focus towards their resp. subjects would be a large factor helping them rise above petty issues and hurdles, if any, rising among the team members.

However, I don't think that a filter panel should be placed for quality checks. This is something that should be done at the primary level only before taking the writer on board. Once on, I believe, complete freedom and trust towards the writer and his works would only give him the security and confidence that he deserves so that he can keep churning good content from his side.

Well, Arti. The quality checks may not be relavent in some genres such as technical or travel blogging. But I am not sure if even established authors can provide consistent quality of fiction/poetry. So was thinking if there was some peer editing if not a peer filtering mechanism. For this idea to work, readers should be able to trust the quality of anything on the common site as they trust books in the book store. The audience for the site should be genuine readers who are willing to pay for content and not writers pretending to be readers.

I agree with Arti's points. But especially in political and nationalism issues, a lot of responsibility is needed, so it would be better if an editor is on the top level. As legal issues may involve with these topics, editor can take care of it too.

It's a great idea, and it's what I am also wishing from a long time, but I didn't get that dedicated souls to write, where the quality, dedication and regularity everything comes together and passion to write.

One more point the benifit of this idea is, the work remains fresh with new ideas of diffrent people and different personaities, it can become popular if they share same passion and ideology about the content.

Maybe you will get people of that sort in this very thread, Mohinee ji. Only thing is one should wait and select the right set of people. It should not become a mixture of gems and garbage like indivine by allowing whoever wants to join.

I agree with the word, gems and garbage! It requires a lot of responsibility and maturity, otherwise it becomes hard to maintain the group and to solve the problems. 

I think to work this there may be separate peoples to do seperate work like,

1-2 people will do designing devloping and maitaining a blog.

other 4-5 peoples can do promotion of blog like commenting link sharing.

other 5-6 people can write articles, and remaining can do anything I don't know what can be done else.

and this can be rotated after a month.

This too looks like a fairly good option so that none escape tasks like promoting and marketing.

yes and also everyone gets time for writing and thinking on next articles.

Good idea. But that will become like a job and the fun will be lost. It should work on trust and a voluntary basis is what I think. Whoever has time will do everything. Thats why it should not be open enrolment. Instead selection of known people. And the common blog should be all members primary blog. 

That is a very good idea which hasn't struck my mind till date. But I feel that one of the advantages mentioned by you might turn out to be a disadvantage. Noit everyone in the team might put their effort in marketing/ promoting the blog because there are always 14 other people to do the same so why should he bother to do the tedious task. And unless the group of people are already close accquaintances, the project might not be a successful one.

nice point ranjith, because of this many good blogs not work in reaching peoples cause one think other is doing so why I do the same thing.

Yes, Ranjith. I agree. It should not be an open registration type where anyone can join. People must know and trust each other. And if all members know this is their only blog and success depends on all of them, they will put in the effort. 

I am thinking of a blog with weekly features - say a Tuesday poem, a Wednesay Flash fiction, Thursday serial story, Friday short story, Saturday book review etc. And building a repository for 4-5 weeks in advance so that the site regularly has posts coming up. My ideas is in terms of a literature blog as that is my main area of interest. Others if they like this idea can brainstorm the structure for other genres along with the challenges, benefits and areas that need attention. And maybe core groups can form on this thread itself.

for a literature blog its just awesome thinking can be worked fine in many genres

I got this idea as I was thinking of buying a domain. I was not sure if I should just make my existing blog into a domain. First of all I think I write on too many different genres that have different readers. Inspite of that I don't regularly produce content. So if I make 2-3 blogs combining related genres, I will have 2-3 posts per month, which is dismally low. So solution would be to have more writers. But then you can not allow anyone to indiscriminately join and write. Then reader will not be assured of the quality of the content. Readers will be loyal only if they are assured that every time they come, they will be assured of good content giving value for their 10-15 minutes of time. 

The other idea to think about is concentrating content on common blog versus linking from common blog to individual blogs. I somehow feel single blog provides better user experience and SEO than linking to different blogs. 

Others please share your ideas. I also will share more ideas as this thread keeps running.

nice concept but there are must be some work done as Leo said before starting such project.

Yeah. Here I am just starting a discussion. Maybe if we get good perspective in the discussion here and a group can be formed, people can start the work. Right now it is just a vague idea up for discussion that may or may not result in a project.

That's a fine idea in my opinion. Personality conflicts, that's always there in a group. We can't avoid that always, even if it is ten friends joining together to make the blog. Another challenge I find in this idea is to decide, who are the fifteen. Even if be it a niche, that niche might have umpteen bloggers, and asking an open forum volunteers would result in more than fifteen appearing. Once the fifteen is decided, it must also be needed that the fifteen individuals don't ask other fifteen each. I find that in these FB groups. One joins, then invites fifteen or twenty others. So there is a need for an acknowledged co-ordinator & author, a moderator & author, and perhaps the others to be just authors. something on those lines. And each of the authors, if in different sub-niches of the same niche, can contribute a beautiful addition to the magazine, helping in its growth. If more of the same type of content, then it might not hold up on a longer period I feel, or one may not get the attention that other of the same content gets.

@ Leo - It should be a fine balance between getting too narrow and too broad. You don't have companies that manufacture everything. But still companies don't manufacture only one product line either. So book reviews can go on a story and poetry blog but not mobile phone and automobile reviews or current affairs analysis. What content goes with what and what doesn't is also something to be discussed. But one thing I am sure. Blog should not be universal for all kinds of content.

that's what I meant,  TF. suppose literature is the main niche for the bloggers and the magazine, then different subniches like fiction, flash 55, poetry, reviews etc. can be incorporated just to bring a whiff of freshness into it. Not universal.