Editor's Note: Today we have a guest post from Ben Ilfeld, Operations Manager of the Sacramento Press.

Our contributors are not "free labor." They all have incentive to write or they simply would not write. The question then is what incentives compel writers to write?

For example, Facebook compels me to upload photos and share links by connecting me with my friends and family in an easy and relatively private way.

At The Sacramento Press our goal is to provide local news and information. We need to incentivize writers to contribute that content.

Step one:
Build a system that is open and encourages interaction and dialog. This starts with a recognition that online there are no constraints on space and time as there are at traditional broadcast media. You can and should design a content management system that allows writers to write as much or little as they wish and tell stories over time. People love to tell stories! This is one reason why blogs work so well, they are built to tell a story over time. See our storyline feature.

When it comes to interaction make sure that comments sections are prominent, contain real debates (even some flame wars), and that the writers of stories participate. We like to think of comment sections as a place for conversation so our design is aimed at making them as conversational as possible.

You also have to pay careful attention to the barriers to becoming a writer. The more barriers, the more difficult to bring new writers on board, but the trade-off of barriers is a sense of community and ownership in the success of the venture. Consider layering and incentivizing different levels of involvement equating to more access and greater influence within the community (Digg does this very well).

Step two:
Add value. Anyone can write a blog, but here at The Sacramento Press we provide both a larger and more targeted local daily audience especially if our editors pick your story for the front page. People who write do want both this audience and the recognition of being chosen by our editors. We see people tweet to their friends about making it to our laid-out front page. And we make sure the front page looks good and looks like a newspaper. Soon we will have even more fantastic layout tools.

In addition, we offer free copy editing and regular workshops in the middle of our newsroom on how to be a better writer, journalist, photographer and interviewer, as well as a social media series to teach the tools of this century. We want writers to work with our editorial staff and offer ourselves as a resource for the community of contributors on our site. We will help with research. I have even given someone a netbook and my hotspot code so he could write regularly.

Step three:
Recruit people who have incentive to write. Go to neighborhood organizations, non-profits, religious groups and find people who already give their time and energy for a cause. No need to be pushy, just tell them who you are and how you can help them tell local stories and they will get excited. Many have never published anything online. Most are excited that they can cover something they really know a lot about. They are not looking to be citizen journalists but rather contribute what they know.

These are stories that would otherwise not be covered by broadcast media outlets. Many of these stories will either get told by an amateur because they want to make their neighborhood better or they will go untold. These stories were never and will never be covered by the daily paper. Community papers are often written mostly by amateurs as well. Build something that has a real sense of place like a community paper and recruit those who have the incentive and the will to volunteer their time just like they do at these meetings and then (step 2) add value!

Also, look for PR professionals and PIO’s from government. They should always disclose their profession and affiliation, but they provide excellent content. The key is to be open and transparent rather than unbiased. Readers know that much of what they see in the news is a quickly researched rehash of a press release with little or no scrutiny. So give readers the press release and let them have a critical dialog with the PR professional. This happens on our site all the time and the conversations are more enlightening and offer tougher scrutiny than any one reporter could provide.

Step Four:
People love video games, trophies and achievements. Consider the Pulitzer Prize. Award systems that incentivize productive behavior work for eBay, why not for community contribution? We are about to launch a very ambitious contest. The winners will get prizes and cash. Plus, we will pay for an illustrator for The Wall Street Journal to create an icon for the winner on the site.

We are also working on a set of badges that denote achievements on the site. How many times has your article been picked for the front page? Have you attended our workshops? And we will add badges that denote identity: Are you a PIO for the Police Department? Have we verified your name by meeting you and checking your ID card?

Step five:
Pay writers! It is not a crime to pay people for contributions. Our community asked us to cover city council meetings and city services. No volunteer could take on that huge task, so we hired a reporter. Same thing with development and business issues. We hire beat writers to keep things consistent and help give us direction.

In that same vein we bring in interns. They don’t get paid, but we provide a TON of value for them. They get to use all the perks of our office and our name. They sit in editorial meetings and work directly with professionals.

The key is not to mistake this editorial department as totally distinct from other contributors. We are all in this together and we do what we can to cover local neighborhood issues.

We are always trying to find new incentive structures and work across platforms to build a community both online and offline for Sacramento. The goal is to create a free space for people to tell stories and have conversations -- and we have. Our Managing Editor David Watts Barton likes to say that someone just needed to stand up, put their hand up and declare that this is the center of a community.

One more thing: for-profit is not a bad word. We love working with local businesses as partners. They want to build the community and be part of this effort. Our business model can be a guidepost for others. We are part of a larger hyper-local publishing community that needs to find new business models to do something that was missing or underrepresented for decades in US media.

This article originally appeared on the Alliance for Community Media's Cit-J listserv, and is republished with permission from the author.