Here are my thoughts:

"Offering stock options to the first 5". We tested this and it turns out this isn't viable. Not only will you administrative overhead managing your cap table, you're going to turn off investors that may not like the structure.

My advice is: keep it simple.
1. Define your customer persona
2. Contact them and find 10 of them to say yes
3. After you have validated demand, find the supply to fulfill the demand.
4. Create a few success stories.
5. Rinse and repeat.

Bloggers/writers primarily want to have a dependable source of supplemental income. If you can do that, while making the experience enjoyable, you'll be on to something.