Bitcoin Business Review - Call for Writers

[carbonpenguin]

   After having both run a small bitcoin business (http://www.iusecoins.com) and written and sub-edited the business section of the late Bitcoin Sun, it has become increasingly clear to me that the success or failure of our collective project ultimately rides heavily on the shoulders of the people who make the goods and services economy happen. As such, a vitally important way in which the scales might be tipped towards "success" is through the establishment of a high-quality and trusted journalistic forum to which both new and veteran bitcoin business people can turn for information on best practices, new trends, and valuable services. At the moment there is much writing on the technical and market side of things, but only the occasional article on how to run a better bitcoin business

   To fill this void, I am pleased to announce the launch of a new website: the Bitcoin Business Review. The BB Review will not only aim to publish a wide range of articles of interest to the bitcoin business community, but we will also make sure that only the best and most relevant articles through an innovative new system (http://cuhistory.blogspot.com/2011/05/coming-micro-ownership-revolution.html). Instead of paying writers a fixed amount for their articles, they will instead be entitled to a share of the site's revenue, pro-rated by the amount of traffic that their article generated. Thus, if the site receives 10,000 hits, and a writer's article was responsible for 1,000 of those hits, the writer would be entitled to receive 10% of the revenue designated for the writers (to begin with, this will be 50% of the site's total revenue). Anyone may submit an article, but, starting out, we will only publish one per day, so readers will benefit from competition ensuring that only the most relevant and insightful articles make it to the front page.

   If you're interested in getting involved with this project as a writer, we're interested in a variety of topics and formats: interviews, opinion pieces, product and service reviews, reflections on challenges you've experienced as a bitcoin business person and how you've overcome them, humor, etc. We should have the capacity to accept submissions by the end of next week, and should you have any questions or pieces you'd like to submit before our online architecture is complete, feel free to drop me a line over the forum.

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[Piper67]

Would you consider expanding it well beyond the narrow scope of a Business Review? I'm thinking something that encompasses every aspect of the Bitcoin world might fit nicely into the PR niche I was talking about in my other thread.

[carbonpenguin]

My sense is that if the model is successful for business stuff, expansion could certainly be on the table. However, one of my takeaways from the Bitcoin Sun experience was that it's best to start with a modest but clearly doable mission rather than aspire to go from 0 to the NY Times of bitcoin all at once. As such, my sense is that the btc business community is the element of our project that has the most need for a forum like this at the moment, so I figure it'd be best to start there, and hen see where things go...

[edd]

I'm willing to write an article. I'm entrepreneurial by nature and Bitcoin has opened up an overwhelming number of opportunities for anyone who's been searching for their "niche." It really is a horse of a different color, however, and I'm sure many could benefit from the experiences we've had.

What size article are you looking for?

I'm assuming revenue will be from advertising?

[Garrett Burgwardt]

I predict you're going to have some problems getting started, as in, you need articles/hits to attract advertisements, and you need advertisements/currency coming in to attract writers.

That said, once I can think of something to write I'll throw an article or two at you; just need to find a business that I want to try out (maybe bitcoindeals, or cheaperinbitcoin)

[carbonpenguin]

@edd - Yes, the revenue will be from advertising; to start with, we'll throw up a few OpFab banners, and once we're rolling we'll entertain other, hopefully more lucrative, mechanisms. The length can definitely vary, but as a rule of thumb I'd aim for around 750-1250 words.

@Garrett - I agree that the "pump-priming" problem you mentioned might pose some issues, but my thinking is that the scheme I outlined might overcome it, since each piece can be viewed by the writer as an investment that will hopefully pay off over time. I'm planning to add up the payments monthly, so a piece will continue paying something for as long as it can attract traffic; this creates an incentive for writers to submit articles with a long shelf-life, which will benefit both the writers and the publication. Additionally, in the beginning I plan to write a weekly interview feature as a sort of "foundation" which might serve the pump priming function; once the first few bitcents per day are rolling in, a virtuous cycle will hopefully emerge to carry the project forward. In any case, it'll be an interesting experiment, and I'm quite excited to see how it unfolds. And, yes, I'd definitely be interested in seeing whatever you feel inspired to write!

[Steve]

How about trying to get one high quality bitcoin article per week.  Not too long and not too short and put some time into editing.  Have the author submit something, then review and edit it a few times before publication.  I think you'll find plenty of people that would be willing to write such articles and you don't need to pay them anything.  You could probably find people to help with the editing as well.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

How about trying to get one high quality bitcoin article per week.  Not too long and not too short and put some time into editing.  Have the author submit something, then review and edit it a few times before publication.  I think you'll find plenty of people that would be willing to write such articles and you don't need to pay them anything.  You could probably find people to help with the editing as well.

+111  (As you see, I like this. Now where's that damn Like button!)


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

[IdeaMan]

We should have the capacity to accept submissions by the end of next week, and should you have any questions or pieces you'd like to submit before our online architecture is complete, feel free to drop me a line over the forum.

I'm very interest in writing for BBR, where can I submit an article to?

[carbonpenguin]

How about trying to get one high quality bitcoin article per week.  Not too long and not too short and put some time into editing.  Have the author submit something, then review and edit it a few times before publication.  I think you'll find plenty of people that would be willing to write such articles and you don't need to pay them anything.  You could probably find people to help with the editing as well.

I think this model is generally what we're going for, but my sense is that I don't want to limit it to one good article per week if there are several in the hopper. On the payment side of things, my sense is that, in the long run, paying writers with a share of the revenue their article generates might actually be better than getting free content. This is because the writer has an incentive to actively promote the article to all of the communities with which he or she has access, thus simultaneously increasing both the size of the whole pie as well as the size of the writer's individual slice. My hope is that having all the writers incentivized to act this way will function to build the reader base in a way that having "free" articles could not match.

@IdeaMan - The website is already partially complete, and my goal is to have it online and accepting submissions by Friday, Sept 2, with publication beginning the following week. I'll post both in this thread and a new announcement when we're online and ready to go...

[Villem Anton]

I really like this idea of having reviewed material!

Just want to add,

* I could pay for a high signal to noise newsfeed like this! I like the idea of paying the authors so if we pay for serious work this helps everyone. In the long run this enables inviting outsiders (economists/it-specialist/crtographers) for commentaries etc.
* There are a lot of really smart people around here. If this BBR gets feet, please everyone, encourage those you know that have something to tell to put some of that into an article.

[carbonpenguin]

Status Update

As my tech guy has been swamped by a project with a hard dead-line of next Tuesday, getting the BBR fully operational will have to wait until next week. We've blocked out a full-day work session for Wednesday the seventh, so my hope is to have all the necessary infrastructure in place to launch on Thursday. In the meantime, we've secured the domain http://www.btcbusiness.net, installed Drupal 7, and put together a rough outline of the site. Obviously it still needs a lot of work, but its a start.

In the meantime, if you're interested in submitting an article for editorial review and possible publication once we get going, send an email to carbonpenguin (at) yahoo (dot) com with your piece in an attachment (preferably in OpenOffice format, though .doc will work). Further updates will be forthcoming as things progress

[IdeaMan]

Status Update

As my tech guy has been swamped by a project with a hard dead-line of next Tuesday, getting the BBR fully operational will have to wait until next week. We've blocked out a full-day work session for Wednesday the seventh, so my hope is to have all the necessary infrastructure in place to launch on Thursday. In the meantime, we've secured the domain http://www.btcbusiness.net, installed Drupal 7, and put together a rough outline of the site. Obviously it still needs a lot of work, but its a start.

In the meantime, if you're interested in submitting an article for editorial review and possible publication once we get going, send an email to carbonpenguin (at) yahoo (dot) com with your piece in an attachment (preferably in OpenOffice format, though .doc will work). Further updates will be forthcoming as things progress

Signed up, but got an email error.  Thursday here we come!

[carbonpenguin]

Work session has begun; will update when we're ready to go!

[carbonpenguin]

We are a go: http://btcbusiness.net ! New forum topic to for further discussion here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=42180.0