9.5 KiB
Do you have expert knowledge of some aspect of bitcoin related technology ? Do you have an urge to write high-quality articles for extremely picky editors and demanding readers, sometimes under tight deadlines, for minimal pay? If so, writing for BTW may be for you. Please read on for information on how you can participate in the creation of BitcoinTechWeekly.
What we are after
BTW is seeking authors who can contribute articles on a free-lance basis. Our needs fall into three areas:
-
Lead-in editorials for the various Weekly Edition categories, based on current events.
-
Brief updates and highlights, based on current developments in the mailing lists and community projects.
-
Longer, feature articles that are not so tightly tied to this week's news.
Lead-in
As of this writing, we are particularly interested in contributions to our weekly Protocol, BIPS, Crypto and Lightning pages, but other subjects are welcome too.
Contributions to these pages will run in the "lead-in" position at the top of the page. They usually cover some topic from recent bitcoin news (a release, mailing list discussion, plans made, etc.). Our general guideline is for articles to be around 1500 words in length, though somewhat longer or shorter can work too. The best articles cover a fairly narrow topic completely, without any big omissions or any extra padding. We are generally looking for authors who have their own ideas on topics they want to write about. Looking at past weekly editions in the Archives is a good way to get an idea of the kinds of topics we cover and how we cover them.
First drafts of articles are typically due on Monday, with a (hopefully) one-day turnaround for a final draft sometime on Tuesday. Our deadline is early Wednesday morning, CEST time (UTC+2), but it is best to not push up against that if possible. Articles that are less tightly tied to the news of the week can be delivered at most any time, the earlier, the better.
Briefs
We are looking for contributors to our weekly briefs. The format is shorter than usual articles; the recommended length is less than 600 words. It can cover an update, release, new announcement or other developments in the Bitcoin technology space, and usually includes quotes and citations from the covered topic.
The priority sources of news should be the development mailing lists bitcoin-dev and lightning-dev as well as other bitcoin tech communities like /r/BitcoinDiscussion and bitcointalk forums.
Since brief updates are time sensitive, contributions approval will be faster but you need to contact us first to check if the topic is not already covered on our upcoming Weekly Release. The time of the news or event covered should be in the period starting from the Thursday of last week to the Wednesday of current week (last day before the release day).
If you want your contribution to be included in the upcoming Weekly Edition release, the deadline is a strict early Thursday morning, CEST time (UTC+2).
Feature articles
We are also always on the lookout for standalone feature articles. Feature articles can run independently, on the Weekly Edition front page, or both. Articles intended for a specific week's front page are subject to the same deadline constraints as other Weekly Edition material; others can be more flexible in their timing.
Please note that we are, as a general rule, not looking for "how to" articles; there are plenty of other outlets for such content on the net. We're more interested in the current news and in informing our readers of interesting developments in the community that they may not have previously heard of.
We are especially interested in authors who follow an area well enough to propose topics for articles and follow through quickly.
How to contribute
There are two ways to submit contributions:
Open Contributions
If you just wish to contribute your writing in an open way you should head over our Github repo.
We encourage open contributions as they are more transparent and much easier to review. The contribution process works this way:
-
Submit a PR including the title and a brief summary of your writing.
-
You PR is reviewed and will accept or reject your proposal at our discretion, based on the topic relevance and other factors.
-
If you PR is accepted you will be able to work on your drafts updates over PRs which we will review until the article is ready for publication.
-
Your article is published under the "Open Contribution" section on BitcoinTechWeekly.com
When you start a draft you need to use the TEMPLATE provided in the github repository and fill in the metadata at top of the template. (See Formatting)
Open contributors will have the opportunity in the future to receive payments through community donations. If you wish to receive compensations for your contribution you should include your BTC or Lightning address in the metadata section.
Direct Submissions
If you wish to send us directly your writings, the first order of business is to contact us (at authors@bitcointechweekly.com) or on our matrix room to discuss your interests. Please do not just send articles without talking to us first. We'll discuss subjects and timelines and come to a determination on if and where your contributions fit into BTW.
Submission must be done done in Markdown format. Please read our writing style and formatting information (below) to understand the kind of content we are looking for.
BTW style guide
One can find on the interweb an abundance of Bitcoin related journalism. BTW is trying to distinguish itself from the lot through (1) a high degree of respect to its readers, (2) a significant level of technical accuracy and (3) top-quality writing. Contributors to BTW must aim for those goals. To that end, we will edit contributions before publication if necessary (though we much prefer writing which requires little to no editing), and we must reserve the right not to publish work which, in our opinion, does not belong to BTW.
Furthermore, BTW is a Bitcoin technology magazine, not the run-of-the-mill "everything Blockchain" website you will find elsewhere. We will reject any "click-bait" writing in the form of "10 reasons you need a Blockchain" and make sure to ignore such a contributor.
We will likewise reject any contribution which, at its substance, tends to primarily focus on price behavior or market predictions, unless the technical subject of the writing is tightly linked to the economics aspect (such as mining incentives, block rewards, transaction fees, etc.).
Audience. You must assume BTW's readers to be be highly educated and strongly technical. Some of them will likely be participants in the projects you are writing about. Should you feel the urge to "dumb down" material, that urge should be resisted. Our readers are most certainly not "dummies". If you talk down to them, or only tell part of the story, they will call you on it.
Formatting
Our preferred format is Markdown. For direct submissions we will prioritize contributions in this format.
For Open Contributions, markdown is the only format accepted.
If you prefer any other specific markup language, let us know we might be able to accommodate you.
"Word" documents should be avoided at all costs; we will still consider contributions in this format but we strongly advise against it as it makes the review process much slower.
Compensation
Compensation can be made in BTC and Lightning. Let us know if you want to get paid in an alternative crypto-currency.
There are two ways to get paid for your writing.
Compensation On Open Contributions
For open contributions you need to provide a bitcoin (or LN1) address in the metadata section. The readers will have the opportunity to make direct donations to each article. Half of every donation will be distributed to the original author. The other half is reserved to the costs of running the website and the BTW editors team.
Direct submissions
For direct submissions which are accepted, there will be a "one time only" payment. Those contributions are not elligible to donations from the readers. If you wish to receive donations directly from the readers consider making an open contribution.
Compensation starts at $200 for well-done articles from new authors. Those figure do go up quite substantially for authors who, over time, establish a record of good writing and on-time contributions. We'll entertain proposals for in-depth articles (or a series of articles) of greater complexity at a higher price; please contact us if you have an idea you would like to pursue.
Copyrights and further reproduction
Authors retain the copyrights for their work. We ask that you grant BTW exclusive rights to publish your work during up to two weeks after publication. Thereafter, we retain the right to publish the material, and release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0). After the exclusive rights period, authors may republish their work however they wish.
Still interested ?
Drop us a mail or join us on matrix and let's talk.
-
{{< footnote >}} For lightning payments you need to establish a LN channel with us. We are still setting up our LN node and will soon give more details for this procedure. {{< /footnote >}} ↩︎