Q: What site(s) should I write for?

If important news is your bag, we’ve got you covered. Go ahead and browse. Find your passion. Not every site is taking new writers, but most at least accept freelance submissions to get you started.

Food & Natural Health

Eat, Drink, Better: sustainable food (and drink!)

Vibrant Wellness Journal: Natural Health and Wellness

 

Clean technology and Healthy buildings

CleanTechnica: wind, geothermal, solar, efficiency….CleanTechnica is the #1 Clean Technology and Renewable Energy news site on the web. Not that we’re proud…

Gas2.0: the future of transportation

Green Building Elements: healthy, energy efficient buildings

 

Business, done better

Inspired Economist: showcasing the global revolution of our economy toward a healthier future

Green Business Owner: a startup strategy site for those looking to make a living while making a difference

Ecopreneurist: sustainable business, from startup to the board room

 

Current Events, Policies, and Sustainability

Sustainablog: all the sustainable news that’s fit to blog

Red, Green, and Blue: Environment and Public Policy

 

Nature, Creativity & Sustainable Living

PlanetSave: our big, beautiful world

Feel Good Style: naturally beautiful, inside and out

Green Living Ideas: ways to improve our personal and financial well-being through living green

Blue Living Ideas: water, water, everywhere

Crafting a Green World: eco-friendly crafting site

Q: How does writing with Important Media work?

Important Media is a decentralized network of editorial stakeholders. In general, the daily operations of each site are defined at the site level, although everything is based on common organizational elements across the network.

Site Editors run each of our sites on a daily basis. A Site Editor assumes primary responsibility for each site’s editorial operations, and participates with all other Site Editors on the Editorial board. These folks will work with you on your writing, and help you get the maximum benefit for all involved through your contributions.

It’s kind of like having a great mentor, who has a team of peers to help them out. That’s part of what makes Important Media great…we’ve got an amazing team with people who have expertise in pretty much every part of the sustainable economy.

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Q: What are the basic requirements for participating with Important Media’s editorial community?

All members of the editorial community will always be entitled to the following general rights and responsibilities:

Rights:

• Compensation via direct, transparent revshare
• A stable centralized platform with reasonable technical resources
• Visibility and credibility as a part of the Important Media brand/experiment
• Consistent coordination, advice, guidance, and encouragement from editorial peers and network management
• A commitment to structured feedback and input as a stakeholder in the network

Responsibilities:

• Ask important questions – create mainstream awareness for under-discussed important topics
• Be obsessive – move fast, find and cover every interesting angle, and figure out a better way to communicate your passion
• Help each other succeed  – understand that our fortunes rise and fall together
• Suggest more – give feedback, and take it; help the best ideas rise to the top
• Don’t worry too much – there’s a solution for every problem, humor and a useful lesson in every error, and serendipity in some as well
• Maintain basic network-wide and relevant site-specific editorial standards
• These responsibilities mirror Important Media’s overarching values: purposeful work, group progress, and open autonomy.

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Q: How does the payment system work?

Important Media operates on a direct revenue-sharing system, which we not-so-creatively call “revshare+layers.” It’s a system that’s designed to optimize a few variables:

The advertising revenue received each month from advertisers is totaled per site, per month, on a gross cash basis. We divide the company’s total ad revenue received per site on a predefined percentage between the site’s Editor, its Authors (as a group, subdivided relative to each other), and the company (for its central operations). That top-level revenue split is starting out around 45% for Authors, 30% for site Editors, and 25% for the company, and will be adjusted regularly over time to maximize editorial payments while keeping the company slightly profitable (and therefore, financially sustainable).

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Q: How do I get paid?

We take the money we receive from advertisers each month, split it up automatically, and send it out to all editorial stakeholders via PayPal by the 15th of the next month.
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Q: Do I get to choose my own stories?

Yes (generally)! One of the perks of our blog network is the flexibility to write about whatever topics speak to your passions–as long as they meet our editorial standards for being important to humanity. If you typically write about community gardening and suddenly feel the inspiration to write about electric cars, we’re behind you 100%.

Beyond basic network-wide editorial standards, Site Editors may develop and maintain their own standards for contribution to their sites. We want authors to feel creative freedom, within the context of our editorial structure. As our new editorial system develops and grows, these standards will undoubtedly evolve.
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Q: How often do I need to post, and on what schedule?

This is decided in conjunction with a site’s Editor. In general, our posting schedules are flexible, although again, each site Editor may maintain their own standards.
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Q: Who owns the copyright / Can I reuse my posts elsewhere?

Any posts  or other content created for any Important Media  site are published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 license for general public distribution and use.

However, we recognize that content authors need the option of extended commercial uses for their work. So, we only ask for exclusivity for the first week (7 days) of publication. After that exclusivity period, we grant all content creators an additional, more expansive Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, allowing for any futher commercial uses, as long as attribution is maintained.

This means that after a week, you may re-use your posts on your own blog, or even resell it elsewhere. However, the Attribution requirement remains, requiring a logo and/or link back to the original permalink, stating that the post was first published at Important Media. We are always open to discussing special arrangements concerning content ownership for special projects.
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Q: How do I track how my content is doing?

One of the primary purposes of maintaining our centralized infrastructure is to be able to provide a comprehensive set of tools to members of our editorial community. The depth of information about traffic and reader engagement with content varies by editorial role, but we do our best to always provide our editorial stakeholders with the tools they need to constantly improve. This constant march of improvement is mandated by our second editorial value.
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Q: What kind of readership might I expect to get?

That depends entirely on how much and well you write, and can also depend on how hard you work on your own and within the editorial community to promote your material. A good post that is not promoted in any way will usually receive an average of a few hundred hits, whereas posts that are popular on various social media services can get anywhere from 3,000-20,000 visits (or more) in the first day alone. Also, posts that are properly crafted using SEO (search engine optimization) best practices can receive hundreds or thousands of hits per month on an ongoing basis.

Fact: The standing 24-hour record for page-views on a single post in our network is >1,000,000.
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Q: This looks great! How do I get started?

Just head on over to our

editorial application

and let us know about you, your interests, and which site(s) you’d like to write for.
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Sustainability pictures from Shutterstock