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.

This framework of elements can best be compared to a federalist political system, in which sovereignty is formally divided between a central governing authority and constituent political units (like states or provinces). In a well-functioning federalist system (few people would call the current U.S. political system “well-functioning”), state subunits act as laboratories for innovation, and best practices are filtered among those subunits, and sometimes bubble up to be implemented at the national level. So how does our network compare?

Important Media maintains three primary editorial roles. If any of the three stands out to you immediately, click through to read specific information about the role.

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, which if compared to our federalism metaphor, would be akin to a cross between a body like the Senate and an association of state governors.

Freelance Authors create the preponderance of regular content on our sites. Each Site Editor maintains their own editorial masthead, but cannot create a successful site without multiple committed, passionate authors contributing to its voice. One might view those in the Author role with IM as members of the House of Representatives, or state legislatures.

Guest Contributors have important contributions to make to one or more sites’ voice and purpose, but are constrained from daily (or other regular) contributions. Their metaphorical equivalent might be the interest groups that have a more indirect effect on state policies.

(…and, just to complete the metaphor, readers and commenters obviously play the role of the voting electorate in the this system.)

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

Regardless of which of the above roles they occupy, 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 (mostly formatting-related) and relevant site-specific editorial standards
• These responsibilities mirror Important Media’s overarching values: purposeful work, group progress, and open autonomy.

Again,  each role has more specific rights and responsibilities on its own page: Guest Contributors, Freelance Authors, Site Editors.

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:

• Always matching expenditures to revenue. (How many media outlets have raised money, then steadily paid authors beyond the outlets’ means until they went out of business? Not good for anyone.)
• Align the incentives of all financial stakeholders by pegging compensation to common, downstream metrics. (In our case, per-site monthly gross revenue.)
• Maximize the number of ways editorial contributors can support themselves, without ruining the reader experience. (Find innovative incremental revenue streams to offer our community)
• Maximize transparency so that contributors always have context for their incentives and participation. (Keep everyone on the same financial page.)

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).

For more details on the revenue streams we provide (and plan to provide) directly to our editorial stakeholders on their content, check out specific information for potential freelance Authors and site Editors.

Q: How do I get paid?

Because we are paying Authors and Site Editors on a direct revshare of gross monthly deposits, we no longer have to wait 60-90 days for advertisers to pay us for accrued earnings to pass on to authors and editors–because we’re all waiting together! 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.

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%. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be running this massive experiment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Q: This looks great! How do I get started?

Please check out specific information on Important Media’s editorial roles (Guest Contributors, Freelance Authors, Site Editors), noting your desired level(s) of involvement, including time commitment and compensation expectations. Our system doesn’t work for everyone, but we’re doing our best to create opportunities for fulfilling participation along as broad a spectrum of content producers as possible.

If one of those looks like you, then head over to our editorial application and tell us about yourself.

We’ll review internally, get back to you as soon as we can, and once we’ve reached an informal agreement on your joining the team we will send you a registration link, legal and financial formalities, as well as supporting information to get you posting with us as quickly as possible.