
LWN pays $300 for a well-written article from new authors - ratdragon
https://lwn.net/op/AuthorGuide.lwn
======
rwmj
I've written a couple of articles for LWN (I waived the fee)[1][2]. It's quite
an involved process going through many rounds of editing. You have to stick to
the house style and use the house markup. The results are excellent because of
this consistent attention to detail, but I wouldn't recommend it as a way to
make a quick buck :-) The whole process for these two articles took two weeks
from proposal to publication and involved 30 emails as well as many edits in
their CMS.

[1] [https://lwn.net/Articles/749185/](https://lwn.net/Articles/749185/)

[2] [https://lwn.net/Articles/749443/](https://lwn.net/Articles/749443/)

~~~
benhoyt
I've recently started writing for LWN and have written nine articles now:
[https://lwn.net/Archives/GuestIndex/#Hoyt_Ben](https://lwn.net/Archives/GuestIndex/#Hoyt_Ben)
It's definitely a stringent style and editing process -- I find it good
discipline. Most of my articles have taken a full day to write (8-10 hours)
plus an hour or two of editing, though a couple of them took two days. So not
a get-rich-quick scheme, but also not bad (or you can think of it as them
paying you to research and learn :-).

I've really enjoyed the process. It's nice to have an article done and dusted,
and then you don't have to worry about it anymore. Unlike code, which keeps
breaking, you have to maintain it, deploy it, add features, etc. Code is never
done. But an article gets published, and (apart from reading a few comments)
that's the end of it.

So I highly recommend subscribing to (or writing for!) LWN. It really is
quality content. And I'm not even an avid Linux person. It's really
inexpensive for what it is, and they're just a small shop so they deserve it
(I think they only have 3 or 4 full time writers).

~~~
chrizel
Agreed! I'm also an LWN subscriber, even when I'm checking LWN just
occasionally. I support their high quality content, which is so much missing
on the internet of today.

Ben, just wanted to say that I especially liked your articles and it pushed me
to resubscribe to LWN again. I like the topics you write about, because they
really interest me. Good job! I really like AWK, Lua, Go and everything around
it, so I'm looking forward to more articles from you.

------
markvdb
Lwn.net is without any doubt the greatest free and open source publication in
the world, to me at least. Very high standards both technical and ethical.

I highly recommend subscribing!

P.S. I am a subscriber, but otherwise not in any way affiliated with lwn.net.

------
from
Many VPS providers are offering similar terms. DigitalOcean has its Write for
DOnations program ([https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/write-for-
digit...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/write-for-
digitalocean)) which pays $300 for a new tutorial, for instance. I'd imagine
the cost must pay itself off, I've seen many people sign up for DigitalOcean
because they wanted to follow one of the tutorials (even though you don't
really need DO to follow them).

~~~
karterk
DigitalOcean started this trend but this has now become a very crowded space
with other hosting providers like Linode etc. using the same strategy.

~~~
hboon
If you are referring to writing useful articles (and not referring to paying
for articles), Slicehost and Linode definitely started this way earlier than
DigitalOcean.

------
corbet
LWN editor here.

We are always looking for writers who can create quality articles and aren't
afraid of writing for readers who know more about the subject matter than they
do (or anybody else does, for that matter). We're interested in news from the
free-software development community; we don't do how-to articles or "five
reasons your company should be using DevOps".

The cited rate is our entry rate; we try to bump things up fairly quickly for
authors who do good work for us. As others have noted, we care deeply about
the material we publish, so there is definitely some time to be spent in the
editing process.

------
soared
FWIW this is in the normal range for what a good blog post costs any business.
My first job paid me $50 per blog post and I churned out a few a week. My
second job did $1,000 for three very high quality ones per quarter. (Blogging
is no where near my day to day job).

All were just posted on the corporate blog for seo, building the brand as
experts, etc. One of my posts was reblogged by some major outlets, so
definitely worth the cost for my employer.

~~~
seibelj
Hard to overestimate the value of a high quality, viral blog post for SEO and
business development. A lot of engineers don’t understand how important these
are.

~~~
oefrha
Unfortunately, there are way more companies and engineers who understand the
importance than ones able to produce high quality blog posts, so you end up
sifting through tons and tons of almost useless, often outdated hello world
tutorials when looking for in-depth knowledge on any popular topic.

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
Sounds like there’s demand for an aggregator that curates non-trash, non-spam
“content marketing” pieces!

~~~
mercer
It would be cool if such an aggregator had a commenting feature so people can
discuss the title of the article without even bothering to read the article!

~~~
downvoteme1
Since it would be a service where people would discuss articles after reading
it - I suggest we call it reddit.

~~~
sky_rw
Can't call it reddit, OP said "non-trash"

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beenBoutIT
HN spoiler alert: "Please note that we are, as a general rule, not looking for
"how to" articles..."

------
sixhobbits
I maintain a collection[0] of places with programs like this (I'll add lwn
later today).

As others have said, producing a good blog post takes time, so the money isn't
as good as it initially seems if you aren't doing it for reputation or fun
too.

I also recently launched ritza[1] to scale production of this kind of content
as it's definitely a growing demand trend. Happy to chat about technical
writing with anyone - details in profile.

[0] [https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-
writing/blob/master/...](https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-
writing/blob/master/write-for-us.md)

[1] [https://ritza.co](https://ritza.co)

~~~
sah2ed
Small typo on your Ritza page. There is this dangling text to a link
“[https://sixhobbits.github.io/hugoblog/posts/2020-q1-retrospe...](https://sixhobbits.github.io/hugoblog/posts/2020-q1-retrospective/”)
that is identical to the “here” hyperlink.

------
monksy
I would love something like the LWN for the Scala world. That would be pretty
cool. (High quality curation and journalism)

Shame we don't have Dr Dobbs anymore.

------
AlexMuir
If anyone wants to write detailed, high-quality articles about automotive
engineering on a similar basis, drop me an email. Explaining concepts from the
basic to the advanced in an easy-to-understand way.

alex@howacarworks.com

~~~
sah2ed
> _If anyone wants to write detailed, high-quality articles about automotive
> engineering on a similar basis, drop me an email._

Will you also match LWN by paying $300 and up for accepted articles?

Not sure why you were downvoted, but it might be a good idea to put up a page
explaining your goals and perhaps do your own Show HN so more people can see
your offer.

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marioch4
It really depends on the topic (probably not for Linux), but Medium seems
today the best option if your goal is to earn money.

My last 2 articles in Medium generated $500 and +$800 (and growing) for a
total effort of around ~6 writing hours per article, so I think it is a very
viable way to make a living writing 100% online.

~~~
cosmodisk
Can you elaborate a bit? I wasn't even aware that Medium does pay for
articles...

~~~
marioch4
Sure. Medium paywall works surprisingly well. You simply need to publish your
article and activate Medium paywall after a very simple KYC.

The point is that if you don't have an audience/publication, no one will find
your article. That's why it is usually better to publish your content under a
publication focused in the same topic than your article. If you are lucky,
Medium will also promote the article in their newsletter and in Medium
homepage and visits will boost.

Then Medium pays you a fee based on the article performance. It is not clear
what parameters they consider to calculate the fee, but it seems to be a mix
between views and reader time.

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A_No_Name_Mouse
Let's see if they accept GPT-3 generated articles :-)

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dfee
I was with a company once that paid $100. The content was actually pretty bad.

Where do you find quality writers? I can’t imagine it’s Fiverr.

~~~
Veen
I write content that straddles marketing and technical writing for a living.
Clients find me through referrals (best for me) or the marketing agencies I
have established relationships with (more reliable but less money). In the
decade I’ve been doing this, I’ve never so much as created an account on
Fiverr or Upwork.

A lot of published work is substandard for two reasons: businesses aren’t
willing to pay enough and they have no expertise in editing. Even the best
writers benefit from an editor who can knock their work into shape and keep
them on the straight and narrow. Publishers know this, but the average
marketer or entrepreneur does not, or, if they do know it, they are not
willing to pay for high-quality editing (running writing through Grammarly
doesn’t count).

~~~
throw9193819110
Do you know any services which offer that? I have some work I would like to
polish up but beyond having a relative of friend look over it I am generally
lost.

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aste-risk
Is there anything similar for windows platform? I would love to pay to get in
depth technical articles but with keeping Windows as platform in mind.

~~~
bboreham
Used to be the Microsoft Systems Journal, which morphed into MSDN Magazine.
But it shut down last year.

I guess there is so much content “free” that it’s difficult to compete.

~~~
loosescrews
MSDN Magazine was no where near LWN, at least not for its last few years of
existence. It was very high level with almost no technical insight. I only
remember seeing not very helpful or in depth tutorials and a rant or two by
people who seemed fairly uninformed in each issue.

------
markosaric
Great to see that there are still publications that care about having high
standards of editorial and that actually pay their writers a reasonable
amount. These are very few and far between.

