How I published my first article on Seeking Alpha and got paid
Over the last 2 years, I’ve done SO much writing for this blog. I wanted to branch out, stretch my creative muscle and financial know-how writing for a larger publication that pays per article (here’s a list I made of 20+ websites that pay you for writing). I started out on the financial website Seeking Alpha since it’s commonplace now for me to write/talk about finance. Here are the blueprints to How I published my first article on Seeking Alpha and got paid.
First, What’s Seeking Alpha?
Seeking Alpha is an online financial journal for investment research covering stocks, bonds, assets classes, ETFs, and investment strategies. It looks a bit like this.
Why Write for Seeking Alpha?
Anyone who is first starting out as a freelance writer should start with a small publication, getting their feet wet and then lead into larger publications. You shouldn’t expect to be published in the New York Times with your first article.
I heard other bloggers talk about writing for Seeking Alpha so I looked into it. I even heard it was easy to get published on Seeking Alpha. So I decided to start small (FYI, it’s not that small).
Seeking Alpha has TWO different publishing platforms. One is like a blog where you sign up and they’ll publish any article you write to your own “mini-blog” and the other is for exclusive articles that Seeking Alpha will pay you for. I discovered that was MUCH harder to get published on.
What does Seeking Alpha Pay-Per-Article?
Every article exclusively published on Seeking Alpha receives a base payout of $35 PLUS $0.01 for every page view. So no matter what you get published, you will receive $35 and if it’s widely viewed you’ll receive $10 per every 1,000 page views.
The higher the page views, the more money you make. Plus there is no timetable for payments, so you’ll continue to receive paychecks from high visited articles for months.
The average article on Seeking Alpha makes $68.79, meaning the average article receives 3,379 page views. It’s way more then what Ebates pays.
Here’s How Writing for Seeking Alpha Went Down
Don’t expect it to be easy
I went into this thinking it was easy (like the other bloggers said) so I spent a little time on my first every article. After recently selling off a majority of my portfolio to pay off my car, I sold my position in Coca-Cola first. So I figured I’d write about that.
My first article was titled “3 Reasons Why Coke is Basically Just Backwash Now”. I spewed out some opinions, ran up about 600 words and hit submit. I submitted it to the “mini-blog” AND their exclusive article submission platform that actually paid per article.
Well, it was published to the mini-blog no problem, that was easy! However, I discovered it’s MUCH harder to get published in their exclusive journal where they pay-per-article. Here was my first Rejection.
HOLY CRAP, that is not easy, they flat out rejected the article. I honestly wasn’t expecting a rejection and it kind of hurt. I REALLY wanted to give up. I only tried again I made it a goal to get paid for an article in my May Income Report. Stupid goals.
I only tried again because I made it a goal to get paid for an article in Income Reports. Stupid goals.
They gave me some great feedback though, so I revised my article and tried again.
I revised my article and re-submitted
I have to admit, they at least read the article close enough to give me valuable feedback. I’m pretty sure if I ever went back to school to get my MBA, I’d submit all my articles to Seeking Alpha before my professor.
So I narrowed my focus more and concentrated on one of the reasons why I wanted to abandon Coca-Cola. I narrowed down my focus to the health movement and how the Soda Tax is affecting the soda industry. I sourced every thought with hyperlinks and fleshed out opinions replacing them with facts. I was quite proud of my article.
It still wasn’t enough, Rejected.
SERIOUSLY! Was this the editor for Berkshire Hathaway? I had over ten sources and a well-written piece covering an interesting topic. However, they wanted more on how it specifically affects Coca-Cola. My article should cover how exactly is A is affecting B and how it relates to C. So they wanted to get in the weeds with how exactly is the Soda Tax directly affecting Coca-Cola and how is the company responding to the growing health concerns.
All illusions that publishing to Seeking Alpha was easy, were now shattered. I started going finance ninja and pulling stats.
I revised my article once more and was accepted!
I spent more time looking through Coca-Cola’s financial reports, understanding how the current 8 cities who passed a “soda tax” have affected both their tax growth, the decline in soda sales and future growth of the tax. As well as read Coca-Cola’s Letter to Share Holders about the future of the company and their responses to the current cities enacting the tax.
I now had a pretty good idea now how the Soda Tax is affecting Coca-Cola and Seeking Alpha loved it.
YES! The final article is now published on Seeking Alpha, Coca-Cola And The ‘Soda Tax’. In the first 2 days, it’s received 1,340 views which equals $48.40 ($35 base pay + $13.40 for page views).
As well as receiving over 38 comments, primarily from people who REALLY hate taxes.
Conclusion
It’s exciting to think of oneself as a finance writer, once you’ve been officially paid for an article to be published. There is so much that goes into an article that gives it substance and obviously a bit more difficult than I originally imagined. However, the process I feel is similar to other freelance writing jobs if you want to earn extra money.
I will absolutely do a couple more Seeking Alpha articles in the future. Maybe once a month, it’s a great learning opportunity, and I’m all about residual payments from page views as a new passive income stream. Although in the future, I’ll use a tool like SEMrush to find popular keywords that can get more page views and more passive income. =)
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Congratulations, WalletSquirrel! Great to see how your perseverance paid off!
Thanks for sharing your experiences — I had a couple of rejections, too, and it annoys when that happens. However, the editors usually list good reasons when they “reject”, so now I take it in stride when that happens.
Seeking Alpha is a great platform and I really appreciate their payment structure. I highly recommend you keep writing and submitting articles!
Thanks FerdiS! It was quite the experience for sure and one I’m excited to add to my monthly income reports. =)
Thanks for stopping by!
-Andrew
Thanks for your article! I’ve been reading articles on SA for over a year now, and I had no idea you could submit your own and get paid for them until this morning. I decided to look into the process a little more and found your post completely by accident. Thanks for walking us through the process of how you got your article submitted, and I hope you keep killing it!
I get really excited when I hit that submit button. Never know what they are going to say! I actually had my second article go through without edits, I was quite proud of myself.
Hey Finding Wealthy,
Right! How cool is it that you can write for Seeking Alpha. I obviously wrote about how hard it is to write for them, but I haven’t had any more issues getting anything published. Once you know what they’re looking for, it’s a lot easier. I’m at three total articles, but I try to post one, once a month.
Hopefully this helped!
-Andrew
That’s awesome DD!
My second and third articles went through with no issues. I think there is a bit of a barrier to getting in, but it’s a lot easier once you’re in. Glad you’re rocking out the SA. It’s a lot of fun. I know you’re trying to do one a week, but I’m lucky if I get one a month. =)
Thanks for commenting,
Andrew
Hey Wallet Squirrel,
I have a question, were you a pro member to get the email alerts sent out? Is every article published on seekingalpha sent out as an email alert?
I’m just a regular member, but I believe they email out members who have specified noted they’re interested in the stocks that you mentioned in your article. =)
-Andrew
I hear you over here talking about [Seeking Alpha]. I never knew they existed until you discussed it. Or maybe I heard of it in the past when “article marketing” was the biggest thing on the web. I may have to look into “Seeking Alpha” and see how ti can benefit things. Thank you for mentioning this eventhough I’m a late bloomer to seeing this blog until now. 🙂
Write an article about how Tesla is going bankrupt. Throw in a few charts and graphs. Guaranteed accepted.