Copywriting on Utopian.io - The Basics
Copywriting in general holds an important position in any organization as it affects the strength of its brand and helps shape its public image. As such, Utopian.io wants copywriters to not only produce high quality content, but to also foster good relationships with Project Owners.
In our efforts to develop a vibrant copywriting category, we plan to role out a few changes aimed at creating more opportunities for copywriters on our platform.
New Guideline
With the category's recent switch to accepting contributions only if they are made in response to public requests or task requests from Project Owners, we identified scenarios in which genuine, high quality contributions could be made without an explicit request from the Project Owners.
To accommodate copywriters who engage in appropriate communications with Project Owners and come to an agreement for work to be done, we plan to add new details to the category's guidelines.
The new additional guidelines will allow contributions to be made without a linked task request from the Project Owner:
To be eligible for rewards, contributions without an associated task request should show a public and appropriate communication process between the Project Owner and the contributor, with an indisputable level of voluntary Project Owner acceptance of the work done. Contributors can initiate this communication on public channels to propose their work as long as they don't act on behalf of, or as a representative of, Utopian.io.
THIS GUIDELINE IS NOT YET IN EFFECT. THE CATEGORY WILL BE OPEN FOR THESE TYPES OF CONTRIBUTIONS ONCE AN OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT IS MADE.
A public and appropriate communication process
For a contribution to be considered for potential rewards, the communication between Utopian.io copywriters and Project Owners needs to be appropriate and public. We encourage our contributors to be respectful and professional in their communications. Disrespectful, rude, coercive or otherwise unprofessional communication is not encouraged by Utopian.io and it may lead to a ban.
Why public?
Public communication processes are required because publishing private conversations may cross legal boundaries and violate other people's rights. Therefore all our copywriters are encouraged to respect the privacy of the people they work with, by conducting all their communication on public platforms such as GitHub or our public Discord channels.
An indisputable level of voluntary PO acceptance
A high-quality copywriting contribution is one that shows good communication processes that lead to the Project Owner voluntarily agreeing to merge the work and use it in the project.
Copywriters are always encouraged to respect the wishes of Project Owners and not coerce or force them to merge their work. If any bad communication of this kind is evident in your contribution, then it will not be eligible for Utopian.io reward, as it will be in violation of our Policies.
Not acting on behalf of Utopian.io
Utopian.io copywriters, as stated in our Policies, may not communicate with project owners acting on behalf of or as representatives of Utopian.io in any way. They are encouraged to make all communication in their own name, courteously and respectfully.
A successful copywriting contribution: The basics
Quality of writing
Good grammar, perfect spelling and appropriate tone and style all add to the quality of your work. Writing that is polished in the aspects above stands a much higher chance of receiving high rewards from Utopian.io.
Relevance
High quality content portrays the intended message in a clear and understandable manner, communicating all the points necessary, in the right contexts. This is even more important with copy that is meant to be read by users.
Communication processes
The communication process behind a contribution has a big influence on how well it is scored by Utopian.io. Professional communication that leads to the voluntary acceptance of the work by the project owner is important.
More detailed posts covering each of these aspects of copywriting on Utopian.io and more will be released in the near future.
Do you have any suggestions for topics to be covered next, or feedback for this post? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Stay tuned for more educational posts on copywriting!
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I think the new guidelines are a good path in the right direction, but "perfect spelling" as a prerequisite would disqualify 60-80% of the good or even excellent posts from the outset.
As an open source contributor and developer with over 20 years of experience in the company business and the open source field, I know it will be even more complicated to be honored with an upvote at all. Especially for non-native English speakers and will continue to reduce the willingness to participate in this excellent project.
Even with a translator you will never achieve a "perfect spelling", at most a "nearly perfect spelling" is possible. Such impossible-to-reach targets will push the Utopian project even further towards a picture-upvote bot.
Why do I think that? Because this is evident from the statistics in the post https://busy.org/@utopian-io/weekly-top-of-utopian-io-may-31-june-6 and is clearly visible.
Without a more detailed analysis of the submitted and up-voted content, the numbers speak a clear language:
I. Only each ~ 4.2 post in the bug-hunting category was honored with an upvote, but each ~ 1.69 post in the graphics category.
II. The top weekly bug-hunter was "only" honored with about a $ 20 upvote per accepted post, but multiple submissions for the same task request were rewarded up to $ 100 in the graphics category. And I was only looking at 3 of the sent images for one task.
III. To stay in numbers 47 rewarded bug-hunting contributions with a payout of 1118.49 STU against 52 rewarded graphics contribution with a total payout of 4496.56 STU. This is more than factor 4 in earning for nearly the same numbers of contributions.
Do not get me wrong, all of the submitted contributions have more than well deserved to get an upvote for their time and content. All of the 3 mentioned images deserves even more upvote money for their work. But the weighting of the time spent is not rightly observed in the current guidelines as can be seen in the upvotes.
In order to discover a bug, write a good issue report in an open source project, write a long and good contribution in Utopian and provide explanations is very time consuming. Contrary to a logo design task, where one does not need approximately as much text in the contribution as in most other categories.
So it's clear that if you want to be honored by the Utopian project for your time spent, you should be a graphic designer in the current state. Which is sad.
Thanks for the feedback, @panzerfather
Perfect spelling is not a prerequisite, but it increases the quality of your contribution and also increases the chances of it getting rewarded by Utopian.io. The aspects listed in that section describe what we look at when evaluating the quality of a copywriting contribution, as is further explained in the preceding sentence:
Thank you also for giving feedback on the other categories and their rewards distribution. It helps us create a better platform for all. I will forward these points to the team.
No problem, your welcome.
Up voted , thanx.