Book Review on the Road Slate Star Codex

Blog Contest

1. You and Your Blog:

Your weblog should typically exist the combination of 2 things: your ain curiosities, interests, and passions too every bit themes and intellectual currents in the communities with which you want to engage. To win the Effective Ideas blog prize, we've provided a few examples of the themes and currents we suggest you tap into.

  • Using reason, evidence, expected value, and the picket mindset to think clearly about the world, and to think clearly near how to benefit.
  • Big picture thinking about science, philosophy, economics and the long-term trajectory of humanity.
  • Cut-edge discussion of traditional areas similar AI, biorisk, and weird commonsensical philosophy, as well as exploring potentially of import new areas, similar population, People's republic of china, and institutions for space settlement.
  • Personal agency, ambition, and opposing the cheems mindset.
  • The principles and areas of interest pages on the FTX Foundation website are adept overviews of themes we are interested in.

For further inspiration: What'southward upwardly with the Most Important Century and AGI, and what should we practice nigh it? How do we strengthen liberal democracies and terminate authoritarians from taking over the world, but besides avoid potentially cataclysmic great power war? What are the adjacent 100 years going to look like? How tin can nosotros encourage institutional experimentation, and how do we overcome vetocracy and gear up our broken state chapters? What will happen when we settle space, and what should a constitution for the time to come await like? How much does economic growth thing, what determines growth in the very long run, and what should nosotros do about it? What concrete, big projects should EA launch? What is EA totally missing, or totally wrong most? How can we bring more than people, and a more diverse set up of people, into the fold, and empower them to exercise ambitious things? More generally, how can we think clearly about the earth, applying reason, evidence, expected value, and the sentinel mindset?

We would as well recommend you ask yourself what your goals are for your blog across the possibility of winning a prize. Do you want to accelerate your career or develop your expertise? Make the earth a ameliorate place? Win friends and influence people? Simply explore your interests? All of these goals are fine and we think that having some thought of your personal motivations volition help you create a successful blog.

Blog Contest

two. How to write posts:

Finding topics

One of the swell parts about blogging is that you can write about annihilation y'all want, no matter how specific or idiosyncratic. At the same fourth dimension, when one looks at the sheer quantity of content existence written, information technology can still exist easy to feel like there's nothing unique for you to write almost. The all-time posts to win this contests will exist deep and substantial, only hither are some ideas that could aid atomic number 82 you to that post and become you started writing:

  • Write a primer / beginner'south guide / ELI5 / "Much More Than Yous Ever Wanted to Know" on a tricky field, idea, or topic.Ex. MUCH MORE THAN You WANTED TO KNOWNote: This format works all-time when the subject is really complicated or there is very little existing explanatory material.
  • Develop contrarian or meta-contrarian takes on important subjects.
    How to go promoted, Bioethicists are generally alrightNote: We are particularly interested in formal "red team" pieces, like A Red-Team Confronting the Impact of Small Donations, that could potentially change the direction of an important debate or break up groupthink.
  • Create a curated compendium of an existing author'due south piece of work or a topical bibliography.
    Ex. My Favorite Chad Jones Papers; The Very Best of Very Bad WizardsNote: These work particularly well if you have a special interest, human relationship, or expertise with the work.
  • Book reviews are often the easiest and best form of writing for a new web log. A review tin can cut a few different ways, hemming closely to the book or being entirely tangential, but having a book to respond to gives y'all a dialogue partner, helps build involvement in your post, and allows you to supplement someone else's research with your own findings or perspectives.
    Ex. Reasons and PersonsNote: Nosotros take a special interest in fact checking or disquisitional engagement with popular and influential books. Meet: Matthew Walker's "Why We Slumber" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors
  • Personal wellbeing life advice
    Ex. Ameliorate air quality, How I salve moneyNote: These won't necessarily help yous win the prize, only are a peachy way to attract readers to your blog and assist you go a postal service out if you are in a writing rut.

Finding Your Voice

The voice of every writer is unique. When getting started, it can exist helpful to identify a few writers whom yous admire and work to imitate their style, only over time y'all volition notice your own tone. For this, make sure to write what you enjoy reading. Some writers do great with puns in titles and memes in the body, others find footnotes and "serious" language more natural—annihilation that feels forced to write will also experience forced to read. Subject matter may as well dictate tone: puns in a web log post examining the frontier of cancer research might be too glib, while footnotes in a write-up of a new pop music anthology might distract from the subject and obscure the easy-going nature of Lana Del Rey. It can be difficult, but matching manner to field of study is a great mode to make your writing stick in the heads of readers. (A musical illustration is that singers will frequently sing lower when the lyrics include the word low or college when they include the discussion high—our brains receive things well when tone matches content.)

What Makes a Great Web log Mail (A Subjective Exploration)

A rough rule of pollex is that a web log mail is skillful if someone remembers it equally the all-time affair they read that day and a weblog post is slap-up if information technology shapes their thinking on a topic for years to come up. Here's a few of our all-time favorites posts.

An elegant have-down of a common platitude

  • Roger'south Bacon on The Myth of the Myth of the Lone Genius
  • Robin Wiblin on Trash and Recycling

An try mail service:

  • Scott Alexander on Biodeterminist Parenting

A bold new matter:

  • Tyler Cowen on State Chapters Libertarianism

A useful new concept:

  • Everything Studies on Nerd as the Norm
  • Stian Westlake on Bionic Duckweed

Something weird and artistic:

  • Scott Alexander's Meditations on Moloch

On Organisation

When writing blog posts, it helps to mind the ubiquitous high school writing advice of intro, body, conclusion. For readers, it is incredibly effective and like shooting fish in a barrel to follow when your intro presents a clear statement with about three claims as to why it'south true, the body goes into each claim in depth, and the decision restates the statement and provides implications or follow-upwardly considerations. This advice to stick to threes and maintain a articulate structure might be inescapable, just information technology's true and works—especially if you intend your audition to be broad. Starting from a well-organized outline can assist make the writing procedure easier for you while too providing a articulate coherency for readers, with every point feeling natural to its surround.

The Question of Quality or Quantity

On one paw, posting multiple times a week is the key to audition engagement and edifice a parasocial relationship. On the other manus, nigh all your readership volition come from a small number of hugely popular posts, so information technology's worth investing into writing a few good pieces rather than a bunch of weak ones. (Note: Exercise not get discouraged if a particularly strong piece does non get a lot of attending—readers tin exist fickle and difficult to gauge!)

One fashion to resolve this paradox is to publish slowly on your weblog, but and so build audience engagement through Twitter. Another option is to simply have a lot of open threads and "highlights from the comments on" and link threads (see ACX), though the kickoff 2 merely really work if you already accept an audience.

I major upshot is that information technology's hard to know ahead of time which blog posts volition take off. It often comes down to luck,  hitching a ride on the correct cultural moment, or generating controversy. And so depending on your audience, yous can think of this every bit either. We advise against using controversy, peculiarly needless controversy, to grow your blog. Instead, nosotros suggest you follow the SlateStarCodex'southward comment department rule:

Earlier you speak, let your words laissez passer through three gates; At the first gate, ask yourself, is is true? At the 2d gate ask, is it necessary? At the third gate ask, is it kind?

Nosotros will promote loftier quality posts through various channels (Follow us on Twitter, @effective-ideas).

In general, we will be almost impressed by web log posts that stay in our minds, that nosotros are compelled to link to again and again in the future: a single frame-altering post could win a blog the prize.

Blog Contest

3. Where to host the web log

Our Recommendation: Use Substack or endeavor out a hosted Ghost website—information technology'south a Goldilocks solution of like shooting fish in a barrel-to-utilize simply highly customizable. Ghost makes for a bully portfolio site, web log, and newsletter service.

The default: Just kickoff a Substack

The strengths of Substacks are obvious: You can have 1 upwardly and running in a few minutes. The platform is easy to use. Your subscribers receive your posts by e-mail. Y'all tin easily monetize your content should you ever need to. (Note: Per the rules of the prize, paywalled blogs will not be eligible for the prize. Please accomplish out to us directly if you lot are financially restrained from starting a blog. Donations or optional subscriptions are acceptable.)
If this sounds highly-seasoned to you and y'all never want to worry virtually the workings of a website, we encourage you to starting time a Substack—especially if y'all're interested in a newsletter format.

Why Wouldn't You Want a Substack?

Expanding beyond a Substack may let you to present more than of a personal portfolio, differentiate content, or provide more (and better targeted) information than the newsletter / digest-style of Substack. Flexibility and customizability are limited on Substack. For largely unfair reasons, in that location is also sometimes a cliché or stigma attached to beingness a "Substack writer" (run into: How Substack Get Milquetoast). These aren't deal breakers but things to proceed in listen, especially if you consider blog aesthetics an important office of your identity as a writer. There are too diverse reasons ane might want to maintain greater control over their own data or back up an open source project with a dissimilar platform, some addressed beneath. You should know that Substack takes a 10% cut of your acquirement, should you decide to monetize your weblog in the hereafter.
In that location are some Substack competitors such as Revue. Substack is apparently the most popular of these but others may take unique features worth because in lieu of Substack or in conjunction with a website. (For example, Revue is owned by Twitter and allows you to solicit subscriptions from your Twitter profile.)

Content Management Systems (CMS) and Blogging Platforms

Notation: Most of these will allow you to self-host or to host on their own servers.
A Content Management Arrangement (CMS) is what allows you lot to routinely publish blog posts, organize web pages, and more without having to code each webpage from scratch. The most famous of these is likely WordPress, simply there are other options with different degrees of difficulty and customizability at diverse pricepoints.

Ghost

  • Pros: Backend is very intuitive, easy writing environment, strong newsletter integration, more flexible than most platforms, and lots of loftier-quality templates and plugins.
  • Cons: More than expensive than cheapest alternatives, analytics are not a strong suit of Ghost, not as flexible as WordPress.
  • Cost: Complimentary (self-hosted); $nine/month (hosted)
  • Consider Ghostboard.io for an analytics dashboard—it is intuitive and gives a adept sense of general trends although not always accurate and often buggy.

WordPress

  • Pros: Long-fourth dimension blogging standard with lots of documentation, plugins, and free templates
  • Cons: Bloated and often wearisome, not the most intuitive to newcomers, weak newsletter integration, and very like shooting fish in a barrel to brand a very ugly website. Powerful but not the easiest—requires a lot of customization.
  • Cost: Gratuitous (self-hosted); Complimentary or $4–8+/month (hosted)

Squarespace

  • Pros: Easy browser-based blueprint (virtually impossible to non take a pretty site), intuitive backend, lots of support for extra things (scheduling, webstore, newsletters, social media)
  • Cons: Looks similar a Squarespace website, relatively expensive, non flexible, many take had reliability issues with Squarespace as a blogging platform (not its primary focus).
  • Cost: $12/calendar month (hosted)

Wix

  • Pros: Same as Squarespace
  • Cons: Same as Squarespace but doesn't expect as overnice equally Squarespace
  • Price: $14/month (hosted)

GitHub / Static Site

  • Pros: Loftier level of customizability and free.
  • Cons: Requires more than technical work which is easier if you have feel with coding or GitHub, merely there's lots of documentation to make it easier.
  • Cost: Complimentary (hosted)

Self-hosted vs. Hosted Website

The question of where to host your web log entails a few considerations, in part the convenience and user feel associated with blogging and in part the location of where your data—from newsletter subscribers, to blog posts, and more than—are stored. Most blogging platforms allow you to use their backend on a website you host yourself or to host through their platform. If y'all host on a platform, there is some possibility that data will be difficult to access or consign in the future—you're dependent on the platform. Self-hosting is generally not difficult but is less user-friendly than a platform hosting. Making a switch to cocky-hosting is e'er a possibility later down the road if the costs of hosting or other concerns are raised for you.
Cocky-hosting (If this is germane to you, you probably have a meliorate sense of the necessary steps than the list below):

  1. Larn a domain (Google Domains and countless other services).
  2. Larn server infinite (AWS, BlueHost, HostGator, etc.).
  3. Build a website (HTML or static site generator like Jekyll)  or upload CMS (WordPress, Ghost).
  4. Point your domain to server space and upload website to the server.
  5. Start publishing (this will look different based on step three).

If you need any further help in setting up your site, feel free to reach out and enquire for assistance. There is, however, a big number of tutorials and guides bachelor for each platform across the internet.

Blog Contest

4. Distribution and Finding an Audience

Social Media

For better and worse, Twitter is the social media home for journalists, bloggers, and public intellectuals. If you are not on Twitter already, y'all should strongly consider creating an account—even if your use will be minimal. Twitter is the best place to share and promote written content, find controversies or positions on discourse to write about, engage with interesting people, and observe new opportunities. If there are other social media platforms where you already have a significant audience or experience more skilled at, by all means use them! Information technology could be a huge comparative advantage to be an econ blog with a viral TikTok or Instagram following, simply different platforms tend to have different audiences and Twitter tends to be standard among bloggers. We also encourage you to focus on simply one social media platform, it's better to develop a devoted post-obit on one than an erratic follower list on many.

When it comes to sharing links on Twitter, there are a couple things to go on in mind in order to help dilate views. Offset, Twitter cards (the box that pops up with a link) are the easiest way to draw in readers and a good image, title, and extract or subheader will help. It tin be off-putting when links only default to a logo image or a low-quality graphic. Links that exist just equally text are less probable to be clicked on. Secondly, threads that explain or excerpt parts of your post tend to get corking engagement—when people are commenting, liking, or Quote Tweeting parts of your thread then more people will see the post.

Other Distribution Channels

You lot may consider other distribution channels as well. Nosotros recommend you make a list of the channels that are relevant to your blog, ranked by audience size. Some potential options include: Marginal Revolution, the Effective Altruism Forum, the Effective Altruism and 80k Newsletters, Less Incorrect, relevant subreddits, The Browser, Hacker News, and maybe some prominent Twitter feeds and podcasts. For forums, consider crossposting or linking your piece of work (if it is highly relevant and doing and so doesn't violate the customs norms of the forum). For more curated distribution channels, such equally Marginal Revolution or The Browser, you should rarely send your work in, doing then just if y'all remember a piece is your absolute best and is highly relevant to the interests of their readers. Still, having those platforms in heed can make for great goals for your web log.
Each time you're featured on i of these channels, iii things happen:

  1. Some of the readers convert and become followers.
  2. Some readers don't subscribe, but become more aware of your work, and are more likely to click/subscribe adjacent time.
  3. Some readers are decidedly non interested.

Over time, yous'll end up "saturating" dissimilar channels. The first time yous're featured on MR you'll get a skillful chunk of the MR readers who are interested in the kind of affair you lot're writing nearly. The next fourth dimension you're featured, y'all'll see less growth, and then on.

I fashion to overcome this dynamic is to pursue unlike channels. Another way is to write about dissimilar topics to attract new readers, counting on quondam readers to stay engaged due to the high quality of your content.

Ultimately, you want to own your audience, rather than borrowing it from other channels. That ways having people who are on your electronic mail list, subscribed to your RSS feed, who check your site regularly, or at to the lowest degree follow yous on Twitter. Twitter and Substack make the reader-to-subscriber conversion really like shooting fish in a barrel, though they also impose some costs.

Reminder: Don't spam. It makes you look bad and can also reflect badly on whatever of the communities y'all stand for. Nosotros will brand sure that high quality posts are widely distributed.

Mailing Listing

Even if your posts don't take a "newsletter" format, you lot are going to want some grade of email distribution available. An email listing of interested readers is very valuable for keeping people updated on your piece of work and by and large has higher clickthrough rates than whatever social media publishing or other distribution options. If you stop your blog and move to another site, are kicked off a social media platform, or otherwise lose your audience, email tin be the best style to stay in contact with readers. A major advantage of Substack or Ghost is that email lists are a core feature, other services may crave you to too set a newsletter service such as MailChimp. Native support is certainly easier but all major blogging platforms should take plugins available for newsletter services.
It's also worth considering more than of a regular newsletter format. If y'all are doing a great bargain of enquiry in your domain, information technology is likely that you are more aware of new developments and state-of-the-art discussions than nearly. This provides an fantabulous opportunity to share what you read with your audience. Regular newsletter summaries and link lists are a lot of work merely accept been successful for numerous writers.

Analytics

Y Combinator encourages their startups to choose a single metric to chase and build targets around. In blogging, you lot could choose to business concern yourself with email subscriber list, Twitter follows, unique visitors, reader retention, or many other information points. Withal, we propose a different metric: backlinks. Oftentimes having a few uniquely influential readers is more valuable than having hundreds of Twitter retweets. Backlinks are whenever someone writing their own blog post links to your piece of work equally a reference or commendation. Your work could be linked equally a superlative essay or as an example of foolish thinking, only nosotros think that your writing existence discussed by other writers is the best metric for influence and success every bit a blogger. Backlinks have an added do good of cascading into greater readership and search engine ranking over time.
There are many means to check backlinks (give it a Google search), just you should also consider other methods of knowing your analytics. Almost blogging platforms have some native functionality baked-in (with the exception of Ghost—for that, y'all'll need ghostboard.io) and we encourage yous to supplement native tracking with some other service, such every bit Google Analytics. Oft, these analytic tracking services only need yous to paste a snippet of lawmaking onto your website footer in gild to piece of work, Google Analytics or any other service volition have like shooting fish in a barrel tutorials in case you need assistance.

Blog Contest

5. Miscellaneous Advice & Farther Resources

Miscellaneous, Surprising Tips

  • Using department headers helps increase time spent on page and makes your posts more impactful: they help readers skim, find and return to their page, and gauge length. If a section isn't interesting, it signals that readers can skip ahead or allows them to option out the particular flake they're curious about. Section headers also help you, every bit a writer, keep your organization potent and writing legible.
  • Counterintuitively, lengthier posts (>6000 words) become viral at a college rate than short course writing. You shouldn't expect—or even promise—that every post volition go viral but it is reassuring that non just will a "deep dive" web log post non be penalized for length, information technology might even perform better! This trend seems to be especially authentic if yous can write an authoritative handling of a topic, the commencement and only essay anyone needs to read.
  • If you desire to really customize and automate parts of your web log, look into API-based services such equally Zapier or IFTTT. These can ensure that more than things happen automatically: subscriptions on Patreon become added to your Substack listing, blog posts are automatically Tweeted, and more.

Further Resources:

We have a team dedicated to supporting contestants in this web log prize. When you nominate your blog on our course, there are options to bring together both our Slack community and receive mentorship from our writing mentors. Mentorship is available whether you want to develop general, formal writing skills or to strengthen your blogging strategy and dominate a topical niche. Please reach out to united states if there are whatever other, further forms of support nosotros can offer yous.
In add-on to our own writing guide, here are some of the internet's best writing resource to study.

  • Why You Should Get-go a Blog Right Now (Alexey Guzey)
  • General writing advice: Nonfiction Writing Advice (SlateStarCodex)
  • On the tradeoff betwixt publicity and intellectual honesty: Toxoplasma of Rage (SlateStarCodex)
  • On Being a Loser
  • On the long game of blogging: How to Become Famous on Substack Overnight (in Ten Years)
  • On long writing
    • Evergreen notes
    • Long content
    • How Substack Became Milquetoast

Blog Contest

6. Prize Rules

  • Upward to five prizes of $100,000 volition be awarded.
  • Qualifying blogs and newsletters explore themes related to effective altruism and longtermism, including:
    • Using reason, testify, expected value, and the scout mindset to think clearly about the world, and to think clearly about how to practise practiced.
    • Large flick thinking nigh science, philosophy, economics and the long-term trajectory of humanity.
    • Cut-edge give-and-take of traditional areas similar AI, biorisk, and weird utilitarian philosophy, every bit well as exploring potentially important new areas, similar population, China, and institutions for space settlement.
    • Personal agency, ambition, and opposing the cheems mindset.
    • The principles and areas of interest pages on the FTX Foundation website are good overviews of themes we are interested in.
  • While blogs should generally explore these ideas, not every post needs to be on-topic to qualify. (Your foremost goal is to write an interesting and thought-provoking weblog!)
  • Nosotros have a particular interest in iconic blog posts that stand the exam of time.
  • Paywalled blogs volition non exist eligible for the prize. Donations or optional subscriptions are acceptable.
  • Qualifying blogs volition generally demand to be new or started inside the concluding 12 months, though exceptions could be made for special cases (like a long inactive blog). Please reach out if you lot have questions.
  • Group blogs may qualify for a single prize, with coin split among participants.
  • There is not a stock-still stop date for the awards, simply nosotros hope to award the prizes inside 2022.

Blog Contest

gladewhoundle45.blogspot.com

Source: https://effectiveideas.org/how-to-start-a-blog/

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