3 Ways To Improve Experience for Contributing Writers

1. Don't run pop up ads on their content.

When someone wants a story to be free to the public, it should be free to the public. A pop up ad to buy shoes or create an account is a major barrier to reading the story. We are removing this barrier.

2. Make it easier to read more stories by the contributing writer.

In Hacker Noon 2.0, we are going to test for ways to increase the likelihood that a second story by the same contributing writer is read. Currently when you publish on Hacker Noon, you have to leave the story page to gain access to more stories by the author. We are experimenting with a sticky author bio so that contributors can curate their top 3 stories and make them accessible on all their story pages. example:

3. Give the contributing writer the power to make a prominent call to action on their profile page.

When you contribute to another site, it helps grow your community and overall internet presence. Most contributing writers have ways that their readership could help them. By designing a prominent call to action on the contributing writer profile page, we can help contributors gain more from their readership. Simple use cases include like ‘buy my book,’ ‘demo our software,’ ‘subscribe to my newsletter,’ ‘subscribe to my patreon,’ ‘now hiring,’ or whatever creative CTAs that our contributors come up with. I think this could make their Hacker Noon profile a page that helps drive real business activity.

Originally published at community.hackernoon.com on April 10, 2019.