Introduction

As an author for Catalyst Group Solutions, your fundamental goal is to create engaging, high-quality educational content for our readers and subscribers. Your articles help educate our readers, improve their knowledge, and, in the process, grow our business.

This article outlines our process to deliver high-quality, consistently excellent, and genuinely authentic knowledge-based articles.

Goals and Objectives

We have three goals for our authors and content.

  1. Rank on the first page of Google's search results. To continue producing high-quality content, we must first have a business that generates revenue. Each of your articles is an opportunity for us to rank highly on Google SEO, which, in turn, drives traffic and revenue to our products and services.
  2. Provide genuine educational value. At their core, the articles you produce attract our reader's attention and mental equity by delivering high-quality educational content. Each article you deliver should leave our readers feeling as though they have learned something new and powerful.
  3. Grow our knowledge base. Ultimately, every article you submit contributes directly to our ever-expanding knowledge base. Over time, our goal is to become a top provider of high-quality content in our space, and you are helping us achieve this.

Here is how we go about achieving our goals and objectives.

Winning at Writing

Write Clearly, not Cleverly

Have you ever read a piece of content that tried so hard to be clever that it ended up being a disaster? Sentences that were convoluted and wonky or included extra words that just weren't needed?

That's not good writing, and it's not what we want from our authors.

We have a different approach. When you write for us, write content that is clear and direct. Don't waffle around adding in extra words and phrases to sound knowledgeable. Instead, respect us and your reader's time by saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

Here's an example:

How not to write. "Building a trading bot can be an exercise in frustrating futility. You need to know all sorts of things, like quantitative logic and algorithmic design. Even selecting a technical indicator is fraught with peril as it is impossible to know at the outset which technical indicator or combination of indicators you need in order to generate successful trades."

How we would write this. There are two things you need to know about building a trading bot. Firstly, you need to have a basic knowledge of technical indicators and how they work. Secondly, you need to have the patience to iterate on your algorithm until you select the right combination of indicators to make it work.

Write Directly, Not Verbosely

Verbosity is the enemy of helpful content. It's those long, wordy phrases that offer nothing of value but take a long time to get there. They sound impressive at first, but when you read them, you realize there's nothing of substance.

If you've tried ChatGPT (or equivalent) lately, you'll know exactly what I mean.

For instance, when you read an article and within the first three paragraphs it mentions 'vital', 'essential', 'crucial', or 'critical' four times? It's probably:

  1. Been written by AI (which is a huge no-no)
  2. Lost its impact (after all, how many times can something be crucial or critical in one go)
  3. Lost its readers

Don't be that person. Instead, write your article with genuine passion and be direct. If something is crucial, then go ahead and use the word. But don't use the word two paragraphs later for something that isn't.

Write Authentically, Not Robotically

When we hire you as an author for our practice, we do so because we believe that your unique, authentic experience has something to offer. We invite you, the individual, to share your experience and perspective with us and our readers. We don't want:

  1. Stiff, formal prose that sounds like it comes out of a (boring, lame, and old) textbook
  2. AI-generated garbage that fluffs around and sounds like everyone else.

Instead, follow these rules of thumb when writing for us:

  1. Include real-life examples from your own experience
  2. Share unique insights you've gained from your years of experience in the field

Own Your Opinion

When you write for us, don't be afraid to share your opinion. If it helps, visualize yourself as a senior engineer talking to a mid-level engineer. You wouldn't waffle around saying 'maybe this' and 'maybe that.'

Instead, you would share your opinion directly. If something doesn't make sense, you would call it out. To do otherwise would be foolish at best and malicious at worst.

Take the same approach in our articles.

Be an Example by Providing an Example

We love examples. Especially code examples.

If you're writing an educational article on how to do something with code, we expect that you provide a working code example. This should include everything necessary for the code to work, including any import statements.

Be aware that in some instances, we may post your code to our organization's GitHub.

Don't Be the AI Guy or Girl

With the world of LLM's exploding, it's tempting to think you can write your article by popping open ChatGPT and giving it a prompt.

If you want to be an author with us, don't do it.

Our expectation of our authors is that all the work you provide is free of AI and plagiarism. We check for both.

AI writing is generally garbage. It's full of fluff and hyperbole and sounds like every other person on the planet. It's super obvious, and if you get caught or suspected of doing it, you'll be immediately terminated as an author for us.

The only exception to this is the specific use of Grammarly to check your spelling and grammar (obviously not the 'generate text for me' part).

Secondly, don't plagiarize other people's work. Not only does that suck for the person being ripped off, it's also a guaranteed way to hammered by the Google algorithm. We check each and every article for this, so don't do it.

How We Work

Most of our articles have a clear structure we follow. We do this to ensure that our articles are consistent in nature, which helps our readers read them effectively. Here's how they go:

  1. Introduction. A short section, 1-3 paragraphs, that introduces the topic and sets the readers expectations for the article.
  2. Summary table. A table that summarizes the main content of the article.
  3. Description sections. A series of sections that expands on the main points outlined in the summary table. Each of these sections contains recommendations, key learning, or best practices.
  4. Conclusion or Summary. A short wrap up of the article with a key takeaway message for the reader.

If any variation to this structure is needed, your project manager will discuss this with you during the article.

Ideal Article Length

In general, we aim for all our articles to be at least 2,000 words long. This is for two reasons:

  1. Attracting Google's attention. Articles less than 1,500 words tend to be ignored by Google.
  2. Providing real value to readers. For an article to offer real value, it typically requires this long to describe the point and then deliver it.

Our Process

When you write for us, you'll be part of a powerful process that ensures consistently high-quality content. Here's what it looks like:

  1. Article Outline. Your first step will be developing an outline for your article. This step allows you to demonstrate what you want to write about and what it will look like.
  2. Outline Review. The next step will be a review by your project manager. This allows for any changes to the article outline to be made.
  3. Article Draft. The third step will be the bulk of your work. In this step, you will draft your entire article from start to finish. This includes any examples and diagrams.
  4. Draft Review. In this step, your project manager will review your draft and offer feedback.
  5. Peer Review. In this step, your article draft will be sent to a member of our engineering and training team for review. Every example you provide will be tested, and the article will be checked for accuracy.
  6. Final Review. In this step, your article will be reviewed a final time. This is to prepare it for publishing.

Our Payment Structure

We have two payment structures: one for returning authors and one for new authors. Both are outlined here in US dollars:

Existing Authors

  1. Outline. $50.00
  2. Outline Review. $25
  3. Article Draft. $275
  4. Draft Review. $50
  5. Peer Review. $50
  6. Final Review. $50

New Authors

  1. Outline. $50
  2. Outline Review. $75.00
  3. Article Draft. $150
  4. Draft Review. $100
  5. Peer Review. $100
  6. Final Review. $25To

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