Contributors Wanted 

New to HowMuch? You might be wondering what we're about. The answer is simple: We believe that understanding money should be easy and fun. We create engaging visualizations that break-down complex economic concepts in a simple way so that even your cat gets it. And we need your help to do this.

Why do we need you?

We want to build a team of creative minds with sharp analytical skills, ready to produce high-quality content for Howmuch. We need you to help source creative, likable, and smart ideas to keep populating our site and engaging our readers.

What do we need from you?

Are you the kind of person that sees an economics puzzle in every current event? Do you have a particular skill for combining catchy ideas with compelling data? Then we want to hear from you. Specifically, we want you to send us:

1. Pitches for interesting blog ideas. Our different topics are: personal finance, business, technology, macro-and-micro economics. 

2. Compelling headlines to accompany them.

3. An initial idea for a potential image or graph that will help visualize your main idea and supporting data in a clear and compelling way.

4. The research that supports your idea.

You should alwasy keep in mind our mission: Understanding money should be easy and fun. This means that your pitch should be easy understand, the headline and the image (data visualization that we create) should be enough for our readers to get the story. 

Now, let’s talk about your pitches.

Your pitches should relate to money and economics in two key areas: personal finance and macro- or micro-economics.

We’re looking for pitches that are:

1. Interesting and share-able. You have a burning idea that you just know all of your best friends would “like,” retweet and up-vote.

2. Memorable. We love ideas that present new perspectives on everyday topics or that look at the economic angle of a popular issue.

3. Genuine and backed by real data. We’re nothing if not well-researched. Our mission is to not only make money and economics more accessible, but to also be a trusted and reputable source of information. Read on to see our requirements for research and data.

4. Original and unique. The pitch should be on a unique topic that hasn't been covered before OR a topic that has been covered before from a NEW angle.

In the first stage of submission, you’ll need to grab our attention with just the potential title of the article and two lines explaining why it’s interesting. You don’t need to show the research at this point, but it must be an idea that you can back up with data. And we’re data nerds, so you better believe we’ll check your data.

My pitch has been accepted, now what?

Once your pitch is accepted, you’ll need to give the research to back up your story.

The research must come from reputable sources (wikipedia is not a reputable source). Reputable sources include universities, government websites, research papers from reputed institutions or journals, reputed publications from big media companies etc. The research should be presented in a clear way with all data analyzed and a clear connection to the title and topic of your pitch.

How Do We Evaluate Your Ideas?

We will evalutate your ideas on the following criteria: 

1. Interesting and share-able Pitch. 

2. Memorable Pitch. 

3. Pitch is original and unique. 

4. Pitch is Genuine and backed by real data.

 

Let Us Give you Some Pitch & Research Examples. 

EXAMPLE # 1.

Pitch: Let's show in a compelling way how the world economy is distributed and the importance of the USA.

Headline: One Diagram That Will Change the Way You Look At the US Economy.

Idea for Image: We can do a proportional Voronoi Diagram similar to this one, in each area we show 1 country with a proportional size of GDP, then we colour every every area by continent (Remember you don't need to create the image, you only need to give us an idea). 

Research Souce:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2012.html

How is it graded?

Criteria	Grade	Reason
Interesting and share-able	B	The pitch is of interest to many people especially Americans.
Memorable	B	It has a pretty catchy tittle.
Backed by real data	B	The data comes from a reputable source.
Original and unique	B	The image is new way of representing this data.
Average	B

 

Now, let us show you the same topic but with a not so interesting pitch. 

Pitch: Let's show the GDP of the Most Important Economies in the World. 

Headline: GDP of the Most Important Economies in the World. 

Idea for Image: We can do a graph similar to this one.

Research Source: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

How is it graded?

Criteria	Grade	Reason
Interesting and share-able	B	The pitch is interesting for many people.
Memorable	C	Not so memorable, economic terms such as GDP tend to be seen as boring, the heat map of the world map is an overused resource.
Backed by real data	F	The souce is Wikipedia, even if data is correct it does not meet our criteria for souces.
Original and unique	D	It is a topic that has been covered quite a lo and represented with that image.
Average	C

 

EXAMPLE # 2.

Pitch: Let's show how much users are worth to major internet companies like: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Amazon, etc. 

Headline: Guess How Much You’re Worth to These Big Tech Companies.

Idea for Image: We can create a cute caricature like this one, where we recreate the times when slaves were being sold, in our caricature an Internet user is being sold to the CEOs of major internet companies (Remember you don't need to create the image, you only need to give us an idea). 

 

Research Source: 

https://investor.google.com/pdf/20141231_google_10K.pdf

How is it graded?

Criteria	Grade	Reason
Interesting and share-able	A	Most people wonder how much they are worth as users for major internet companies. They understand is not free to use.
Memorable	A	It has a pretty catchy tittle.
Backed by real data	B	The data comes from a few different reputable sources.
Original and unique	A	Very original and engaging way of representing the data.
Average	B+

 

Now, let us show you the same topic but with a not so interesting pitch. 

Pitch: Let's show the value of internet users. 

Headline: The Value of Internet Users. 

Idea for Image: We can do a graph similar to this one.

Research Source:  

http://joswhite.com/2012/05/socialnetworks/

How is it graded?

Criteria	Grade	Reason
Interesting and share-able	C	The pitch is quite interesting but not described in an engaging way.
Memorable	C	The title is plain and boring.
Backed by real data	D	The data of the research is outdated and does not come from a reputable source.
Original and unique	C	The way of representing the data is too simple and boring.
Average	C-

 

Interested in joining us?

If you think you have what it takes to join our team of contributors, please submit your pitch here. 

In the meantime, check below out some of our viral stories to get a feel for the types of topics and visualizations we love to post.