A few months ago, in July, I published my first article on Seeking Alpha.
It was a tough run. I had spent hours researching Yonex stock and thought I had written my most in-depth article ever, only to spend another week revising and resubmitting it.
It took me nearly two weeks to get one article out, but the experience was well worth it.
Although I barely earned anything from the Yonex article (only $6.40 since publishing the post), the learnings would help me publish articles on Seeking Alpha more smoothly and efficiently.
This month (September 2024), I decided to put more effort into creating content on Seeking Alpha, and it was one of the best decisions I have made for my blogging ventures recently.
My problem prior was that I could never truly justify giving up on my coaching job to work on my online ventures.
Medium, my main online venture, was just too inconsistent. Sure, I averaged $15-$20 per article in some months, but only because a few articles earning hundreds of dollars offset the ones earning less than $10.
I still needed my $20-$40 per hour coaching income, even if that meant being stuck in a situation that didn’t allow me to grow or move closer to my goals of becoming financially free and playing badminton.
Then, I learned of the fixed payments (generally between $45 and $65) you could earn from writing articles on Seeking Alpha’s Undercovered Stock List, which gave me the confidence to significantly reduce my coaching hours in return for blogging.
By covering certain assets on Seeking Alpha, you can be eligible for fixed payments of $45-$65 in addition to whatever you earn from subscriber pageviews.
So far in September, I’ve published three articles on Seeking Alpha, and the platform has been very good to me. I’ve gotten $175 from fixed payments and another $18.04 from variable earnings despite only having eight followers on the platform.
Screenshot From Author
Due to the success of these articles, it now makes much more sense for me to reduce my coaching hours and focus on growing my online ventures instead.
Today, I will share what I learned from publishing articles on Seeking Alpha that you can hopefully implement yourself to find success and create another blogging revenue stream.
How To Publish Your First Article on Seeking Alpha
Before we get into some of my tips and advice for getting your first article published on Seeking Alpha, I suggest you read my article linked below:
This Site Pays $45+ per Article With No Viewers for Your Articles on Investing
I wrote the article above detailing more about how the Seeking Alpha fixed payments work. The article you’re reading now is more of a sequel to that one.
To start publishing articles on Seeking Alpha, a good tip is to get into the mindset of being a professional investment analyst.
It doesn’t matter if you’re officially not considered one and don’t have the qualifications or work experience of an actual investment analyst. All that matters is that people pay to be on Seeking Alpha for insightful analysis, and you must provide that as a writer.
Tip number one is to read other Seeking Alpha articles before you write your own.
The first benefit is that you will get a good idea of what you need to do to get an article published. Take clues from how other writers structure their articles and their investment analyses.
The second reason to do this is because Seeking Alpha will reject articles that are too general or don’t provide new insight. If you already have two to three writers saying the same thing about one asset, what are the chances that you’ll get published saying the same thing as well?
Instead, you need to provide insight and analysis that others have not discussed. This is key to getting articles published on Seeking Alpha.
Similarly, your article cannot just be a collection of other people’s opinions thrown together. You need to provide your own thesis.
Yes, you have to be scientific when writing articles for Seeking Alpha.
Use other people’s writing, but make sure you’re building on it rather than pasting whatever they said. Criticize or support other people’s thesis with your own evidence.
Take my Seeking Alpha article, “QQQY: Surprisingly Solid Strategy But Overambitious Distributions,” which was an Editor’s Pick (the Medium equivalent of selected for distribution), for example.
Even though my thesis was similar to other people’s articles, where we all believed QQQY was a Sell due to significant NAV erosion, I expanded in much more detail on why.
Out of all the articles on the fund as of writing, I was the only one to manually gather historical options data and backtest the fund’s strategy to provide significant insight into why the fund was not a great pick.
Other people simply put up a total/price return chart and called it a day. If I had done that, there was no guarantee that my article would have made it, as it’s already something that multiple people have looked at.
Additionally, being specific with your thesis will help immensely.
We all must understand that investing is more art than science. When analyzing these investments, things are rarely objectively good or bad and are, instead, generally better or worse for specific people and situations.
In the articles I have written recently, I specified that the assets were either buy-or-sell for long-term buy-and-hold income investors, and I crafted my articles around those theses.
Other analysts might write articles about how various assets are buy-or-sell for short-term investors and base their articles on how the market will change in the next three months.
The idea is to provide actionable advice (without all the liabilities of doing so, of course).
The Key Is To Be Professional
Going back to the idea of viewing yourself as a professional investment analyst, you have to focus on writing professionally.
When I wrote my first draft, I wrote like I would on Medium.
I split my paragraphs into one or two lines, as you’re seeing right now, and told stories about my life.
That led to immediate rejection on Seeking Alpha.
Fortunately, the one year I spent in university studying business did come in handy. I had one class with a group project in which we essentially wrote a Seeking Alpha article but on a large scale.
In that class, I learned some business writing fundamentals and implemented those learnings into my writing on Seeking Alpha. Here are some of my learnings you can implement.
Your priority on Seeking Alpha is to inform.
Forget the paragraph-splitting many bloggers do and write in complete paragraphs unless you split it using a relevant chart or image providing data. Each should have a fundamental idea, supporting evidence, and a conclusion.
Similarly, your article should be structured in that manner as well. You need to have an introduction, supporting theses, and a conclusion. Both introductions and conclusions should be like abstracts that summarize your entire article.
For the supporting theses and body paragraphs, make sure you link to your sources, describe your analysis strategies in detail, and cover ideas that counter your thesis.
Remember professionalism.
Financial and investment advisors do get sued when they knowingly spread misinformation or even sometimes unknowingly. While you’re unlikely to get sued writing for Seeking Alpha, write as if you are liable for your readers’ money.
Make sure you’re concise, too.
Don’t ramble about how you blew $10K at a restaurant unless it’s relevant to your argument and points.
Also, it is necessary to realize that analysis requires both qualitative and quantitative methods. You won’t get an article published by simply telling your story of how X company is popular. Get data to back that up.
Some FAQs
Part of the reason I wanted to write this article is that I received a few questions from my last article about writing for Seeking Alpha. Inevitably, others will have the same questions, so I would like to answer some of those questions in this article.
1. Do you need a premium Seeking Alpha membership to write and submit an article?
No, all you need is a free account. That said, it will be much more difficult if you don’t read what others have already published. You will also get a complimentary premium membership after publishing your first article on Seeking Alpha.
2. How long does it take for Seeking Alpha editors to get back to you/publish your article?
This is Seeking Alpha’s official statement:
Seeking Alpha receives a high volume of submissions each day and our team strives to provide quick turnaround times, with most articles reviewed or published within 10–14 hours of submission. New authors — those that have published less than three articles — should expect longer turnaround times.
My personal experience was approximately two business days for my first three articles and then 10–14 hours for my fourth, which was in line with Seeking Alpha’s guidelines.
3. Can I submit multiple articles at once?
If you’re like me and thought of submitting 3–4 articles per day to make thousands of dollars every month, you’re out of luck.
Unfortunately, you can only have one article in the queue and can only submit another once the one pending has been published.
Are You Going To Try Writing on Seeking Alpha?
If writing on Seeking Alpha is something you would like to do, the best overall advice I can give is to just start. While the things I mentioned in this article will help you, going through the process is ultimately what’s going to get your first article published.
Don’t be scared of rejection. I know it hurts, but the lessons you learn and the experience you gain are necessary for improvement.
You can get started on writing on Seeking Alpha here.
Affiliate Link Disclosure: You may assume all links in this article are affiliate links. If you purchase any product or service through the link, I may be compensated at no extra cost to you.
Originally published on Medium.com. Get a Medium membership and read articles like this one ad-free.
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