Press release -
ViewsHound launches “Follow an Author” feature with a $500 cash prize contest!
ViewsHound, the world’s first crowdpublishing site, has launched a feature where readers can follow their favorite writers, photographers and cartoonists and be alerted when they publish new work. To promote the launch, ViewsHound will be awarding a one-off $500 cash prize to the author with the most ViewsHound Followers at 5pm EST on Monday 20th June 2011.
To follow an author, readers simply click a “Follow” button at the bottom of any article. Additionally, every author also has their own profile page, with a biography, a list of articles and a “Follow” button. ViewsHound then sends one email a day to the reader with a list of updates from their favorite authors.
To get more followers on ViewsHound, authors can do several things. They can email their friends, and send messages on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, asking them to become a follower. They can also ensure a wider audience for their work by using tools such as Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon and Delicious to share their work beyond their own immediate connections.
Ian Howlett, Editor in Chief of ViewsHound, said, “This is great news for authors because it helps them to build a ready-made audience for their work”. With over 6000 Facebook fans in less than 6 weeks and growing rapidly, ViewsHound will increasingly be able to offer authors the chance to earn money from the 50% revenue share deal as well as their participation in the daily prize pool of $120, plus a $50 weekly prize for best newcomer.
Topics
- Art, Culture, Entertainment
Categories
- prize
- cash prize
- competition
- contest
- citizen journalism
- crowdpublished news site
- crowdpublishing
- crowdsourcing
- daily cash prizes
- make money online
- online journalism
- publishing
- share of revenue
- viewshound
- follow
- followers
ViewsHound is revolutionizing the way news-sites operate by crowdsourcing all of their content from writers around the world. Copy-editing, marketing and monetization are also farmed out to the crowd in a collaborative business model called Crowdpublishing. This makes costs variable and avoids the fixed costs that are killing newspapers and magazines.
Contributors are rewarded by a daily prize pool and revenue share. For the reader the allure lies in being able to read potentially thousands of great authors from around the world rather than the same tired 20 or so found on a normal news-site.
