Dear readers, your humble bloggers at Priceonomics have aspirations to grow 50% larger! Yes, that means expanding the staff from two full-time writers to three full-time writers. Overall, you would be the #7 employee to join our team.
The role of the writer at Priceonomics is to bring new information into the world. You are expected to do so with an exceptionally high level of rigor while telling an interesting story. Every time you write about a topic, your product should be the definitive work on that issue.
If the opportunity to work hard at bringing valuable information into the world appeals to you, we hope you’ll consider applying. So, why else would you want to join our team?
The Case for Joining Priceonomics
First, we have a very interesting model for funding content. While almost every content site makes money by generating page views and slapping up ads, we pursue something different. We give away information for free on the Priceonomics blog, and make money mostly by selling premium information and services to businesses. We sell things that people want to buy — and so far, it’s working.
Content companies continue to be commoditized because there is infinite competition for creating content. We are trying to find a model that takes advantage of the market opportunities caused by the Internet, rather than fighting against them.
It’s important to focus on making money so that we can afford to hire more people to make the kind of content that we love. This is our riff on a famous Walt Disney quote: “We don’t make movies to make money; we make money to make more movies.” As we can afford to hire more people by having a durable business model, we may one day become a very large company.
Secondly, on a micro level, our numbers suggest that the Priceonomics blog could end up being very big some day. On typical month, we do about a million visitors a month with just two editorial staff members. Half a million visitors per editorial staff member compares very favorably to almost any content company. If we were to extrapolate these numbers with a larger staff, we would be in a formidable position to compete with the Internet’s largest media sites — but without the gimmicks often used to inflate traffic.
The Role
Your role will be to write great things that help bring transparency to the world. This could include making previously opaque information well-known, exploring the business model of a company or industry, or writing about the massive data sets that Priceonomics is building. An economic slant and data-driven analysis are your tools to tell important stories in novel ways.
The responsibility to come up with a perpetual stream of good story ideas also comes with the freedom to pursue them. You could spend your time interviewing plastic surgeons, reading quirky behavioral economics research, or analyzing the revenue streams of airports, for instance.
The role is based in San Francisco. You should be:
* Able to write clearly and with humor
* Skilled at synthesizing lots of information and explaining complicated concepts simply
* Proficient with basic statistics and microeconomics
* Fascinated by the prospect of writing about things like SkyMall magazine, the economics of living a van, how food trucks make money, or the economics of Girl Talk
* Eager to come up with interesting topics to write about (this is the most important criteria)
We are interested in hearing from a wide range of applicants — anyone who has great ideas and a desire to write stories that engage millions of readers. It’s a plus if you’re fairly active on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, or other platforms where awesome things spread, but it’s far more important that you can write well and have a nose for good stories.
How to Apply
Send us an email (jobs@priceonomics.com) with the following information:
1. What you consider to be your relevant resume information (links to your online footprint, your Linkedin, your resume, etc.).
2. A list of story ideas. Check out our most popular posts to get a flavor for what kind of topics we like. Please include the angle you’d take rather than just a topic or headline (ie. “Market manipulations in the fine art market,” rather than just “Fine art is bullshit”).
3. Your best writing sample. Send us a link or attachment of the writing sample that you’d like us to read. You can send along more than one, but please specify which one you’re most proud of.
We look forward to working with you!