Write a great headline
It’s not as easy as it sounds! Writing a great headline is important for getting attention for your bounty. Great headlines are accurate, catchy, descriptive, but most importantly, newsworthy. A great headline makes your target reader want to know more. It makes them want to click on your bounty.
Keep in mind that you have 2 kinds of target readers:
- someone who can fund your bounty, or
- someone who can answer it and collect the reward for information.
Headlines also set up the tagline, which can be a comedic payoff or punchline.
When you share your bounty on social media, the headline is the default message for the post. Headlines are limited to 100 characters.
Example of a Great headline:
Who Murdered 27-Year-Old DNC Staffer Seth Rich?
Example of a Low-Energy headline:
Seth Rich’s Murder
Add a catchy tagline
Make journalism great again! Taglines are catchphrases or short sentences that emphasize the headline. They can also be used as punchlines or payoffs to funny or ironic set-ups in the headline.
Taglines are limited to 160 characters.
Headlines also set up the tagline, which can be a comedic payoff or punchline.
Example of a Great tagline:
Does her DNA show 23 and Cherokee?
Example of a Low-Energy tagline:
Do A DNA Test On Her
Upload an intriguing image
Bam. There it is. It’s the first thing that your audience will see. Make sure it grabs their attention and doesn’t let go.
Depending on where it appears, the top, bottom, or sides of the picture may get cropped a bit. The cropping is by design, so make sure that there’s something interesting in the center of the image.
The last uploaded image is the featured image in the bounty (if you upload more than one).
Images are rendered at 600x600 pixels.
Make sure that you have the rights to a picture before you upload it. There are several services, including Flickr, that let you search for images with Creative Commons licensing. WeSearchr lets you appropriately credit those pictures.
If you want to edit an image you found, note that modification of found images has been ruled by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to be acceptable based on the test of being “transformative” to a “reasonable observer.”
Add a cool video
YouTube is there, you might as well use it! Adding a YouTube video is optional, but producing one is highly recommended. Video lets you make a pitch, present evidence, and/or make a compelling case for funding your bounty.
It could need a bit of production, but a well-done video can be the difference between success and failure. Show us your thought process to prove your bounty is essential. Don’t forget to ask your audience to fund and support your bounty!
Outline a clear goal
What do you want to see happen? This section is all about the result of your bounty. What will happen when your bounty is solved? Tell it to us straight.
Unlike in the requirements section (see below), you don’t need to be overly specific in this section. Just let people know in plain language what your bounty is for. Tell the audience what it will achieve if it gets funded and solved. Make everyone want to see it happen.
A goal is required and must be between 40 and 5000 characters. Express yourself!
Describe why your bounty is important
Why should anyone care about your bounty? Let them know why, and let everyone know why so hard that they apologize for ever doubting you.
Give context to your bounty. Add links to background information or news sources! Reference other related bounties. Explain why your bounty is important to your audience. Tell everyone what will happen if your bounty isn’t funded and solved. Probably something bad, right? Let them know!
What will happen if your bounty is funded and solved? Will your audience benefit? Tell them how!
This section is required and must be between 40 and 5000 characters. Be descriptive!
Explain requirements to collect the reward
WeSearchr is serious business. You don’t need a lawyer, but list the exact criteria that would be necessary for a researcher to collect the reward on your bounty.
Consider how an unscrupulous person could game your bounty. Include exact dates, times, and locations related to your bounty. Use full legal names of people involved, as well as pseudonyms. Be specific about if you want video evidence, audio evidence, written documents, all three, some combination thereof, or something else altogether.
Bounties work best when they ask for specific hard evidence. Be as specific as possible when describing your acceptance criteria.
You may want to include language such as “Chain of custody and provenance is necessary for establishing veracity and determining the award of this bounty.”
The more specific you are, the less trouble any scam artists will give you. We will work with you and all researchers to establish veracity of evidence, but we also want to make it harder for scam artists to scam in the first place.
Acceptance conditions are required and must be between 40 and 5000 characters. Be as specific as possible!
Set a deadline
When does the bounty expire? Give researchers enough time to search and find the required information, but be aware of the news cycle. A lot of news is like fruit or fiat currency; it has a limited shelf life.
Some bounties are useless after a specific date. Other bounties are nearly evergreen. Pick a deadline appropriate to your bounty. Longer is not always better! Sometimes a shorter deadline inspires more urgency!
Current bounties range from 1-2 months to a year or more.
A deadline is required and must be at least two weeks in the future. The maximum deadline is five years.
Set a minimum reward
What’s the pay-out for an intrepid researcher that answers your bounty? A bounty cannot be solved until it reaches the minimum. Researchers can begin working on a proposed bounty knowing that it will offer at least the minimum, assuming it is successfully funded.
If you’re looking for something critical, a researcher or whistleblower may need a big incentive to dig up or cough up the information. A high minimum ensures that the bounty will pay out significantly, if it succeeds in being funded.
However, a high minimum will be very difficult to reach unless you, the Asker, are able to motivate a huge audience. Can you?
Remember that a minimum reward is just that — a minimum. The total reward can always go much higher than the minimum!
A minimum amount is required and must be at least $500 USD.
Add tags to categorize your bounty
Tag your bounty just like on YouTube or Facebook. Use common keywords and concepts that are specific to the bounty. You don’t need to create complex tags. Names and locations are always important to include.
For example, a bounty headlined “Hillary’s 9/11: Video Of Fainting Hillary Arriving At Chelsea’s Apartment” should be tagged with “HILLARY-CLINTON” and “NEW-YORK-CITY.” “CHELSEA-CLINTON” and “POLITICS” are also good tags.
It's a good idea to search for similar bounties to get an idea of what tags are common. Use tags that fit your bounty and are already in use by other bounties for best results.
Spaces in your tags will be converted to dashes and tags are forced upper case. Don't use underscores, they're ugly.
Pre-Fund This Bounty
Submitted bounties are reviewed by WeSearchr editors with priority given to bounties that have been funded by the Asker (you).
We strongly recommend funding your bounty before submitting. A bounty that you are not willing to fund yourself is not compelling to an audience either. Bounties that start at $0 are not being given a real chance at life and will be reviewed only when we get around to them.
If you pre-fund your bounty and it is not accepted for publication, your money will be refunded to your WeSearchr account and can be used to fund a new bounty you post or any of the other bounties on the site.
We will give extra VIP priority to your bounty if you fully fund it yourself. We will also give your bounty extra VIP priority if you have a strong history of successful bounty creation.
Remember when pre-funding that you are awarded 10% of the final bounty reward if the bounty is solved AS WELL AS the first publication right to the bounty's winning information!
Increase the Bounty
The higher this bounty gets, the bigger the incentive is for someone to solve it! If you care about the outcome, kick in a few bucks!
If it doesn't work out and the bounty expires, you'll get the money back in your account and can apply it to another bounty.
Eventual satisfaction is yours, eventually.
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