The Secjuice Guidebook

Hello and welcome to the Secjuice guidebook, your guide to how we roll here at Secjuice and how we do things. If you are reading this then you are already a member of our Slack, so if we missed anything just ask, everyone here wants to help you be a writer.

We are infosec people of letters, a writers guild and the only non-profit publication in our industry. We love that you wanted to come write with us!

Your work will never be monetized here, each of us write and contribute to Secjuice here because there is magic in being published alongside your peers and also because maintaining your own blog is hard. We prefer to write together.

Our leadership team consists of Mars Groves, Guise Bule, Paul Dannewitz, Miguel Calles, Jamie Collier, Arif Kahn, Andrea Menin, Alessandro Innocenzi and Abartan Dhakal, you can ask them for support, advice or about anything in general.

Because we are people of letters and a well educated, civilized bunch of people, we do not have a code of conduct, but we have one rule.

No drama, no hostility, maintain civility.

Stick to this rule and you will never be excluded from our group. We will warn anyone who breaks it once before kicking them, we just do not want to deal with hostility or drama. Secjuice is a fun hobby for most of us and we want to keep it that way.

Introduce Yourself To The Rest Of The Team

If you are a new writer be sure to introduce yourself to the rest of the team in the #alpha channel when you arrive, Secjuice is a great place to network and we currently have more than 200+ members. Make sure they know who you are and what you do!

Don't Be A Shill

We try to keep Secjuice as non-profit and as non-commercial as possible and we do not allow vendors to post their content or SEO marketing articles on Secjuice. The only exception to this rule are small cybersecurity startups who do not employ marketing people yet, we love to support the startups in our space and we help them to gain exposure at a time when they cannot really afford to pay publications for that exposure. If you work for a small startup, let the leadership team know.

Complete The Infosec Writers Challenge

We run our very own infosec writers challenge which awards a challenge coin to those writers who complete the challenge. Its a unique challenge just for infosec writers and is quite difficult to complete if you have never written before, but if you write once a month you will qualify for it in less than a year. Only a handful of members have every won a challenge coin, making it the most exclusive writers challenge in the space.

Get Into Our Hall Of Fame

We have our very own Hall Of Fame where we immortalize legendary Secjuice members, the precious few who volunteer tirelessly for the group, those who have won writers awards, our top ten writers of the year and those who complete one of our challenges. Contribute to Secjuice and you too will see your name there one day, we love people who volunteer to help writers improve their articles and its a great way to get recognized over time and eventually get into our Hall Of Fame!

Speak Truth To Power

We are proud to be an independent voice in the infosec space, one that is free of commercial pressures and interests. If you have an article that speaks truth to power or holds wrongdoers to account, then we would love to publish it. We will never censor your articles because they happen ruffle someones feathers. No other publication in our space will ever hold power to account, so we consider it our duty.

Get Involved With The Community

More than a publication we are a community, so get involved and talk to your peers here. There is nothing worse than a lurker who never engages with the rest of the group and we love people who share ideas, spitball their thoughts and communicate with other members, its what Secjuice is all about. If you are able to volunteer the time, help other writers with their articles or help our editors edit up the articles ready for publication, we are all volunteers here donating our spare time.

Secjuice Questions & Answers

How Does The Process Of Writing & Publishing Work?

We use Ghost as our publishing platform, you can access it by clicking this link and then just click on "New story" in the sidebar on the left to start your journey of getting your first article on Secjuice. If you don't have an account yet, @Bule and a couple of other people including me (@paul-dannewitz) can invite you. Just let us know!

When you want another pair of eyes to take a look at your article, the #peereview channel in our Slack is the place you go. Just post your articles preview URL in there and everyone will be glad to give you some feedback before its published.

When you think your article is ready, put EDIT in the title of the article, so the editors know the article is ready to be finally reviewed. Our volunteer Editors will then see your article, polish it, add images and then schedule your article for the next #SecjuiceSunday, we publish once a month on a Sunday, our only publication day unless your story is #hot. Because we are volunteers we are very laid back about having a specific day we publish, if we havent published your article yet, dont worry we will.

You also don't have to search for a cool picture for your article, this is our editorial teams favorite task. When your article is published, Secjuice will then promote it on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and Reddit for the following month or more.

Remember to fill out your profiles with social links and a nice picture, these will populate the 'About The Author' part at the bottom of your articles and drive traffic to your social media profiles over time. Write a nice little bio too!

What Shall I Write About. Any ideas?

You can write about anything as long as it is related to security in some way! We have a dedicated channel on Slack for #inspiration. Head over there to look for topics you could write about, if you do have an idea for an article but don't know enough about that specific topic you can ask others for insight there too.

Can I Make Money Here?

Yes, from time to time we are approached by businesses who are looking for freelance writers for their projects. We post all of these opportunities in our #getpaid channel on Slack, so head over there if you are looking for work.

We never introduce you to opportunities directly, nor do we get involved in any commercial transactions, we simply post the details. It is up to you to write and properly introduce yourself to the opportunities, ideally with evidence of your previous writing work. Everyone gets an equal shot at these opportunities. If you have published with Secjuice and are not yet a member of #getpaid let us know and we will invite you.

Do I Have To Write Regularly?

Because we are a writers guild, a community of people who write, we ask you to publish at least once a year in order to maintain your membership and we remove non-contributing lurkers periodically.

We understand that there are times when you're busy and writing an article is the last thing you are thinking about, so if you can't make it you can always reapply with a new article and come back and join our community with no problem.

If you write more than ten articles, you will become a lifetime Secjuice member and we will never exclude you for not publishing on a regular basis.