Start Motion Media publishes work from people who know their subject and can explain it to someone who doesn’t. This page covers what we look for, how the submission desk works, and what happens after you send something in. It is worth reading before you apply — particularly the editorial policy at the end, which is where most people find out whether this is the right place for their work.
What the newsroom covers
Our range is business and general interest, read by founders, operators and marketers alongside a general audience. That includes company operations and hiring, marketing and brand, finance, technology and engineering practice, health and science, media production, and the ordinary working realities of building something. We also publish in adjacent commercial areas that other outlets treat as untouchable — digital assets and blockchain, and the regulated hemp and CBD sector — provided the writing meets the same standard as everything else.
What we are not is a wire service. We do not publish company announcements, funding news, or product launches written as news.
What makes a piece work here
The strongest submissions we receive have a few things in common.
- They argue something specific. “How remote teams ship faster” is a piece. “A guide to remote work” is a category.
- They show their evidence. Numbers you gathered, a project you ran, a mistake that cost you something. First-hand beats aggregated.
- They assume an intelligent reader who is not in your field. Define the jargon or drop it.
- They are long enough to earn the claim. Most pieces that land well run somewhere between 900 and 2,000 words. There is no prize for padding.
Writing that reads as though it were produced to fill a slot tends to read that way to our audience as well. We would rather have one considered piece from you than four assembled ones.
How the submission desk works
Submissions used to run through email, which meant your article waited on somebody here opening it. That is no longer the case. The desk is automated end to end, and a piece that meets the standard is live within about a minute of clearing review.
There are three ways to send an article, and they all end in the same place:
- Upload a Word file. Your formatting, headings, links and images come across intact.
- Paste a Google Docs link. Set sharing to “anyone with the link” and the desk retrieves it.
- Write it in the browser. A full editor with formatting and image support, including a search of our existing media library.
You choose a primary and secondary category from our live catalogue, optionally add a featured image, and submit. The desk then runs the article through its checks: a content review against our published standards, a virus scan on any file you upload, and a reputation check on every outbound link. Images are resized and re-encoded for the web. If everything clears, the article publishes and you get the URL immediately.
Nothing is charged until your piece has passed every check. If it is declined, you are told exactly why and no payment is taken. Submission costs a flat $15, which covers the review and publication of one article.
What we decline
Some categories are refused automatically and without exception: firearms and weapons, illegal drugs, adult material, gambling, and anything promoting malware or fraud. The checks also decline articles carrying more than two outbound links, or any link pointing at a domain with a poor security reputation.
These are not judgement calls made after the fact. They run before payment, so a piece in one of those areas will simply not go through.
Editorial policy
This section matters more than the rest of the page, so it is stated plainly rather than buried.
We make no promises about performance. No guaranteed traffic, no guaranteed placement in search results, no assurance your piece will be widely read. What we guarantee is publication of work that meets the standard, on a real site with a real audience.
Articles are published under the Start Motion Media byline and may be edited, updated or removed after publication at our discretion. Submitting a piece confirms that the work is yours, that it has not been published elsewhere, and that you have the right to publish anything it contains.
Each article carries at most two links and two images. This is enforced by the desk, not by an editor’s patience. Links must resolve to a domain with a clean security reputation; anything flagged as malware, phishing or adult is declined automatically.
Apply
If your work fits what is described above, the desk is open. There is no application form to fill in first and no waiting on a decision from us — the submission itself is the application, and the checks are the review.
Questions about a submission that did not go through are handled on the order page itself, which carries its own contact route.
