│ Starting out

How did you become interested in cryptocurrency?

Sheba Karamat, CEO of Coin Rivet: I’ve had a lot of experience being involved in international financial projects and they have all been plagued by problems in transferring large sums from one part of the world to another.

About five years ago, I started to study different options. I was drawn to the concept of cryptocurrency.

Centralized methods create all manner of frustrations, but a decentralized system – which cryptocurrency operates well upon – offers some great solutions to those frustrations.

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What made you become a content creator?

Sheba: To help spread the word about this whole new way of doing things. Very few mainstream media outlets were taking cryptocurrencies seriously, and it was almost taboo in some quarters. So I thought, let’s do it ourselves and establish a serious news and information platform.

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│ Charting a course

What are some of the challenges you face as a content creator?

Sheba: I think one of the single most difficult challenges facing any publisher in this field is presenting content in a way that’s friendly for anyone to be able to digest.

It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of producing complex and technical content for technical people, because you’re within a comfort zone when talking peer-to-peer.

The real skill is when you’re able to get someone who has never really got the cryptocurrency thing to not just sit and read something you’ve published, but to also understand it straight away.

That’s where the magic happens.

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What are some digital publications that you follow?

Sheba: Just about every single one that crosses my path. I don’t have a particular favorite, as I think many are very good in their own way. But there are about seven or eight regular outlets I turn to, and maybe a dozen more that I’ll browse.

I think it really helps to hone your ideas when you examine each and every publisher. You find yourself thinking ‘okay, that’s pretty good, but here’s how I reckon we could do it better.’

Why did you decide to syndicate your content with Newstex?

Sheba: Purely and simply because there’s a shared focus on quality. Every step we take as a brand is, first and foremost, about quality. There are plenty of aggregators out there who just want copy and clicks, but to see there’s such an emphasis on quality and a genuine need for our perspective put Newstex at the top of our list. 

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│ Tips and tricks

What do you like most about creating digital content?

Sheba: The immediacy of it is simply stunning. If we were back in a time when we could only operate in print, there wouldn’t be that same excitement about being able to break a big story to the world within minutes.

It’s a fast-moving industry we’re reporting on. Couple that with the speed of the internet and it can create a real newsroom buzz.

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What do you dislike most about creating digital content?

Sheba: The ease in which your work can be copied and used by others. You’ll occasionally stumble upon a site that may have copied your exclusive and, to all intents and purposes, dressed it up as their own. You find yourself thinking ‘hey, we worked really hard on that for days, and now you’re benefiting from all those views with something you’ve technically stolen!’

It can be very disappointing when that happens.

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What inspires you to keep writing?

Sheba: Everything that’s still to come in this industry. It’s already been an exciting few years, but cryptocurrency is barely out of the starting blocks yet.

There’s so much more to come. So many more historic milestones to report on and be a part of.

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What do you think are the benefits of syndicating your content through Newstex?

Spreading the word about an industry we want to share with as many people as possible.

What are the top three tips you can give to others wanting to develop successful digital publications?

Sheba: Firstly, and forgive me if this sounds a bit cliché and cheesy, but ‘work really hard.’ It’s a very competitive business and you’ll be sharing a market with not just other professionals in your field but also amateur self-publishers who can actually be pretty impressive. If you want to be ‘best in class’ you’ve got to put in more hours and open more doors than they do.

Secondly, deliberately create difficult goals. If you set out with a roadmap where every end-of-month goal is achievable after the second week, then you’re not even trying to be the best–you’re just going to settle for being comfortably average.

Finally–and this is key to publishing success–ensure you have rigid quality control. Every word, every picture, every readable or visual asset needs to be checked, proofed, edited, cross-examined, and sense-filtered before you hit ‘publish.’

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│ Final thoughts

Where do you see Coin Rivet in five years?

Sheba: Being an instantly recognizable name when people talk about this industry, like when you’d hear someone down the pub years ago say ‘did you hear about that thing on the BBC?’ I want to pass people on the street saying things like ‘Bitcoin’s gone up again–I saw it on Coin Rivet.’

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How many writers do you have? How do you find them?

Sheba: Just over half a dozen. And finding them can be like looking for pearls in a bay full of oysters.

No disrespect to any crypto writers out there–there are lots of good ones–but there is a painful shortage of great writers. Trying to sift through and discover potential talent that you can nurture is a hard task. And trying to find the cream of the crop is harder still.

Having said that, we’ve done well to find the talent we have.

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Coin Rivet provides a place to buy, sell, transfer and store cryptocurrencies.