How To Make Your Quiz Eligible For Points
Last updated: Monday May 18th, 2020
Several people have e-mailed me to ask how a quiz becomes eligible for points.
The short answer is this: quizzes that are featured on the front page are eligible for points. These quizzes are selected by me - the JetPunk quizmaster. I keep an eye on all the quizzes that are submitted, and choose my favorite ones to feature.
Note: This article refers to English-language quizzes.
Here are some tips to getting your quiz featured:
1. Accurate, sourced data. There are lots of quizzes that would be great to feature, if only they were accurate. Things like "countries with the tallest people". But if there is no source listed, or the source is not accurate, then the quiz can't be featured. Generally, Wikipedia is accurate. Sites like insidermonkey, thetoptens, huffingtonpost, etc... are usually not. Find good data, and you will have a good quiz!
2. Original ideas. Sometimes, you can use an interesting format to create original quizzes. For example, Quizzer6794's Top 5 Countries by Continent series or Kiwirage's Generator series.
3. Non-obscure topics. Sometimes, we will feature a quiz about a niche topic like Minecraft or Pro Wrestling. But usually we stick to more mainstream knowledge like movies, sports, history, literature, and especially geography. Are you in high school? Make a quiz your grandmother would like. Are you a grandmother? Make a quiz that your grandson would be able to ace.
4. Not too difficult. Get rid of answers that are guessed less than 10% of the time. Try to keep the total number of answers to 25 or less unless there is a good reason to have more. Try not to make the user type more than they have to.
5. Spelling and grammar. I'm busy, which means I like to feature quizzes that don't require me to rewrite sentences, fix spelling, correct formatting, etc... Make my job easier, and I am way more likely to feature your quiz!
6. Be a SVG map hero. Make an original map, and I am more likely to feature your quiz. Make a map like this and it's a virtual certainty.
7. Make it rain. In legal parlance, a "rainmaker" is a person who brings new business to a law firm. It's no surprise that "rainmakers" are extremely valuable and highly compensated. We're no different on JetPunk. If your quizzes consistently bring in traffic from other places such as Reddit or social media, we'll be much more likely to feature them!
8. Nominations. Each week, we feature at least one quiz (and often more than one) that has the most nominations from other users.
Keep in mind that very few quizzes get featured. Finding original ideas and writing good quizzes is hard. When I first started this site, some of my quizzes were pretty bad. In the last decade, I've improved a lot, and I continue to get better. So keep making quizzes! The more you make, the more attention your quizzes will get, and the more likely it is that one of them will get featured.
I do though take plenty of non-featured quizzes if the subject interests me, it's not all about how many points you have!
And it must be bigger than 235x235 px.
And you have to keep copyright in mind.
Why?
Countries of the World 1444 I spent a lot of time on the SVG map for this one, probably too niche to get featured though
2. Oh yeah, geography list quizzes are so original.
3. You should definitely feature more "obscure" stuff. Obscure is highly subjective by the way. For example, most sports quizzes on jetpunk are totally obscure for the Belgian that I am (we know just nothing about baseball, ice hockey or american football... just slightly more about basketball but...).
4. Well, ok, a quiz must before all be balanced. Having 15 easy answers and two impossible is frustrating. But I don't like the idea that difficulty is bad, it's not how you become a scholar.
5. Finally, I agree with something, hurray (too bad I'm not a native english-speaker, but that's why I don't make quizzes anyway).
6. Not complaining against the nice maps, of course, but rather about including this in a tip list. Few people will be able to make that, so in the end, it's rather pointless and discouraging.
7. Pathetic. Quality must take priority over rainmaking.
Absolutely wrong. Let's take a utilitarian approach. The greatest utility is created when the best quizzes are being seen by the greatest number of people. To maximize utility, we need to optimize for quality, but also for the number of users. Optimizing for only one factor will not be ideal.
Looking at the site logs, it's become clear to me that almost no one is creating quizzes which bring new users to the site. In the future, we will heavily prioritize rainmaking (if we ever see any that is).
It Clearly States:
"These quizzes are selected by me - the JetPunk quizmaster."
Obviously his quizzes are featured.
Just a reminder ya know.
HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO MAKE A MAP LIKE THAT AND POSTING IT ON JETPUNK?
Thanks,
Me