Thanks for your inter­est in writ­ing a guest post for Thomas-co Media.

It is impor­tant to know that I do get pitched a lot of guest posts. I am not able to use every­thing that is sub­mit­ted. Some­times I say no based upon qual­ity, other times it is based upon rel­e­vance of topic, other times I sim­ply say no because I have more posts that I can use and other times it is based upon whether I’ve posted on a topic recently.

To help you with your writ­ing (and to increase the chances of me being able to use a post) and to help me with get­ting your post ready for pub­lish­ing on Thomas-co Media I’ve put together a few guide­lines and sug­ges­tions for you below.

Please Note: what fol­lows are not hard and fast rules. Ulti­mately I want peo­ple to write in their own voice. How­ever the fol­low­ing might help your post to ‘fit’ bet­ter with Thomas-co Media and get the atten­tion it deserves.

Top­ics

Posts work best on Thomas-co Media that are rel­e­vant to my over­all topic — mak­ing money from blog­ging. Of course there is a lot of room to move in this over­all topic — really any­thing that helps a blog­ger improve their blog­ging will be help­ful for readers.

My read­ers love prac­ti­cal tips. Any­thing you can include that is a ‘how to’ or some­thing that they can go back to their blog and try out imme­di­ately will be greatly appre­ci­ated. Even more the­o­ret­i­cal posts that have some­thing in them that read­ers can ‘do’ rather than just ‘know’ is good.

Increase your chances of hav­ing your post selected by check­ing top­ics with me before you start writing.

Voice

Some guest posters worry about what voice or style to write in. Ulti­mately this is up to you and I want to encour­age you to bring your own voice to your post. My read­ers are used to my voice (I try to be per­sonal and relat­able) how­ever it’s up to you how you approach it.

Sub Head­ings

I love to use sub­head­ings in my posts. This breaks up the con­tent and helps draw the eye down the post. If you have a sub head­ing in your post please rap <h3> tags around it.

Images

I love to include images in posts on Thomas-co Media. As my theme is fairly text ori­ented images add per­son­al­ity, break up con­tent and grab atten­tion. I find that posts with at least one good image in it get more atten­tion than oth­ers. A few sug­ges­tions for images:

* images can be of any size — but the max­i­mum width is 540 pix­els (the width of my con­tent area).
* please ensure images are able to be used in terms of copy­right
* images can be illus­tra­tive (screen­shots), descrip­tive (some­thing that is more atten­tion grab­bing on the theme of the post), title images (an image with words/title that appear at the top of the post) or any­thing else that you’d like to include.

A few exam­ples of how I’ve used images on posts pre­vi­ously are:

If you can’t find the right image for your post don’t get too stressed. I’m rea­son­ably quick at find­ing them.

Feel free to either insert images using the WP uploader or by just point­ing to a link on your own server or Flickr. I’ll then grab the image and host it on my server (so there’s no wor­ries about me crash­ing yours).

Post Length

I am always asked how long posts need to be and my answer is always the same — as long as you need to con­vey your message.

I post a large vari­ety of posts in terms of length and any­thing goes. Stick with your own style, voice and choose a length that sits well with you. I’m happy to post long and short posts — length isn’t a fac­tor, but qual­ity is.

Edit­ing

Please note that I do edit posts that appear on Thomas-co Media. I rarely heav­ily edit them but it’s not unusual for me to change a title, rework an open­ing or con­clu­sion or cor­rect grammar/spelling.

Don’t be offended by this — I’m just try­ing to make it as suc­cess­ful a post as pos­si­ble and know what gen­er­ally works well with my audience.

Occa­sion­ally I’ll send a post back to you the author with sug­gested addi­tions, omis­sions or changes. This is gen­er­ally if I feel the post could be fur­ther enhanced in ways that go beyond some basic editing.

My hope in this is that we get a post up that hits the mark with my read­er­ship — good for you as the author, good for Thomas-co Media read­er­ship and as a result also good for the blog as a whole.

Exclu­siv­ity

Unless pre­vi­ously nego­ti­ated I’m assum­ing that the post you’re writ­ing is exclu­sively for the use of Thomas-co Media. While you’re more than wel­come to write on the same topic else­where — my hope is that posts that appear on Thomas-co Media don’t appear in the same form elsewhere.

Byline

As the author of the post I want to high­light you, your blog or any prod­uct or ser­vice that you have to offer. This should largely be done in a byline.

Bylines should be a sen­tence or two of who you are and what you do. Feel free to include up to 2 links in it. Some guests include a link to an RSS feed here — this can con­vert well. This byline will appear at the bot­tom of your post — but I’ll also write a short intro­duc­tory sen­tence that will include your main link that will appear at the top of the post.

In post links — if rel­e­vant to the topic you’re writ­ing you’re wel­come to link back to your blog within the post. Keep in mind that this ‘rel­e­vancy’ is very impor­tant. Some guest posters have included too many links or irrel­e­vant links back to their own blogs and have come in for crit­i­cism from my read­ers as a result. I don’t mind pro­mot­ing you — but some­times sub­tlety works best — a high qual­ity help­ful post will get peo­ple check­ing out who you are more than lots of links back to your post.

If you have any ques­tions or con­cerns — please do con­tact me via the form below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Thanks for your involve­ment with Thomas-co Media.

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