First, thank you for planning to write for Indy. We love bringing the knowledge and wisdom from other professionals to our community. We appreciate your experience and look forward to your contribution to other independent contractors.
Second, to help us maintain a high level of quality for our audience, we provide guest writers with a set of simple guidelines for their posts. Please have a look and try to work within these suggestions.
What Kind of Content Do We Want?
We love content that is unique and uniquely helpful to other freelancers.
Here’s what we are looking for in new content:
- Guest posts that relate to the real world of freelance work. Don’t be abstract, or too philosophical. Try to help people get a little better as independent professionals.
- We love content that brings unique research and unique experiences together. So, please do your research and cite your sources. Tell us about you, as well!
- Depth is brilliant. Leave the basics to us. Instead, focus on diving deeper into your area of expertise. Show off your knowledge, skills, and experience.
We want to help our readers discover something new, fresh, inspiring, and genuinely helpful. Along the way, we love to promote other professionals like you. So, please, show us your best stuff.
What About Images, Videos, and Other Stuff?
Please feel free to add images, videos, and other types of content into your guest post. However, we ask you to do two things:
- Make sure it is royalty-free content or that you have the rights to publish it. Ain’t nobody got time for a copyright lawsuit.
- Include a link to the source so we can give it the right attribution and credit.
Pictures and movies add depth to content. Graphs, charts, tables, and extra pieces of research can really illustrate a point. We value all of them. Just follow our two suggestions and we’ll be pleased to publish them.
How Long Should My Content Be?
There really isn’t a specific length. Most great blog articles are between 1200 and 1800 words. This is plenty of space to really dig into a topic and showcase your authority. Instead of thinking of length, here are some better ideas:
- Is your content thorough? Try to write content that covers the entirety of your topic. If this seems too broad, then narrow your topic a bit. As an example, writing about “freelancer proposals” is too broad. Writing a blog post for us about “How to write winning freelance journalist proposals” would be amazing.
- Are there questions you can answer? Try taking your main keyword and doing a Google search. Look at the “People Also Ask” section. If there are some questions there that seem relevant, try to answer them. This is a great way to add depth and relevance to any article.
- What can you cut? Sometimes articles are too long or they don’t seem to hold attention well. If you feel this is the case for your masterpiece, then try to cut off 20% of it. Eliminate a section or two. Rephrase whole paragraphs into single sentences.
In the end, we don’t have a goal or a limit. We just want great content.
Can I Promote Myself?
Our SEO team knows the value of backlinks and our marketers all know how great it is to get references from another company or freelancer. We want to offer you a space to suggest your own services or refer people to your website.
What we want to avoid is spammy links in articles, pushy sales language, and irrelevant suggestions. With this in mind, here are a few ideas:
- Try to use only one link per article. Please include a single link in your article to your own website. Use the right anchor text for your business and stick a link in. If there are multiple links, we might take them out, leaving you without that juicy backlink and anchor text you wanted.
- Link based on the content. Add links people will be interested in based on what they are reading. It’s tempting to think people will be interested in your business regardless of context, but this just isn’t true. Try to link to the services you offer that connect naturally to the article.
- Avoid sales language. The purpose of our blog is to help our community. While your services will almost certainly be useful, we want to avoid overt sales language in our guest blogs. Just include some simple anchor text with a link.
We want you to promote your website and services because we believe in the future of freelance and independent work. We don’t want link spam, pushy sales language, or irrelevant links. In the end, these just make everyone look bad.
What’s Next?
If you are already in touch with us, great! We will pass you an idea for a blog and ask you to write for us. If you’re just reading this and have your own idea, please send a brief pitch email to [marketing@weareindycom]. We’ll be happy to look it over and work with you if that’s the best choice.
