Guest Posting Policy

Thanks for your interest in guest posting! I’m always looking to connect with other bloggers. Please read over these guidelines before emailing me about your request to guest post. They seem silly, but when you receive tons of emails about guest posting and you can’t tell whether or not people are scammers, it becomes necessary.

1. Prove you have written great content in the past.

You must either run your own blog or regularly contribute to other blogs. You must be able to prove that the content written and photographed by you.

Send me links to your blog so I can see examples of your writing (mostly I just want to know that my readers will be able to understand you).

If I see that you signed the email as “Bob” and the person in the post calls herself “Rachel,” I’m going to assume you’re a spammer and I will reject your guest posting request. (This is based off a real example, by the way.)

2. Your guest post must be unique, well-written, and decent in length.

Posts must be 500-1500 words. It must also be original and unique. I will run it through Copyscape to make sure it hasn’t appeared on other blogs. (Search engine crawlers will catch too many similarities and mark my blog as spam if I use a pre-written guest post.)

Please use proper spelling and grammar (for instance, “a lot” is two words, not one). I will fix a mistake here and there, but if your post is difficult to understand due to spelling and grammar, I won’t publish it.

3. Check the copyright on photographs.

Photographs must be your property. They may NOT be something you purchased for use on your site. Buying the copyright license for your own site does not mean you can use it on other sites. Putting them on another site is something that could get those sites into trouble with copyright laws.

4. Photos must be good quality.

I am picky about the photos that appear on my blog. They must look professionally done. On my blog, they must be at least 800 pixels wide. I will not accept yellow, dark, or blurry photos.

If you want to submit something that doesn’t use photos, that’s also fine! I’ll handle the pinnable image on my own, in that case.

5. Blog size and age matter.

Sorry, I know this is a disappointment! In order for this arrangement to be beneficial to both of us, I will only work with bloggers who are similar in size and age to my own blog. It does not have to be exact, but please make sure you are close to the following:

• 30k-60k pageviews per month
• 1000+ followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest (if those are not your primary social media sites, we can discuss it)
• 2+ years old

If you match TWO of those, but not the third, email me. Two out of three ain’t bad. 😛

6. I have rules for links.

You can include as many links as you want to your own blog, as long as the outgoing links are relevant to the post and will benefit my readers. If I feel like you’re spamming the post with links to your site, I will remove them.

If you have a small blurb about yourself you want to use, with links to blog(s) and social media, please send that to me. I will post it at the bottom of your guest post.

Please do not use your affiliate links. Affiliate programs must approve sites for certain accounts before you can post affiliate links on them. My site is not approved for your account and if you put your affiliate links on my site, it could get you kicked out of your affiliate program.

That said, if you need to link to a product, feel free to do so. And don’t worry about making product links nofollow, I can do that myself.

7. For copyright purposes, I own everything on this site.

Meaning once your guest post has been published, I can edit it however I want (including photos), share it wherever I want, or use it for whatever purposes I see fit.

In reality, I’m not going to use it for anything unusual. I don’t intend to sell your photos or anything. But it is very important that I maintain copyright over anything that appears on this blog. This is to make sure you don’t come back in a year demanding I remove your photos and claiming I have to because of copyright laws. Nope. Once it’s on my blog, it belongs to me. Just as the posts I write for other people belong to them.

8. Make time for social media.

I do expect you to share your guest post on social media. I’d love for you to come back and respond to comments, as well, but I know it’s sometimes difficult to remember that.

If you’re on Foodgawker or Tastespotting, feel free to upload your photography to your account. This is something I do with the guest posts I write for others, mostly because I want the feedback on my photos. But it generally turns into great traffic for them. However, it is not a requirement.

If this sounds reasonable to you, then email me! If it doesn’t, feel free to email me with any questions you have. (If you think it’s a question that will benefit others, leave it in the comments!)