The following is the official guest post terms and conditions for sponored, guest, or paid posts on this website, Pacific Northwest and Beyond, which is owned by Pacific Northwest and Beyond, LLC a sole-proprietor LLC in the state of Washington.
To submit content on this website, please visit our write for us page.
Table of Contents
Definitions
Sponsored Post
A post that is paid by a sponsor to us that promotes a business, product, or service.
Please see our Sponsored Post FAQ.
Guest Post
A guest post is an article created by a website member rather than an admin or editor and does not qualify for monetary compensation.
Paid Post
A paid post is an article submitted by a contributor for which we offer monetary compensation.
Types of content we have on this website
Posts/Articles
These are standard articles. They can also include posts with specific rich content like book reviews, trivia quizzes, or polls.
Events
These are for specific events with a time and location (or URL if it is an online event), except for some holidays, dates in history, etc, that we choose to add.
Routes
These map-type posts feature a point-by-point route map of a cycling path, hike, etc.
Locations
These are single locations on a map. They may supplement a post to show more about, for instance, a piece of local public art you want to draw attention to.
PNWWikis (Glossary entries)
These are glossary entries with information about a subject — we have several different glossaries: one for PNW info, one about cycling terms, and one about photography terms.
Galleries
Currently, we are not paying for photo galleries or media uploaded to community galleries.
Products
We do not allow members to add personal or affiliate products to our shop.
Payment for Posts
We are not a big-budget blog, but we like being a multi-author blog and wish to compensate authors. Currently, we are in an experimental stage with our payment system for writers. We are trying it out through the end of June 2024 and will likely continue it past that. We may make some revisions depending on what we find, but the terms you see here will apply to your post, and we’ll update these terms if we make modifications.
What types of content do you reimburse, and how?
Whether we offer payment for content, how much we pay, and which system we use for calculating payment depends on the post type, its category, and, in some cases, your choice about how you use promotional links.
Post/Articles
For most standard posts, we pay $0.01 per word, which we cap at 2500 words. You can write longer pieces, but we need this initially until we can evaluate further. After that, you may receive additional future compensation depending on the performance of your post. Our system does not automatically track some of the factors we consider. Hence, it’s something we need to track manually every month and will apply if, at some point, the post’s performance exceeds the amount initially paid.
Exceptions by category
Gear/Product Reviews and Lists
For categories with “gear” in the title, which are generally product reviews and lists, we pay $0.005 per word, again capped at 2500 words. We will include our affiliate links in reviews or product lists where we can and replace existing affiliate links. There may be a chance of revenue sharing i the future. Again, this is not guaranteed. Alternatively, if you want to write a gear review and include your affiliate links, you can choose to forego the chance of payment.
Trivia Quizzes and Polls
You can create trivia quizzes (in a tab in your member account) to supplement main posts. Our word counter will exclude the quiz or poll from the overall word count. Generally, we will also put a quiz or poll in a post by itself. We do not pay a per-word rate for poll posts but keep the payment options open for contributors submitting other content as well, in case one ends up generating the ability for future payment. Currently, we pay a flat $5 for trivia quizzes, and they may be eligible for future bonuses. We are talking about sitewide polls, NOT the polls you can post in user activity.
Recipes
Recipes may be short on word count as we exclude the recipe card in the post, but they generally require some effort. We pay $10 per recipe, with the possibility of earning more in the future. We prefer recipes that you can relate to in some way, such as the PNW, outdoor activities, travel, etc.
Event List-type posts
Sometimes, we use our events calendar to create lists of local events. However, we do not currently pay a flat or per-word fee for event list-type posts or reward social shares, but we will keep it open if we potentially bonus this in the future.
Event reports
We sometimes attend, photograph, and report on events (as we enjoy doing so). However, as event reports tend to be brief and not evergreen, we currently do not pay a flat or per-word fee for them, the same as for event list-type posts.
Routes and Locations
We do not pay per-word or flat fees for routes and locations. We keep them open as a paid content type, and if you are a contributor who has submitted other paid content as well, they may appear on the list in your My Earnings tab. We may choose to bonus these for existing competitors if one is performing very well, but it is not guaranteed.
PNWWikis (glossary entries)
As with routes and locations, we do not pay per-word fees for these but keep them open as a paid content type in case we want to make a bonus for exceptional cases in the future. However, this is not guaranteed.
Events
We do NOT pay for submitted events, nor do we charge for them.
Off-Topic Posts
We have an off-topic category for times when we want to write something outside our main topic. We generally limit off-topic posts to our admin. If we choose to publish a guest off-topic post, currently, we do not offer payment for it upon publication but would keep it open for potential future bonuses.
Subject matter
We prefer subject matter about the PNW area of the United States (including posts about MANY aspects of this area, not just things to do), travel, local nature, photography, and outdoor activities such as cycling.
We also do not accept religious posts (unless you consider, just as an example) a post about places to meditate and do forest bathing in the woods as “religious.” Or posts about a charming local chapel.
And we’ll reject posts that use derogatory or hate speech.
We only accept English-language posts as that is our primary readership and we cannot evaluate content in other languages.
Right to Refuse
We only pay for published content (not submitted content) and in specific categories. We do not and cannot publish everything that we receive.
If we cannot use your submission, you should receive an automated email letting you know that we declined your post.
Bonuses (and Deductions)
Some posts may qualify for future bonuses. Bonuses are not guaranteed. However, we’d like to be able to add bonuses to posts that are performing well and intend to do so.
Likewise, if you’ve submitted an article that would be usable but requires a significant amount of editing on our part, we may contact you and check if you want us to proceed. We may deduct a small amount for our extra time.
We base our decision to bonus on several factors. Please do not take actions to try to manipulate how you perceive that we may be making our decisions. If we find a particular member is taking actions like repeated page loadings, clicking on ads, or rating their posts multiple times — though you should not be able to do that and though those are not necessarily all the factors we take into account — we may remove you from the contributor program.
Additionally, you might notice “Facebook Shares” in your earnings tab. In some categories, we offer a tiny bonus for Facebook shares on your post within the first 30 days after your post is published, starting after the second share and capped at ten at this point. We may edit this in the future, depending on the results.
Non-plagarism
We expect the content you submit to us will be your own, and we will run it through a plagiarism checker. If you do not have an image of your own, you may use images from free photo-sharing websites. Please adhere to the licensing terms of the photo you use. For instance, if you borrow a photo from Flickr, make sure it is licensed for commercial use and then credit it (you can add a note for us in the post body).
We also do not allow duplicate posting of your content from another website—or anyone else’s, of course. Once, we found many of our posts on another website, all attributed to the author of “admin,” apparently having been placed there via RSS. It’s not a happy circumstance.
We have made exceptions once or twice for exceptional circumstances and reposted someone’s content at their request. However, we cannot pay for such content and must refer the cannonical link back to the original website.
For glossary entries, you can use a shortcode to insert Wikipedia content at the end of your glossary entry. Wikipedia allows this under its terms—we’ll just cite where the text came from. Your glossary term page must also have a significant amount of other content before it can include this. We do not pay for word count with glossary entries.
Word Count
For standard posts, we require at least 300 words.
Our word count tool for submitted posts is automated and excludes small articles and conjunctions, shortcode content, quoted materials, excerpts, photo captions, and table of contents blocks.
Post Formatting
As you are writing blog posts, we prefer that you use headings. However, not all content requires headings — if you’re writing a story or essay, and headings would detract from your work, then do not include them.
For most blog posts with headings, we’ll add a table of contents at or near the front of the post.
Additionally, you must at least submit a featured image with your post. We prefer a 3:2 image ratio or close, and a “Facebook Ad” size of around 1200 x 700 px works great.
You can find more information about post formatting here.
Post authors group
The first time you submit a post for paid publication and it gets scheduled, our admin will send a “connection request” and then invite you to join a private group for post authors. We recommend you accept. The group is for notifying authors of changes but could also be a format for (some) discussion.
Deleting Posts
Contributors cannot delete their posts, and we will not delete paid posts. However, we reserve the right to delete posts in the future for any reason. You can request that we delete your non-paid post.
If We Discontinue or Sell This Website
There’s always the possibility we will not be able to keep up this website in the future. In the event this website ends or changes hands, we’ll pay out remaining payments before it does so (except in the case of the owner’s demise). After that, what happens to existing content will be the decision of the new site owner.
With sponsored posts, we will only refund the payment if the post has been on the site for a year or less when we remove it or when the website ownership changes. Then, we will prorate the amount by the time it’s been published.
Requesting Payment and Payment Fees
After your first paid post is accepted, your role will change to “contributor.” In your member account, under the “More” tab, you’ll find a tab called “My Earnings,” where you can view a list of your posts and current (unpaid) earnings. When your balance reaches $10 or more, you may request payment with a button on that page.
We reserve the right to raise this threshold if we find that the per-transaction fees are becoming too high.
Any payment generated by per-word fees is eligible AFTER publication. We do not pay for submitted and unpublished posts.
We pay via PayPal. You can enter your PayPal address in that area. You MUST have a PayPal account. We do not send out personal checks, cash, money orders, credit card payments, etc.
We will only initiate payments without request if your balance reaches $100 or if we either decide to discontinue the paid writing program or can no longer run this website—in that case, we’ll initiate paying out whatever balances are remaining. We may also initiate payments ourselves if we decide to change payment terms so that the amount we owe you does not inadvertently change.
We usually attempt to pay within three business days of your request. However, we do like to travel. If we anticipate being away and unavailable, we will notify the author group in advance.
Audience Reach and Promotion
We do not guarantee any specific reach for your post or promotion. Depending on the subject, we will likely share your standard post on our social media channels and email newsletter. You are welcome to promote your post on your social channels as well. We often delay sharing just a bit, as currently, we post to draft status on social media channels and then edit.
Profile Completeness
Your author name and box will link to your profile on our website. Before we publish your post, we may ask that you complete at least a custom user avatar and cover image and some other areas of your user profile.
For paid authors, we will require a certain level of profile completeness.
Your post (at least standard posts) will have an author box, which may enable logged-in members to contact you with questions. This has been fine, but we do have user-blocking tools if you run into anyone who is using the contact or connect button inappropriately.
Links: Affiliate, doFollow, Sponsored, oh my!
It is in keeping with best practices to add the rel=”sponsored” tag to paid links. In keeping with that, we will add that tag to links in sponsored posts. We will also add that to any affiliate links that do not already have that.
If we find affiliate links in content that qualify for payment, we will replace them with our own affiliate links.
If you want to write a product review with your affiliate links and remove that post from the possibility of any payment from us, you may use affiliate links, though it is always up to us what we’ll allow a post on our website to link out to.
Links that are not paid links and are truly necessary to the post content may be dofollow. We make that decision.
AI-generated Content
The only place we allow a small, AI-generated snippet of writing is in glossary entries. Then, it must be disclosed as such with a heading and must only be a very small part of the overall content.
You MAY use an AI generated image for a featured image, but please be careful with this and mention the source of your image in the post.
Editing
We reserve the right to edit your post without contacting you unless we feel those edits are large and significant.
We may check with you for review before scheduling your post for publication, but we’ll likely schedule it without a preview.
Material Submitted in the Past
Posts submitted before April 11, 2024, are not eligible for payment.
No Guarantee of Time Frame for Publication
Please allow us ample time to review and consider your submission. Additionally, we may schedule your post significantly later to space out member-submitted posts, posts of a similar type, or according to our budget limits.
Ads
We will show ads in your post, unless it is a sponsored post. We block ads in sponsored posts.
Removal from the paid writers’ program
We may remove contributors for the paid writers program (i.e., change their user role) for several reasons:
- Being repeatedly reported for spamming or blocked by other members, which would lead to a user being blocked in general, will remove you from the contributor program.
- If you start repeatedly submitting content that we consider unpublishable.
- You are being argumentative for no good cause or causing issues in the authors/contributors group.
- If your paid posts are not generating any bonuses AND you have not contributed content for the past year. We may pay any remaining amount over $10 and then change your role to “member” unless you want to submit a new post before that.
- Or, of course, if we decide to stop paying writers for content. We’ll pay out any accrued earnings in that case.
- If we find you are reloading pages, clicking on ads, or doing other things to try to determine and affect how we may be deciding on bonuses, we will remove you from paid authorship.
Hopefully, we will have already paid you for any per-post or per-word articles; if not, we’ll pay you before changing your status unless it was for the last reason on the list. In that case, we’d deduct any potential bonuses from the amount paid. If we remove you as a paid writer, we can keep the paid content on our website.
