Write for Us

Yes, we do accept some sponsored posts and content. If you wish to submit a guest post but your post is overtlt promoting a product, business, or service, we considered that sponsored and ask for payment.

What are sponsored posts?

A sponsored post is one that is promoting a brand. If you are an individual and want to submit a recipe, write your thoughts about visiting Seattle, or whatnot, that’s not a sponsored post.

But if you’re a brand or business and are linking to your business, it is a sponsored post.

Do you “dofollow” links in sponsored content?

It is considered best practice to tag sponsored and paid links with rel=”sponsored,” so this is what we do with promotional links.

Will my post be labeled as sponsored content?

In keeping with best practices, we will disclose your post as being sponsored in the early part of the post. We’ll likely add something such as “this was sponsored by” or “this is a sponsored post which means…”

Will PNW & Beyond write something for me?

We cannot give you a definitive answer on this as it is situational. From time to time we get invited to various media previews and if it’s something we want to attend and have time for and doesn’t cost us a great deal to get to, we will choose to do that at no charge. It depends on the event.

Same goes for reviewing a product. If it’s something we’re into, like bike computers, we might want to review it.

Writing a post, however, actually takes quite a bit of time especially if you consider photography, SEO, etc.

If you are interested in us writing sponsored content for you, please contact us.

Will there be ads on my post?

We do not feel there should be ads on sponsored posts. We block ads on sponsored posts, or at least make every attempt to (once in a while we find an auto ad creeping back in where it shouldn’t be and have to make adjustments).

How much does a sponsored post cost?

We may vary the price of a sponsored post. Use the form below to view our current asking price.

However, the form is set up a “pay what you will” so we can make adjustments for special circumstances.

The “recommended” value here is for sponsored posts that you submit. Anything else, and you shoud inquire in advance.

Sponsored post payment form

How long will my sponsored post be on your website?

Once we publish a sponsored post, it generally will be on our website “for the life of this blog.” Which means that, in the future, if we need to stop writing this blog or if it changes hands the post will be taken down as then it will be out of our control. But unless there is some extenuating reason (such as excessively negative feedback for a particular post) we’ll leave it up for the life of this blog.

Do you offer refunds for sponsored content?

If, for some reason, your post is up for less than a year, we’ll do a partial refund prorated for the time it was “live” on the website. Otherwise, we do not do refunds for sponsored content and do not guarantee any particular amount of traffic or promotion. We’ll generally share our sponsored post on our social media channels.

Thanks!

You should receive automated emails from us whenever a post changes status, which means that you should receive an email if:

• We receive your post submission.
•  We schedule your post for publication.
•  We published your post.
•  We decline your post submission.

Note that the latter happens when we move a post to the trash. It’s crucial that you save your own post for yourself if you want it in the future. We do not retain declined posts — our trash gets automatically emptied on a regular basis. This puts the responsibility in your hands, ensuring you have control over your content.

Please refer to the terms and conditions for posting on this website for current terms regarding payment. We prefer to keep specifics in one place to avoid discrepancies.

In general, different post types and categories have different payment systems. Some general things to know:

• We use our counter system for post categories that qualify for a word count payment. Items such as shortcodes, tables of content, and small articles and conjunctions get excluded from the word count.
• While bonuses beyond the initial payment are not guaranteed, they may be awarded based on your overall performance. Please note that this determination is currently a manual process, taking into account several factors.

After your first paid post is accepted and you are moved to contributor status, you’ll notice a “My earnings” tab open under the “More” dropdown in your member profile.

From here, you can view your posts and current balance.

You may also see those items here if you’ve also submitted items such as routes, glossary entries, or locations. They don’t qualify for a flat or per-word placement, but we may occasionally apply a bonus if we see one of these items performing well.

If you are a contributor, you will find a “My earnings” tab under the “More” dropdown in your member area. If your earnings are $10 or more, a “Request payment” button will appear there. $10 is currently the minimum amount for a payout. We may raise the threshold depending on how it affects our fees.

We will not initiate payment unless:

1. You request it OR
2. Your balance has exceeded $100 OR
3. We are discontinuing our paid writing program or can no longer run this website, in which case we will pay out any available funds greater than $5.

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.

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.

You can access the post form from your member profile under the “posts” tab or from this page if you are logged in.

This page covers formatting for submitting a post — what we request and some special formats and features you may use in posts on our website.

Basic Formatting for Submitted Posts

When you submit a post on our website, here are some things to consider. Some are requirements; some are requests:

• The post must be in English and use correct grammar and punctuation (we usually find typos in our own writing if we write and publish when we’re tired). We’re willing to make small edits but not to rewrite your post.
• We highly recommend using headings in your writing. This is a blog post, not literature (well, unless it’s a story, and we’ll get to that), and headings help with SEO and readability for online readers. If your post is long enough, we’ll likely add a table of contents, and that’s how it’s done!
  
  However, if you’re submitting something, for instance, such as a story or an essay for which headings are inappropriate, we’re 100% on board with that! Some types of writing will suffer from being divided into headings and sections.
• Like the above, please try not to write too long paragraphs. Again, online readability.
• At the very least, we require a featured image for your post.

Special Formatting for Certain Post Categories

Some of our categories, such as product reviews, recipes, book reviews, polls, or trivia quizzes, have “special” items: recipe cards, quizzes, polls…
You may not be able to insert the item in your submitted post yourself, but if you’re submitting a post in one of these categories, we ask that you include the following:

Trivia Quizzes

First, you must create a quiz! You can do that from the “Create Quiz” tab under “More” in your member profile.

Then, you can create and submit a post. In the post body, make sure that you add which trivia quiz you want to insert here — though it will likely be evident.

There may not be any appropriate categories for your quiz and questions. Don’t worry; just put them in an existing category, and we’ll handle it.

Also, make sure you add some text to the body of the post with more information about the quiz.

If we accept it, we will likely add some formatting to your trivia quiz.

Polls

See Trivia Quiz. The process is much the same. You’ll find a Create Poll tab in your member profile.

Product Reviews

We can add some review stars if you’d like, but you need to let us know:

• The product link
• What should each rated area be (i.e., are you rating it on ease of use, durability, and appearance? Then tell us those areas along with how many stars each should have and your overall rating)?
• A summary that should go in the review box.

Recipes

We may add a form to create a recipe, but we’re using the standard form for now. If you want to add a recipe, make sure you include:

• Ingredients in US imperial units. The recipe plugin adds a unit converter.
• If an ingredient is strange or complex to come by, explain it.
• Add clear step-by-step directions.
• For recipes, we’d like more than a featured image. Images for some steps are helpful, depending on the recipe, or even video clips.

Book reviews

If your post is a book review, please enter the title, author, ISBN, and GoodReads link. We will format the book review box that appears at the start of the post.

Product Comparisons

If you are writing a “gear” type post and want us to create an Amazon comparison box in your post, please let us know the products and what you want to include and we can format it for you.

Footnotes and other things you can add

Footnotes

If you want to add footnotes to your post, wrap your footnote content in brackets with this {[{ to begin and the same in the opposite direction to end. I could do this here as, even in the code block, it ended up as a footnote.

Make sure there is a space between the word and your starting brackets.

Wikipedia Content

Using direct Wikipedia content is ONLY permissible at the end of a glossary term and ONLY if that term has significant non-Wikipedia content.

However, if you’d like to try, enter:

[rdp-wiki-embed url=’http://linktothewikipediaresource’]

…where you replace the URL with the link of the Wikipedia page.

There is a chance we may remove Wikipedia content at some point if we ever find issues with loading because of doing this. This content is only meant to supplement glossary terms.

Galleries

If you want to use a standard WordPress gallery, you should be able to configure it on the post form. Or we can use our own formatted galleries feature which displays better (we think). We can put your images in a gallery with the ability for logged in users to add to the gallery and/or we can display your gallery images in a lightbox social sharing icons and a button allowing downloads OR a large lightbox with EXIF info and thumbnail strip at the bottom.

You must tell us which images you want in a gallery and how you want it to present.

Single Location or Route Maps

If you are also creating a map page or routes page to supplement your post, we prefer you create a map image and link it to the page with the map. This saves us on map loads and decreases the overall loading time of the page. Not everyone cares about the map; let’s just the people who do access it.

When you submit content, you should get an automated email acknowledgment. Make sure that you allow emails from hello@pnwbeyond.com.

After that, how long it takes us to review your post varies depending on what we’re doing and how many other submissions we’ve had. It can take from 72 hours to several weeks. But you should check back in if you have not heard anything within a few weeks.

Please be patient. Often, if you need to wait, it’s a good sign because it means we’re editing your post in preparation for scheduling.

If we decide to publish your guest post, we will likely do some editing.

In most cases, edits will be minor, and we will not check in with you before we publish your post.

If we feel that the changes we want to make are significant, you may receive an email with questions. Please allow emails from hello@pnwbeyond.com

Contributors may not edit or delete posts after they are published. Please get in touch with us if you’d like us to delete an unpaid guest post.

When we pay contributors for qualifying content, we use PayPal as our processor. Contributors MUST have a PayPal account. A form field to add your PayPal email address is in the “My earnings” area.

We pay the PayPal fees, if any. If the per-transaction fee becomes too high, we may raise the threshold for payouts higher than $10. Please check the current terms and conditions.

From time to time, we get asked if “will you add a link to my blog” into an existing article, so we added this FAQ on the subject.

In most cases, the answer is “no.” While we don’t want to sound mean, about 90% of such requests offer a link that really has nothing to do with the article at hand or in which the page the link goes to is pretty content-free.

For instance, we received a request to link to a page that had nothing more than an address for a popular tourist location and a photo of it!

Before you ask us to add a link into our page, please consider whether your link is applicable to the topic of the page, and whether it adds any value to readers of that page.

Also consider this: will you link back to us?

One place where we more often will consider adding links is to our PNWWiki pages in which we have a “related resources” section. If your link is to a page that is directly about the topic at hand, we’ll be more likely to consider placing it there than in an existing main post.

We generally do not consider paid link placements and if we ever did, we’d disclose it, and add rel=”sponsored to it in keeping with best SEO practices.

If you want to get a link on our site, perhaps you could consider adding a guest post on one of the topics we like to cover.

Thanks for your understanding!