Guest Authors Policy Submittal and Posting Guidelines
Thank you very much for your interest in writing a guest article or blog post. We’re always open to great writings that we believe will be of interest to our valuable readers. To smooth the process as much as possible, we developed these guidelines in an attempt to answer questions you might have.
Preferred Topics and Subjects
Most of our valuable readers are Christians, and/or those seeking to learn more about the Christian faith. Approximately half of our readers reside in the US, while about a quarter reside in the Middle and Far East, and the remainder in Europe, Africa and South America. Therefore, any topic that would be of interest to our readers will be considered. You might like to visit our Site Map for an overview of some of our categories and subjects.
Drafts
Initially, we prefer that you submit a title and outline (and a brief summary if you like) rather than a full article. This will save both of us some time and effort if your idea is not a good fit for our site. This will also allow us to make suggestions and feedback early in the project. That said, if your article is not of excessive length, and you'd rather send the entire article, we'll gladly review it.
Quality Requirements
Articles should be family friendly and semi-unique, not published elsewhere, and able to pass plagiarism checks. It also must not violate any copyright laws.
Articles should be clear and well organized, with a good introduction and smooth flow throughout. Articles should be written for a human audience, not for a search engine (no keyword stuffing).
Articles should be semi-authoritative. We encourage guest authors to include a brief byline containing an author bio along with his or her credentials related to the subject. An author photo and links back to his or her website, blog or social media page is also allowed.
Obviously, the article should be proofed. Please run spell and grammar checks before submittal. Arguments should be clear and supported by data and/or other means.
Scripture references, if a direct quote, should include translation (ESV, NIV, NASB etc).
Republishing
Articles posted on our site are credited to the author but become our property. Short extracts or a summary may be published elsewhere (preferably with a link to the full article); however, the article must not be republished elsewhere in its entirety (including the author’s site). This protects both sites from duplicate content issues relating to search engines.
Length of Articles
We typically don’t specify a minimum or maximum word limit, since this might limit the author’s creativity. We request that the length be consistent with the depth of the subject, long enough for an adequate treatment, but without a lot of fluff.
Formatting
Article may be formatted in HTML and submitted as a text document. Alternatively, the article may be sent in MS Word (.doc or .docx) and we can do the coding. Documents should be sent as an attachment rather than embedded in an email.
Images
Images are allowed (even encouraged). Images must be owned by the author, in public domain, or properly cited. Images should be sent as an attachment rather than embedded in an email, or as a link if image is to be linked from another site. Please indicate the location that you would like each image to reside, or we can locate them for best association with your text.
Links
A reasonable number of links are permitted, but should be non-spammy. Links to authoritative sites are actually preferred rather than duplicating a significant amount of material from the original site, however they should add value for our readers, rather than just being included for building back-links or for advertising. Links to similar articles on our site are encouraged and appreciated. Guest authors may also link back to their own content, but affiliate links are forbidden.
Important: All links must meet the requirements of our Resource Links Policy.
Links to Content Marketing sights/pages such as “Product and/or Service Reviews”, “Locator and/or Referral Services”, “Infomercials”, “Buyers Guides”, other informational (often sponsored) content that is used to promote a product or service, or to earn commissions and/or referral fees by driving viewer traffic to the sites of “Associates”, “Affiliates” etc, are highly discouraged. We occasionally an exception for a link to an article that contains unique high quality content and meets the “Proper Advertising Disclaimers and Notices” of the FTC as described in the “Additional Requirements” chapter of our Resource Links Policy linked in the previous paragraph.
Author must also disclose any relationships to all linked sites and associated companies (if any), such as owner, executive, marketing rep, employee, ad agency representative, etc. All sponsored links must be clearly marked as such. If you do not profit from, or have any relationship with any of the linked pages, please let us know so we don't reject your article on this basis.
Links not meeting the above requirements may be replaced by language asking the reader to utilize their favorite search engine for additional info.
Editing
We reserve the right to make minor edits as we see fit. We’ll run these edits by you for your approval prior to publishing, except for certain insignificant edits such as spelling, punctuation etc.
We may also add a short introduction of our own (why we published your article etc) but will be clear to our readers that it is not part of your article.
Social Media Postings
We encourage you to link and promote your article on social media.
Blog Comments
If your article is posted on our blog, we encourage you to react to any reader’s comments as appropriate.
Advertisements / Sponsored Articles
We generally do not accept articles that are overly self-promotional (basically advertisements for products or services), sponsored posts, or articles with sponsored content.
Average Review Time
We attempt to review drafts within a week or two, and complete articles in three to four weeks or less, depending on length, and our current workload. We’ll attempt to notify you if the process is taking longer than we anticipate.
Questions?
If you have questions on anything not covered in these guidelines, please email us.
Submissions:
Please email us your draft or article for review.
Please include the word “Mavericks” somewhere in the Subject Line of your email.
Thanks very much for your contribution to our site.