Published Oct 21. 2015 - 8 years ago
Updated or edited Jun 4. 2023

We don't publish "guest posts"

Contributions are more than welcome, but what is known as guest posts or sponsored posts aren't, and here is why.

Guest posts
No guest posts
Martin Joergensen

What is known in marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as "guest posts" are 90% irrelevant articles on subjects only remotely interesting to our readers - and they are also vessels for more or less elegantly disguised ads or endorsements or other marketing mechanisms. The worst ones are pure opportunistic click bait and SEO aides. The better ones are simply sponsored content or articles with links to online stores, mainly put there to accelerate sales rather than bringing information to the reader. We don't want to support either.
Some guest posters will even offer to pay you for bringing the article, AKA sponsored posts. That won't help much here. Junk posts are still junk posts, and the payment is lousy anyway.

So if you are a professional or semi-professional guest poster and think the large Global FlyFisher audience is "gefundenes fressen" for you, just forget it. We're not publishing traditional guest posts.

Alarm signals

These are the indicators I use to spot that your mail is about guest posts that I don't want:

  • Your suggested articles are totally off subject, like "The best reel for ocean fishing", "The best outboard motor", "Fighting mosquitoes outdoors", "Ice fishing 101". No thanks, we deal in fly fishing and fly tying only.
  • Your topic choice is way too basic, like "How to select a fly rod", "The difference between a dry and a wet fly", "Fishing in the rain", "The best beginner's kayak". The audience here is pretty picky and quite knowledgeable, so I need high level articles on specialized subjects.
  • Your articles are "reviews", basically lists of products and specifications made at a desk using cut-and-paste, and not real reviews done in the field and written from scratch without bias. I want real world comparisons, measurement and ratings based on extended real life use of the products by yourself.
  • The main purpose of the contributions is to get links back to your site or even directly to affiliated online shops. I don't do links for the sake of links, but to refer the readers to useful pages.
  • Your site is an online shop itself or filled with links to one or several shops, which pay you a kickback for the visitors you deliver. I don't support commercial sites unless the contributor simply happens to have one, but otherwise delivers content, which meets my quality criteria.
  • Your mail to me starts "Dear web site owner", "Hello there" or "Hi globalflyfisher.com" and you constantly refer to my website as a "blog" and the articles as "posts". Do your research and convince me that I'm not simply one of hundreds that you sent the same message or had your system spam with identical guest post suggestions.
  • You write something along the lines: "I’ve read you for some time. You are doing a fantastic job.", "I followed your site (Global FlyFisher) for a long time and I have read lots of articles." or "I came across your site, http://globalflyfisher.com, and absolutely loved it!". Yeah, right! It's pretty obvious from everything else you write that you never read a single line on the site.

Just a single of these telltale signs is usually enough to alert me, and if you recognize parts of your mail in more than one of the above examples, don't expect to hear back from me - at least not in any constructive way.

Why do you always start your mails with something like "I know you're super busy" or '"you're probably busy, so I won't take much of your time"? I'm not busy! And you are taking a lot of my time!

And why do you refer to this web site as a blog? What century do you come from? Do you call Sports Illustrated a blog? Or Vanity Fair? They're online magazines - and so is the Global FlyFisher.

I'm not busy! And you are taking a lot of my time!

If you, on the other hand, have relevant fly-fishing or fly-tying related content in the form of articles, book excerpts, photo essays, fly patterns, videos and all other kinds of material targeting a very selective and spoiled audience, we'd be more than happy to hear from you. Read this article on contributing and even this about marketing opportunities, and then drop me a mail on martin@globalflyfisher.com with your suggestion.

GFF editor and webmaster
Martin Joergensen

PS: Here's little rant about guest posts.