The mechanics
Guest post guidelines
Most pages on this search teach the buyer's side at 6,000 words. This is the other half, and it runs on a five working day decision.
The short answer
These guest post guidelines cover the mechanics: a decision in five working days, scope agreed before you write, one revision round, and a source check on every figure before publication.
What to pitch is on the write-for-us page. This page is what happens after a yes.
What these guest post guidelines cover
The process, once, rather than repeated beside every form on the site. These are the guest post submission guidelines for this site: what gets accepted, what gets rejected and how to pitch it are on the pitch page, and everything after that is here.
The subject scope in one line: this desk prices three AI video generator platforms on a derived cost per finished minute, covers talking-head video production, and covers the right of publicity questions attached to both, across HeyGen, Synthesia and D-ID.
What a pitch looks like from this side
Four kinds of email arrive, and they are distinguishable within a line. This is not a complaint: knowing which one you are sending is worth more than any advice about subject lines.
| Tool | Who sends it | What it looks like | What happens | Who is recommending it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The pitch | Someone who did the work | Names the desk, the claim and the evidence | Answered within five days | Rare, short, and the reason this page exists. |
| The near miss | A real writer | Has read the site, wrong desk | Answered, usually with a redirect | Worth answering. Often becomes an accepted pitch on the second attempt. |
| The topic list | An agency, slightly warmer | Five titles, none related to this site | Not answered | Titles assembled from a keyword tool rather than from reading anything here. |
| The template | An agency, at volume | Leads with a domain rating nobody asked for | Not answered | Recognizable within one line, and identical to four others that arrived the same week. |
How this was scored. A description of the outreach this desk receives, ordered from least to most likely to be answered, with no sender named and no bad faith implied by any individual, because the patterns are structural and produced by tools that send at volume. The full scoring method.
The outreach template, and why it fails
It opens with a compliment about a page, usually one that does not exist. It quotes a domain rating. It offers five titles assembled from a keyword tool.
None of that is dishonest and all of it signals the same thing: the sender is optimizing for volume, and volume is the opposite of what a small desk with a narrow scope can use.
The pitch that gets answered
- Names the desk, and makes a claim in one sentence.
- Says what backs the claim, and who you are in two lines.
It is invariably shorter than the template it replaces, which is the part senders find hardest to believe.
What happens after a yes
Four steps, and the first one is the important one, because agreeing scope before you write is when a disagreement about angle costs nothing to resolve.
From a yes to a published page
- Scope agreed The claim, the angle and roughly the length, in writing, before you start. This is where a mismatch is cheap.
- You draft To the standard below. Take as long as you need: nothing here is on a publishing calendar.
- One revision round Light editing for house style, plus whatever the source check turns up. One round, not an open-ended loop.
- Source check, then publish Every figure is opened and read. The piece publishes with your byline and the date it was checked.
The timeline, as this desk actually runs it
Source checking, and what it means for you
Every figure in a submission gets opened and read. That is the same treatment this desk's own pages get, and it is the single most likely reason a draft comes back.
A figure that cannot be verified comes out of the piece rather than going in with a hedge around it. Discovering that before publication is considerably better than discovering it in a correction afterwards.
After publication
The piece carries a date and is re-checked on the same schedule as everything else here, which for anything with a price in it means quarterly.
Corrections are made in place with the modification date changed. That commitment applies to a contributed piece exactly as it applies to a page this desk wrote itself.
What a good guest post pitch contains, in three lines
Writing a guest post pitch that gets read is mostly subtraction. The examples that work are shorter than the templates that do not, and they carry no compliments at all.
What arrives against what gets answered
The bio matters less than senders think and the evidence matters more. A tag line about being a content strategist tells a publisher nothing; an invoice, a test result or a professional qualification tells them everything.
The standard, restated once
Three conditions, and you can check a draft against them before sending it.
- A dated source for every figure.
- A named source for every judgement about a product, and yours counts if you used it.
- Arithmetic printed rather than asserted.
The full version is in the editorial policy, which governs contributed pieces and this desk's own equally.
Paid and unpaid, and how each is marked
Both exist here. A sponsored placement is labelled on the page itself rather than in a footer, and the same editorial standard applies to it as to an unpaid piece.
Rates are discussed on enquiry. The full commercial position, including what a payment cannot buy, is on the disclosure page.
What this desk will not agree to
Four things, stated plainly so nobody has to discover them mid-negotiation.
- An undisclosed paid piece.
- A position in a comparison, a price table or a review.
- The removal of an unflattering fact about anyone, including a sponsor.
- Editing a published piece later to add something that was not part of the original agreement.
Guest post rules that would be worth writing down
Most guest post guidelines templates circulating online are a word count, a tone note and a request for original content. Those are guest post rules in the sense that a sign saying "be nice" is a code of conduct.
The version worth writing down is the one a sender can lose an argument against. Every rule on this page can be checked by the person on the other end before they spend an hour on a draft.
- Rejected reasons, listed, so a poor fit is visible in advance.
- The turnaround as a number rather than as "we aim to".
- Whether you accept guest posts at all right now, which surprisingly many pages leave ambiguous.
Is guest posting worth it in 2026
Asked of a publisher rather than of a seller, the answer is less encouraging and more useful. It depends entirely on whether the page a placement sits on is read by anyone.
What makes a placement worth anything
Two things, and neither is a metric anyone can sell you: whether real people read the page, and whether they trust the publication it sits on.
A placement on a page nobody reads is worth what it cost to produce. That is true regardless of any number attached to the domain it sits on.
On domain rating
It is a third-party estimate that no search engine publishes, and it is the first thing most outreach emails quote. This site's own is a useful illustration of the problem.
Most of its referring domains are link-seller spam it never asked for and cannot remove. The number those links produce says nothing whatever about whether anyone reads this page, which is why it appears nowhere on this site as a selling point.
How much does guest posting cost
Rates here are discussed on enquiry. The industry quotes ranges spanning two orders of magnitude, and the spread tells you the number is not measuring anything consistent.
The better question is what the money buys. On this site it buys publication of a piece that meets the standard above, labelled, on a page that argues for itself. It does not buy a position in anything.
Is guest posting still effective
Effective for what is the question underneath, and it is worth answering honestly: as a way to reach a specific audience through a publication they already read, yes. As a volume tactic measured in placements per month, the returns come from the pages nobody reads and are worth what that implies.
Why publishers stopped accepting guest posts
Many did, and the reason is arithmetic rather than principle. When a hundred near-identical requests arrive a month and two of them are usable, closing submissions entirely is the least costly available policy.
This desk has kept them open for one reason: it has not run the products it writes about, so a contributor who has is offering something it genuinely cannot produce. That is a narrower opening than an open door and a wider one than a closed inbox.
How to do a guest post
Three steps, in order, and the first is the one most senders skip.
- Read enough of the site to know which desk your idea belongs to.
- Send a two-line pitch naming the desk, the claim and your evidence.
- Wait five working days, then pitch something else if you have heard nothing.
Choosing topics, and the benefits of choosing badly
There are none. A smart-sounding topic chosen from a keyword tool rather than from reading the site is the fastest way to create the impression that nothing was read, and that impression is usually correct.
- Topics that work here come from something you did, not from a gap in a content plan.
- An SEO rationale is not a reason a reader would want the piece, and this desk is not optimizing a blog on anyone's behalf.
The business benefit of a placement, if there is one, follows from the piece being worth reading. A publication that accepts pieces chosen for a keyword becomes one nobody reads, and a link on it is worth what that implies.
Where people find guest posting opportunities, and why it shows
Most senders find guest post opportunities from a scraped list of sites that accept guest posts, which is why so many pitches arrive with no relationship to what a site publishes.
A list tells you a page exists. It does not tell you what the publication covers, which desk your idea belongs to, or whether the subject has already been handled properly. Fifteen minutes of reading beats any list, and it is visible in the first line of a pitch that someone did it.
Can you provide an example of a guest post
Not yet, because this desk has published none. Inventing one to illustrate the format would be the exact dishonesty the rest of the site argues against.
What a good one would look like here: a named practitioner reporting what a platform actually cost them over six months, with the invoices as the source and the arithmetic printed. That is the kind of piece this desk cannot produce for itself.
What are the guidelines for guest posts on Finance
Not here. Two of the questions Google attaches to this term ask about other verticals entirely, and this desk covers AI video rather than finance or fashion.
The three things any publisher should publish
The transferable half of the answer, whatever the vertical, is that a guidelines page is worth reading only if it contains three things.
- What gets rejected, specifically.
- The turnaround, as a number.
- What a payment does and does not buy.
A page that says it welcomes high-quality original content and specifies none of those three is telling you it has not thought about the question. Good guest posting guidelines are boring and specific, and almost none of them are.
What replaced the guest post pitch
Nothing replaced it. The volume went up and the specificity went down, which drove reply rates toward zero and made a genuinely specific pitch stand out more than it did five years ago.
Send a pitch
The form is on the pitch page rather than here, because the requirements should be read before the form is filled in. Everything else a contributor needs is on this publication and who runs this desk.
Two or three lines is enough. Name the desk, state the claim, say what backs it, and say who you are.
Guest post guideline FAQs
What are the guest post guidelines here?
How long does a placement take?
How much does guest posting cost?
Is guest posting worth it in 2026?
Do you accept unpaid guest posts?
What will this desk not agree to?
Do you check the sources in a submission?
Is a published piece ever edited later?
Why do you not care about domain rating?
How do I do a guest post here?
Sources
Work in AI video?
We take pitches from people building and using these tools. Tell us what you know that the vendor pages do not.
Pitch a guest postStill comparing?
Every figure on this site carries the page it was read from and the date it was read.
See the pricing deskBy the Humva Desk. Checked against primary sources and updated .