Welcome to the Contributing Writer Program! We are excited to have you a part of the team and look forward to helping you succeed, whether that’s to get more exposure, expand your writing portfolio, or earn some extra income.
So let’s get started…
Website and Contributor Rules: Please familiarize yourself with our Website Terms and our Contributor Terms. It is important you understand what we deem acceptable behavior and acceptable content. If you have any questions or need any clarification, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Publishing Platform: The platform this site is built on is called WordPress. You can access the backend of this system by using the “Author Admin” link found at the far bottom-right side of every page, or by going to womenonlife.com/authorarea.
The first thing you’ll want to do once inside the Admin Area is click the “Profile” link on the left hand toolbar so you can create your profile. Here you can fill out your full name, select how you would like users to see your name online, and fill out your Biographical Information. The information you put in your bio is what will appear in the Author Bio Box at the end of each of your published articles. We recommend using your full name, but that’s entirely up to you. You can also always edit and update this information at any time.
In your Profile Manager, you will also see the Gravatar that is connected to the email address in your profile. If you do not have a Gravatar, you can set that up so your Author Bio Box includes your picture (create your gravatar by visiting Gravatar.com). Otherwise you can simply upload a picture in the profile manager. Please use a real picture and not a cartoon or random image.
You are entitled 1 hyperlink in your profile to your personal website, portfolio, business… anything but an affiliate link. To add an active hyperlink, you’ll need to use HTML formatting. Just copy and past this line of code exactly as is and replace the indicated text, keeping all quotation marks and formatting in tact:
<a href="http://www.yourwebaddress.com">Your Desired Hyperlink Text Goes Here</a>
How Your Profile Will Appear Online to the Public
Now that you have your profile set up, you’re read to start publishing!
Publishing Content: All content submitted by Contributors will be reviewed by an editor before being published. By familiarize yourself with the Contributor Terms, you’ll ensure your content is published quickly and not kicked back to you.
To begin publishing, click the “New Post” or “Add New” buttons found in your admin area. It is recommended you produce your content in WordPress, rather than in Microsoft Word. Often times the formatting from Word doesn’t transfer over accurately and you’ll have to start over. WordPress automatically saves your content every few minutes and keeps a copy of the 3 previous of your article that you manually saved. As long as you are connected to the Internet, the likelihood of loosing your content is slim (always keep a backup just in case).
Enter your title in the appropriate place and begin writing your content. Use the formatting functions where appropriate, but please don’t use bold or italics excessively.
Note: Click the button on the editing toolbar on the far right (Show/Hide Kitchen Sink). This will drop down a 2nd level of editing and formatting options that you will find useful. Most importantly, this will display the Headings drop-down bar. You’ll want to emphasize subheadings in your articles by selecting “Heading 2,” which is important for SEO purposes and will help attract more search engine traffic to your articles. Always keep your regular body text in “paragraph” format.
Unless you are familiar and comfortable with HTML, you want to make sure you’re always in “Visual Editing” mode, which is indicated on the tab just to the right of the editing toolbar.
Once you’re content is complete, there are just a couple last steps. The first is to select the most appropriate category for your article from the list on the right (only select 1 category). Next, you want to add 3-5 short keywords or descriptive phrases in the “Post Tags” section to indicate what your article is about (just below the Categories list). Keep your tags very brief. Each tag should be just 1-3 words, 5 at the max.
An article on “How to Avoid Getting Skin Cancer from Tanning” might use following tags: sunscreen, spf, avoiding sun exposure, curing sunspots.
Lastly, you want to tell Google and other search engines how to list your article in the search engines. That is done by filling in the “SEO Options and Settings” boxes. Do not worry about any of the options. Leave all boxes unchecked. The areas you want to complete are:
Custom Document Title: If you would like your title to appear differently in the search engines than what you have listed as your title above, you can change this here. Most likely you will want to just leave this field blank.
Custom Post/Page Meta Description: This are is the most important. This is the 2 lines of descriptive text that you see under a listing in a search engine. Here you want to include 1-2 sentences about your article (to be exact, the first 150 characters show up in search engines). You’ll want to include the main keyword phrases in your description that people most likely use to search for content related to your article.
Example: “Learn how to avoid getting skin cancer from tanning by following these 7 tips. Don’t wait until it is too late and you need a cure. Prevent skin cancer by reading here.”
Custom Post/Page Meta Keywords: keywords are going to be similar to the tags you entered. Just simply enter 3-5 short phrases that your content is about: sunscreen, skin cancer, best spf protection. That’s good enough for this part.
That’s it! Everything else can be ignored. When you’re ready to submit your article, just click the blue “Submit for Review” button. An editor will review your article to make sure it is 100% unique, error free and complies with the Contributor Terms. You’ll be notified as soon as it is published and live. Otherwise, you’ll receive some feedback on changes that need to be made before resubmitting.
Setting Your Account Up to Earn Ad Revenue
In order for your articles to earn money, you’ll need to configure your account to receive revenue earnings from advertisements that run around your published articles. This is a simple process.
First, go to Google.com/adsense. If you don’t have an account, you’ll need to create one; otherwise, simply log in and look at the upper-right hand side of the screen. Directly under the “Logout” link you’ll see your Publisher ID. It will look like this…
Copy the entire ID (starting with “pub-”) and paste in the “Your Advertising ID” dialog box under the Google AdSense Settings page in your Women On Life Author Admin Area. Click “Save” and that’s it!
Now 75% of the ads that are displayed on the pages where your articles are published will be attributed back to your Google AdSense account. All earnings are tracked and paid to you by Google!
That’s it for now! Go ahead and login to the Author Admin area to start publishing content. Over time we’ll be providing more information to Contributors on how to use proper SEO techniques, do keyword research, and select topics that have the highest earning potential.
Again, welcome to the team. We’re very excited about the growth of this community and to have you be a part of it. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact me at anytime.
Ryan