Last week I was going through my Google Alerts looking for links to share on the socials for Haunt Jaunts and A Haunt Mess like I do when I came across one for 1428 Elm, a FanSided company. It wasn’t the first time I was sharing something of theirs. They often have articles that hit my feed. It was, however, the first time I got curious about writing for them.
I’ve been looking for other places to guest post and such. I’ve read that’s a good way to help your brand/site if you’re a blogger. Back links help with Google ranking and all that.
I’m again wanting to improve mine so I can use HARO (Help a Reporter Out) as a journalist again. I can use it to be a Source and be a reference for any journalists who may be writing a story I know anything about. But I want to find sources for HJ articles!
The catch is, in order to do that, you have to have an Alexa rating of 1 million or under. Once upon a time HJ was in the 300,00-500,000 range. A few years ago Google made big changes and my Alexa ranking tanked to like 11 million. (Or was it 15 million?)
I’ve improved it a lot since then –down to 2 million– but I need to get it down a bit more…
Of course writing good content helps. Always working on that. But back links are also supposed to boost it. One way to get those is via guest posts.
Since I’m refocusing my writing energy this year, I’m buckling down and getting more serious about finding other places to submit. That’s why I started hunting around on 1428 Elm’s site to see what their policy was.
They don’t accept guest posts but they were looking for writers so I submitted an application. Besides Haunt Jaunts, I had experience blogging for Families.com. Why not go for it? See what happens.
So I did.
And I got hired.
After reviewing your proposal with our editors on site, we think you’d be a solid addition to our team and we’d like to offer you a role as a paid contributor at our site Netflix Life.
Aaron HertzogRecruiter – Entertainment/Lifestyles for FanSided
It’s been a long time since I submitted an application anywhere for anything. It felt amazing to get accepted! (Also wasn’t expecting to have such a big reaction to that.)
Now the onboarding process begins. I’m really excited about it.
And, bonus, it’s even a paid position! Won’t pay much –unless I write something that goes vial and gets a lot of hits. I didn’t even think money was involved at all so…like I said, bonus!