Write About Drupal - And Get Paid For It

I have a lot of ideas about what people want (or need) to learn when it comes to Drupal. My ideas are a function of what I want to do with Drupal and this strongly influences the things that I research, learn, then teach others. My research reveals that there are a lot more things that people want to learn about Drupal. Certainly more than I can offer personally on this site. There are many good Drupal sites and blogs out there but I also know that many people who are working with Drupal and have ideas about the platform are not blogging about Drupal for a variety of reasons. It would be nice to hear from people in that situation because I think they could bring a lot of good knowledge to the table. There are also situations where people are writing about Drupal but their site might not have the reach they would like since they spend most of their time doing other things. Either way, I'd like to be able to help these folks get their knowledge to the wider community.

What I would like to do is create a platform for people who want to write about Drupal so they can reach the wider community and do so without either having to set up their own separate website or spend an inordinate amount of time promoting their own site. At the present time (according to Google Analytics) this site receives about 75,000 page views per month from 23,000 unique visitors. We also have over 900 subscribers to the main FeedBurner Feed and syndication via Drupal Planet. So what gets written here tends to get seen by a decent audience. I'd like to give you the opportunity to get your Drupal ideas, opinions, tutorials, etc. in front of that audience. If you write something good and I decide to publish it here I will pay you for it.

Here are the guidelines for articles that I would like to publish on this site from outside writers.

• All articles must be directly related to a current Drupal topic. Just in case some PR folks see this and think it's open season.
• The article must be original and your own. It must be something that you have written and have not already published elsewhere before.
• It cannot be advertising for any product or service. What is advertising? I'll know it when I see it.
• The article must be substantial, containing a minimum of 750 words. If you get to 750 words by repeating things and stretching things out I'll disqualify it.
• The article must have reasonably good spelling and English grammar. I'll do a little bit of editing and correcting but if it's a mess I will pass on it.

As I said earlier if you write something that I find interesting and helpful that meets the guidelines I will publish it on the site and pay you $25 via PayPal. Payment must be via PayPal. With the article we'll also include a little information about you and a link to a place where people can find out more about you. So you also get some personal promotion out of the deal. If you've gotten to this point and you say, "I have a Drupal article that I'd like to write,"  here's what you do next. Contact me using the contact form on this site to let me know your idea. I will reply and let you know if I think you have a topic that I would like to post on the site. If I like the idea you can then write the article and email it back to me in Word, HTML or PDF format. Please note that links to other sites and images are fine to include in the article. Include a short blurb about yourself with at least one link (Twitter, your blog, etc.) to where people can find you on the web.

Once I receive the article I will review the content based on the guidelines mentioned above and let you know whether it will be published or not. If I do plan to publish the article payment will be sent as soon as the article is live on the website. Here are two very important things to remember with regards to this process.

1. I reserve the right to edit the content to reduce the length or correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. I will not add to the content.
2. I reserve the right to reject a topic or finished article for any reason.

I know that these guidelines sound very "old school" to some people. They are old school but I think we can learn a few things from traditional publishing about the quality of the finished product. Don't be scared off by it though. I'd love to hear from you so please submit your ideas today. If you have an opinion about this initiative or ideas about how to improve upon it please have your say in the comments.

***Update***

Someone posed a very good question about writing an article and then also posting the article on their blog. I'd prefer if the article were not posted in two places, each with it's own permalink. For one thing this causes an issue with Google related to duplicate content that doesn't help anyone. What about something like Drupal Planet? You'll notice that Drupal Planet doesn't have permalinks for the posts and they link back to the original which is noted by Google as something you should do when content is duplicated. With that said, I have no problem with someone publishing a short summary on their blog and linking back to the post here.