How to get published on the Huffington Post

 

Update – August 2019

While earlier this year it appeared the Huffington Post had opened up their site for submissions in some countries, it seems as the year has progressed they’ve now shut their doors to new writers and kind readers have advised me the old email addresses aren’t working anymore.

But don’t despair, dear reader, there are a whole lot of other wonderful sites out there you can write for (check out some of my suggestions here).

And while you’re here, I’d love to share a few quick tips for getting your work seen through guest posting:

  • spend a little time lovingly falling down the rabbit hole (err, I mean – “researching”) and find a few quality, complementary, sites where your ideal clients hang out.
  • read their about page + a couple of blog posts and get a feel for the site to ensure you’re a good fit.
  • find their submission terms or, if they don’t have any, note their email address.
  • brainstorm two or three ideas for posts / content that would be really helpful to the readers (and the owner of that website).  Be generous, give away the best stuff you have to offer + centre it around quick wins for the reader.  Make their day, make them laugh, or share a tip or tool that will blow their mind (and that they can implement immediately).
  • make a note of what you’re submitting to who or keep your email submissions (Note: I’ve had people message me before saying – “I got my guest post accepted but I submitted it on their website and now I can’t remember what I offered to write about! Help!” so keep a document or record of what you’re pitching and where!)
  • craft a thoughtful email to the website owner or follow the submission guidelines to submit your post ideas.  If you’re emailing, make sure you share the value you’re bringing and you could even include brief info on how you’ll promote the post if published.  (Note: while you’re absolutely writing this as part of your strategy to grow your own business, you really want to come at this with whole-hearted good intentions and loving kindness – people can sniff out a slimy, self-promoter from 50 paces, so be generous and be easy to work with).
  • if you don’t hear back after 10 – 14 days, send a short, polite email to follow up.  If you don’t hear back after that, move on.  You may hear later, you may not – either way, don’t dwell on it, tap back into your inner awesome and know there are people out there who need to hear what you have to share.
  • if your submissions are accepted make sure you’re clear on requirements, deadlines etc. submit your piece on time (or early if you can), send them everything they need in terms of head shots, links etc. and check with them as to anticipated publication date so you can share, share, share.
  • once your post or piece of content is live, share the shiz out of it!  And share it more than once.  Don’t be that person who writes for someone else and waits for the traffic to flow.  It’s a two way street and the nicer you are to work with, and the more you share it with your community, the more the other person is likely to want to share your stuff too (even more so if it’s helpful, inspiring, informative, gives their readers epic value / help).  So share across all of your marketing platforms on release and then diarise or schedule re-shares every 3 – 6 months.  Continuing to share it benefits you as much as the owner of the site you created content for, so be generous in all you do when it comes to guest posting.

As ever if I can help, or you’d like to workshop your topic, content and pitch, you can book a coaching session with me HERE.

Good luck!

Sarah x

 


 

Update – early 2019

If you’re keen to have your work published on the Huffington Post, it looks like they’ve opened up their site for submissions in some countries.

To send your pitch, scroll down and follow the step by step instructions in the section titled “The original ‘How to Get Published on the Huffington Post’ blog post“.

The only change is that instead of emailing arianna[at]huffingtonpost.com you’ll now send your email to blogteam@huffingtonpost.com.au (to share your work on HuffPo Australia).

From what I could find, HuffPO USA aren’t accepting blog posts ( read more about what they’re accepting here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/static/contact-us ).

And if you’re keen to look at options for other countries, you can select from the dropdown list on the top left menu bar of their website (it looks like this):

Huffington Post Editions List

Some of the countries list clear info on their contact page, others don’t seem to have a contact page at all. It’s quite inconsistent.

And if you’re reading this and feeling like it’s all too hard, or not worth the effort, here’s a list of 9 fantastic websites you can write for instead.

Good luck!

Sarah x

 


 

Update for 2018

Hi guys!

It’s been a while since I posted an update on how to get published on the Huffington Post so I wanted to add some fresh info and let you know where it’s at.

 

Platform Change

In 2016 the Huffington Post switched from their previous format of ‘pitch a post’ to their ‘contributor platform’. (Note – original blog post and instructions are still as first written below so you can see the evolution of things.)

What that meant for bloggers is you could still have your work published on the Huffington Post website (and thus be able to display their logo in your “as seen in” section for what was, at the time, the blogging equivalent of ‘street cred’).

BUT that platform update brought with it some interesting changes.

 

Immediate Publishing

First up, submitting via the contributor platform meant that once you were accepted as a contributor you could upload and publish your posts instantly.

No waiting for approval.

No review by an editor.

Just write, hit publish and your words and work were live on the Huffpo site.

In theory this sounded great and was very much in line with their rumoured goal of publishing content from 1 million contributors on the site. But my personal thought is that this approach simply flooded an already busy site with even more content.

And by busy we’re talking over 1,600 pieces of new content being published. Every. Single. Day.

Which begs the question, if your awesome work is going to get lost in the endless stream of content, what’s the point in blogging for HuffPo?

Which leads us to point number two.

 

No Index & No Follow Links

The switch over also meant that content was no longer indexed or ranked on search engines as the Huffington Post used what’s called “no index” and “no follow” links.

What does that mean?

A no index link tells a search engine not to add a page to its search index and a no follow link tells a search engine not to let that link influence (or increase) the link’s ranking in the search engine index.

So basically it means if you (or your fans, followers, community or your Mum) searched for your HuffPo blog post on Google, Bing or other search engines, it wouldn’t return any results.

For example, if I wrote a post on HuffPo through the contributor platform called How to grow your Instagram following and I searched:

Sarah Jensen Huffington Post Instagram

or

5 ways to grow your Instagram Sarah Jensen

or even

5 ways to grow your Instagram following Sarah Jensen Huffington Post

a link to my HuffPo blog post of the same name would NOT be one of the bajillions of results I got in my browser search (and it definitely wouldn’t be at the top of the results).

 

End Result

You write a piece of great content, publish it on HuffPo, share the shiz out of it and send lots of traffic to the HuffPo website, but no one can search for your article or find your article unless YOU give them the URL.

That’s a whole lot of one way traffic and, if your whole purpose for guest posting is to reach a new and wider audience to grow your online community, it makes it kinda a waste of your time and effort.

No surprises then that a lot of people thought that move was pretty uncool (me included) and stopped submitting work to the HuffPo.

But there were still more than enough people wanting to get on board and write for the Huffington Post because by late 2016 / early 2017 they closed their contributor platform to new submissions.

During that time they also deactivated their old blogger platform so all new submissions had to come through their new platform.

(Note – the old blogger platform is the one I used to publish my articles on HuffPo and I’ve chosen not to apply to access to any of the new platforms.)

 

New Name, New Editor, New Focus

Fast forward to 25 April 2017 – Arianna Huffington had moved on from The Huffington Post to focus on her new platform, Thrive Global, and the Huffington Post had rebranded to HuffPost under the direction of a new editor named Lydia Polgreen.

With the change came what was described by Polgreen as a refocus on their mission to ‘provide a space where a broad range of voices can share their own stories and opinions.’ (Read the full “Letter from the Editor” about HuffPost’s new chapter” here)

And while my best efforts at searching their Australian site haven’t netted anything as concrete as a ‘how to write for HuffPost’ page or ‘submission guidelines’, the HuffPost Australia website’s Contact Us page reads:

“To pitch a blog piece email blogteam@huffingtonpost.com.au

From that it looks like the good old “send an email” approach I wrote about in September 2015 might be back in action.

So if you’re keen to see your words and work published on HuffPost, head to their website (your browser will likely default to your local or nearest offering – mine defaults to http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/ as I’m in Australia), scroll to the bottom of the site, click the “contact us” link and check out the details on where to pitch your blog post.

 

To Blog or Not to Blog?

I want to wrap by saying that it’s absolutely a personal choice if you want to write for HuffPost (or any other website). Some people will, some won’t and either way that’s ok.

If it’s a goal, go for it! Have fun, enjoy the process and share your success in the comments.

And if you have strong opinions about not writing for the HuffPost or guest writing for free that’s ok too. You might enjoy this article by Eye Heart Creative about not writing for the Huffington Post.

Either way I encourage you to get out their and Rock Your Goals in your own awesome way. And if you want any help, give me a shout or book in for a coaching session and we can Rock Your Goals together.

 


 

The original “How to Get Published on the Huffington Post” blog post

I’m over the moon to have had my first article published on the Huffington Post today. Yay!! Major milestone ticked off the list.

I thought I’d share a quick step by step on how you can get published on the Huffington Post in case it’s something that’s on your goals list but you don’t know where to start. I hope it helps.

 
ONE ::

You can write an article from scratch or re-purpose one of your old blog posts. HuffPo don’t mind if you’ve published your article on your blog already. If you have I recommend changing it a bit so the articles aren’t identical. Having said that I don’t recommend repurposing articles you’ve written and had published as guest posts on other people’s websites. For this HuffPo article, I repurposed this old blog post.

 

TWO ::

Articles should be between 500 and 1000 words and can be about pretty much any topic as long as it’s not offensive – keep it clean and positive. The cool thing is too that the Huffington Post covers so many different topics so you can write about almost anything you like. Choose a topic you love, that you have lots to say on and write in your own, natural voice. You don’t have to write a certain way and it’s ok to write in a conversational way. Make sure you spell check it, tidy up your grammar and you can always have a friend read it for you if you want a second pair of eyes on it before you hit send.

 

THREE ::

Once you’ve written an article you’re happy with, email it to Arianna Huffington herself – arianna[at]huffingtonpost.com include a short hello, a sentence or two about your post and include your post. I sent it in the body of the email (below the sign off) AND as a Word document just to make it easier for her/her team to read it. I just wrote “article submission” in the subject line.

 

FOUR ::

This is the second time I’ve submitted. The first time I didn’t hear back – if they don’t want to publish it they won’t reply. This time however, I received a reply within 4 days. I have heard of it taking up to 2 or 3 weeks for people to hear back.

 

FIVE ::

If you get the yes, you’ll receive an email from Arianna saying they want to publish, then you’ll receive an email from the blogging team with your log in details. You then log in, set up your bio, add your photo, add your post and format it (simple WordPress style formatting where you can add numbering, bold/italicise text) – it’s easy to do. You can also add a photo to be used with the post but it must be one you have permission to share – so not something you’ve just grabbed from the web or Pinterest. As far as I understand photos from free stockshot companies like Unsplash, Death to the Stock Photo etc. are ok.

**Important note: make sure you add your bio at the bottom of your blog post at the time of formatting.  The HuffPo instructions don’t make it clear but if you don’t type your bio into the same box where you type and format your blog post it won’t show on their website.

 

SIX ::

Once you’ve formatted your post you hit the save button which submits it to the editing team. They check it and if it’s all ok it’s usually live within 24 hours (unless they’re crazy busy, then it can take a couple of days). For me it was less than 24 hours.

 

SEVEN ::

Share it around your community and celebrate the heck out of yourself for doing an awesome job!

That’s about it. Happy to answer any questions you might have. Sarah x

P.S. here’s a link to my first HuffPo article

 

QUESTIONS ::

I’ve been asked a few questions since sharing this post, so here’s a bit of a Q+A section. If you’ve got any questions feel free to ask in the comments below. I’m here to help.

 

Q: Do Huffington Post pay you if you get published?

A: No. The Huffington Post don’t pay contributors. Think of it as writing a guest post on a really big site.

 

Q: Why would I write for Huffington Post if I don’t get paid?

A: This varies for everyone and it’s a really personal thing. For some people it’s about gaining confidence as a writer, reaching an audience bigger than you have on your own website or just showing the ‘as seen in the Huffington Post’ logo on your website. For new bloggers it can be a bit of a rite of passage and a personal milestone but for others they won’t write for HuffPo because they don’t pay. It’s totally your choice.

 

Q: Does it make a big difference to your website traffic? What results do you get? Is it worth it?

A: Again it’s different from person to person, article to article. Some people get huge click throughs and newsletter sign up spikes and other see almost no difference at all. For me it’s been pretty quiet but that’s probably because I didn’t add my bio at the bottom of the post (rookie mistake) so there’s nothing to click through to. Oops!

 

Q: Will I get published the first time I submit an article?

A: Not necessarily. I got published on my second submission and my beautiful friend Bree took 7 bites at the apple before she landed a post on the HuffPo. The message here is if you want it, go for it and don’t give up! Bree shares what she learned about keeping your eyes on the prize and how to get published in THIS ARTICLE.

 

Q: What do I put in the subject line of my email to Arianna? Does it have to be clever or attention grabbing?

A: You don’t need to spend hours agonising over the “perfect” email subject line. I wrote “Article Submission” in mine – simple, clear and direct.

 

Q: Did you send the post as an email attachment or in the body of your pitch email?

A: When I sent the pitch, I sent an email which attached the article in a word document AND included it as part of the email body underneath my sign off. I figured that way they’d have it in the form they prefer. I also figured by writing my “hello, I’m Sarah, I write about xyz, my post is about abc”, and offering up a compliment about her and her work first, then signing off my email and including the article underneath all of that, the editor could get a feel for what I was submitting instantly without reading the whole post. They could then keep scrolling to read the post or they could open the attachment to read the post – I thought I’d cover all bases.

 

Q: When you pitched your post did you have to specify which section of the Huffington Post your story was for?

A: Not at the time of pitching/submitting my story, no. Once you’ve had the yes from Arianna and you’ve got your HuffPo log in, you can select which section your post fits in at the time of uploading for publication.

 

Q: So I’ve got a log in, does that mean I can write for HuffPo any time I like?

A: Sure does! Once you have your log in you can submit posts as often as you like. In my experience it took about 24 hours (sometimes longer if they were backlogged) for the post to go live but from what’s been shared by awesome bloggers in the comments of this post, it sounds like the process has changed slightly in the last couple of months (it’s May 2016 today) and that when you hit “publish” it goes live on their site straight away.

 

Q: Can I include affiliate links in my HuffPo article?

A: I don’t know the official HuffPo stance on this but I’m going to go with my gut here and say, out of courtesy and professional respect, it’s a no. Think of it this way, if someone wrote a guest post for your website, would you want them selling something in the middle of it?

Here’s some info I rustled up and shared in response to a lovely blogger named Amy when she posted this question:

I’m not certain about including affiliate links. It’s not something I’d do and I’m guessing that it’s not something they’d allow so check the Blogger FAQ section once you have your post approved and have created your log in. I’ve had a quick read and the references I found are these: “You present to us that any blog posts, photos and any other content you submit is not an advertisement or solicitation of business or contributions” and “In an effort to be as transparent with our readers as possible, HuffPost bloggers should disclose any financial conflicts of interest related to the issue they are writing about. If a blogger receives payment or income from a company, organization, group, or individual with a financial stake in the issue he/she is weighing in on, that information should be disclosed at the bottom of the applicable blog post. Moreover, bloggers should not submit posts that include links that are paid for in whole or in part by marketing firms.”

If you’re in doubt you could email the blog team at Huffington Post and see what they say. Here’s their email: blogteam@huffingtonpost.com

 

Q: I got an email from Arianna saying they want to publish my article and that she would forward it to her team to give me the log in info but I haven’t heard back. What should I do and how long does it usually take?

A: It can take a couple of weeks to hear back with the log in and it seems the experience is different for everyone. Some people receive their log in details within a day or two (I had mine within a couple of days) and for others it can take 2-3 weeks. If you haven’t heard within a couple of weeks, send an email through to the blog team blogteam@huffingtonpost.com to follow up.

And here’s Curt’s experience of timeframes which he kindly shared in the comments on this blog post:

Hey Sarah – Thanks for this article. Was just approved and set up my blogger account on HuffPo! Followed your advice, so thank you.

Wanted to also add my timeline to give others another data point to use when trying to figure out what “normal” is in regards to response time.

Emailed Arianna as you suggested on March 24.
Received a reply from Arianna (at least her email account) on March 26, cc’ing an editor and saying the article pitch was a good fit.
Received a reply and blogger invitation on April 5.

So 2 days for a response, and 10 days after that for a blogger account invitation.

Hope that’s helpful!

Curt”


 

Q: I didn’t see a “save” option for my blog post, just a “publish” option and it seems to have gone live without going through an editing veto. Have they changed the way it works since you wrote this blog post?

A: It’s possible they’ve updated their back end since I published my last post for HuffPo. I know they’ve been talking about updating their “blogger” platform to make it a lot more user friendly. When I log in I still see the same old system but if that changes, I’ll definitely update the post with any new information I learn.

 


 

UPDATES ::

It’s six weeks later and it’s time for a traffic report.  So just how much difference has being published on the Huffington Post made to my website traffic?  Hold your breath dear writer because it’s not what you might think…

I’ve had 8 click throughs from the Huffington Post to my website. Yes, that’s right – 8.

On the flip side of that, 108 people have clicked from my website to the Huffington Post.

What’s been an unexpected win from this exercise is actually this blog post.  I hadn’t planned to write a ‘how to’ style post about being published on the Huffington Post; this started off as a quick Facebook group post to help other bloggers and the response was so amazing and overwhelming (in a good way) that I decided to add it to my site as a blog post.

Since I hit publish on this post six weeks ago it’s had over 1,500 views, been shared almost 200 times and has over 80 comments.  It just goes to show that writing for the ‘big’ sites might not always bring you the traffic you’re looking for, but writing posts that helps people rock their goals will.

 


 

It’s time for another traffic report!

It’s now almost 8 months later (today is 10 May 2016) and this post has become the most popular on my site by far. It’s now had almost 10,000 views, over 200 comments, been shared hundreds of times and has helped over 100 people get published on the Huffington Post (including an Emmy Award winning writer!!). But the biggest surprise numbers wise has been the click throughs from Huffington Post itself. In 8 months just 48 people have clicked through from HuffPo to this website but almost 850 people have visited HuffPo from my website. HuffPo, you’re welcome!

Just goes to show that sometimes you might not get the outcome you expect or hope for. Sometimes it’s WAY better and to me the fact that I’ve been able to help so many people totally rock their goal of being published is so much more awesome than a bunch of click throughs from a website.


 

If you’ve rocked your HuffPost goal because of this post, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment and share your experience!

 

Photographs in this post via the wonderful Jana Bishop