This page contains “writing guidelines” for all future blog posts that may appear on CollegeTimes both by staff writers and guest writers.
1. Overview
Our goal at CollegeTimes is to maintain a high quality and unique college blog that delivers thought-provoking NEWS, TIPS, or OPINIONS within every published post. This means that every post must be ORIGINAL (not published elsewhere, with a few exceptions), WELL-WRITTEN (proper grammar that employs a logical, flowing writing style), and RELEVANT to the college audience. In general, we focus on long-term stories that will hold on to their value in the coming months and years.
2. Guidelines
Please do not include any outbound links within your post, except at the bottom in an “author’s credit box” where you may place 2 outbound links maximum to your homepage (unless you are linking to so-called “authority” websites for the reader’s benefit, which we highly encourage). Author homepage links must lead to quality websites that are somewhat related to education, college, and/or the subject of the article. Note: If you have been hired by CollegeTimes or otherwise have negotiated a “writing deal” with us, then we ask you to NOT include any author links pointing to your homepage(s).
In addition, all posts on CollegeTimes should usually be in the format of “X amount of X in regard to X” i.e. “5 tips for studying biology in college” or likewise. This helps clarify to readers what the purpose of the article is when they are browsing Google search results. Posts must be at least 500 words long and extremely well written (for guest posts, it goes without saying that the article’s theme cannot be your product or service). You will notice throughout CollegeTimes that some of our posts are shorter than this, or have a different title format, but these instances are rare. Lastly, unlike other blogs and news websites, we HIGHLY encourage controversial topics and rarely edit any such content.
A great example post that follows our goals tremendously well: Top 10 Reasons Why Mac Sucks
3. VIP/Staff Writers
If you submit quality guest posts often, our team will likely invite you to register an account on our WordPress system in order to streamline the submission and publishing process for you and/or your company. If you are not seeking to publish articles on CollegeTimes for SEO or marketing purposes, we will likely invite you to retain 75% of the Google Adsense revenue that your submitted posts generate.