You are here: Home / Contributor Terms

Contributor Terms

As a memeber of the Contributing Writer Program at WomenOnLife, you agree to the Site Terms of Use and the Submission Guidelines below.

1. All content posted on WomenOnLife must be 100% unique content and created by you. No exceptions. If your content has been published elsewhere, make sure you adequately re-write the part of the content you would like to reuse and include enough new content to make it unique. Also make sure that you still own the copyright to this content and the byline matches your real name or byline on your WomenOnLife account.

2. All content should provide enough in-depth information to satisfy the average person interested in the topic. In general, we recommend articles be at least 300 words in length, and long enough for the information to be presented thoroughly.

3. Content must exhibit correct grammar, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation and follow our formatting guidelines (see below).

4. WomenOnLife does not allow keyword-stuffing. While WomenOnLife encourages Contributors to optimize content for search-engine discovery, content must meet a quality threshold and provide a positive experience for WomenOnLife’s audience. Examples of keyword-stuffing include repeating a keyword phrase in a title, repeating keyword phrases too close together or using keyword phrases in a manner that creates an awkward read. If it’s determined that content, even after it’s published, does not meetWomenOnLife ‘s policy, it can be removed from the site and/or returned to the author for edits.

5. Use a strong, descriptive headline with each submission. Think: What words or phrases would a web user enter to find the content via search? While a headline “The Best Day of My Life” might be true, “Getting Married in Fiji” would be a more discoverable headline.

6. While we encourage you to promote yourself and your business or services, please do not excessively self-promote or brand promote. We don’t want to publish infomercials. Also, do not include an additional “about the author” or other promotional plugs that are unrelated to the content. Your author bio is included at the end of each of your articles, and should be written in a way that is sufficient enough to get the exposure you need. You may also include one link back to your personal website in your author bio.

7. Content shall not be pornographic, obscene, defamatory, abusive, contain hate speech, encourage illegal or discriminatory conduct, or infringe on the rights of a third party. The forgoing is NOT an exhaustive list, and any determination of whether content violates these guidelines shall be made in the sole discretion of WomenOnLife.

8. It is not appropriate to publish content criticizing WomenOnLife’s policies, staff members or other Contributors. Suggestions and complaints should be emailed to us by using the contact form.

9.Content shall not be related to, be about or contain links to websites with content related to programs offering incentives to click links or ads, read emails, or surf other websites. This would include, for instance, autosurf sites, pay-to-read email networks and sites comparing various pay-to-click programs. Content containing affiliate links – hyperlinks used for the sole purpose of marketing a product, business or organization from which you or an affiliated party receive compensation – will be removed from our system.

10. Content shall not promote or link to online gambling sites.

11. Content shall not promote the sale of term papers or student essays in any way, including but not limited to linking to websites that sell term papers, offer term papers for sale, and writing about strategies to buy or sell term papers.

12. We encourage you to link to your other WomenOnLife articles within your text. However, we do not allow excessive links (i.e., content irrelevant to the topic at hand; an inordinate amount of hyperlinks that distract readers). Links to external sites must be relevant to the content and must not lead readers to any content mentioned under guideline No. 8. Please use the hyperlink tool in our text editor to link a word or phrase from your text to the website address (URL). Affiliate links are not allowed.

13. You must cite all sources that were used in creating your content. Whether you refer to a statistic from a government website or quote someone after a press conference, attribution must immediately precede or follow within the content. (All content must be original, too. You can use other sources for facts and information, but you may not simply rewrite published content.)

Examples:

  • In a new study published in the journal Epidemiologic Reviews, scientists find that the obesity level in the United States continues to climb. At this rate, by the year 2015, 75% of American adults will be overweight and 41% will be obese.
  • The Pennsylvania Game Commission reports that in 2006, of the nearly 140,000 licensed bear hunters, 3,122 bears were harvested and taken to check stations.
  • According to Computer Economics, only 1.8% of corporate revenues will be used to fund IT expenses this year in North America (U.S. and Canada).
  • “I think what you are going to see is us working very closely with the local CBS affiliates in all the Mountain West markets to help promote and enhance the profile of the conference and the network,” Chris Bevilacqua said at the press conference.

14. We encourage you to promote your content and drive traffic to your articles. Post a message on your Facebook Profile, linking to your article in the acceptable places on blogs, putting a signature in your forum profile, using social bookmarking are all acceptable means of promotion – as long as they comply with their site terms. We do not tolerate spam and this behavior will result in immediate termination of your account.

To avoid any problems, do not excessively use social bookmarking or overly promote a single article, and respect the terms of other websites, blogs and forums you use to promote your articles. Do not click your own ads or give incentives for people to click your ads. Doing so is in violation of Google’s AdSense terms and can result in having your account closed and forfeiting earnings.

Formatting Text

Please use these rules to format your content:

1. Use single spaces between paragraphs – no indentation.

2. Use line breaks only at the end of paragraphs. The text that you copy and paste into our system should fill the width of the screen.

3. Do not use block or centered formatting for any portion of text. All text should be left-justified.

4. Try to use 1 or 2 sub-headings, but don’t go overboard. Sub-headings should include your keywords and utilize the “H2″ heading, which can be found under the “Format” drop-down bar in your WYSIWYG editor.

5. Limit use of bold, italicized or underlined words to highlight key points.

6. Please refrain from capitalizing all letters anywhere in your submission.

7. Do not include any images unless you own the copyright to those images or have permission to publish.

Submitting Images and Video

Images:
WomenOnLife will only accept image submissions that fall into the following categories:
1. You created the image yourself and own all the rights related to the subject matter in the image; or

2. The image is a publicity photo taken from a free online press kit; or

3. The image is from a U.S. Federal Government website and is in the U.S. public domain; or

4. You licensed the image from one of the following websites:

  • sxc.hu
  • morguefile.com
  • commons.wikimedia.org
  • istockphoto.com

You must follow these guidelines when uploading an image to WomenOnLife. Notwithstanding any of the foregoing guidelines, publishing infringing images will lead to a lifetime ban from WomenOnLife. Note: Regardless of the foregoing guidelines, the use of images from the foregoing sites must comply with the terms and conditions of that site as it relates to THAT image, as well as any relevant copyright laws.

Submitted images are not necessarily reviewed by WomenOnLife prior to publication. It is solely your responsibility to ensure you have all necessary rights to publish any image on WomenOnLife pursuant to our guidelines. Blurry or irrelevant images (including author portraits) or images from unapproved sources may be deleted without notification.

Please do not embed images in the text field of a submission. Image files must be in jpg or gif format and under 1 MB.

Video: Relevant videos may be used by entering the “embed” code provided by YouTube, Veoh, MetaCafe,DailyMotion, and other video sharing sites. Please choose appropriately sized video formats and ensure that the video is relevant to your content.

Payment

WomenOnLife does not pay upfront for published content, but shares a percentage of revenue earned from published articles. Contributing Writers have the option to enter their Google AdSense Publisher ID in their user profile. When they do, a pre-determined percentage of Google AdSense ads with their Publisher ID will be displayed on the pages that the Contributor’s articles appear. Revenue generated from those ads are calculated and paid directly by Google, and can tracked through Google’s AdSense User Interface.

Common Reasons For Low Earning Performance

1. The topic doesn’t typically attract a lot of traffic:

  • WomenOnLife tutorials
  • Humor
  • Creative Writing (including memoirs, poetry, short stories or any form or prose)
  • Movie/music/television/video game reviews
  • Opinion/Editorial pieces
  • Recipes

2. The content does not provide enough in-depth information to satisfy the average person interested in the topic. (In general, content should be at least 300 words to qualify for Upfront Payment.)

3. The information provided in the content is too common to perform well via online search – it doesn’t distinguish itself from all of the pre-existing content on the web. Content must provide unique information on a general topic, or it must have a narrower focus. For example, try narrowing down a broad topic like “great vacations” to a more specific topic like “Caribbean vacations on a budget.”

4. The content submission is too similar to content already in the WomenOnLife Archive. Before creating your content, do a quick search of WomenOnLife to ensure your submission will be a unique addition.

5. The content has too short of a shelf-life. The Internet is a fickle market and people’s search tendencies vary drastically from day to day. We can only offer Upfront Payment for content that will be relevant for weeks, months and even years down the line.

6. The content is too dependent on links to other websties. You are permitted to include links to other websites that provide additional, relevant information to readers. However, you should limit the number of external links you provide, because if these links go down, your content may no longer make sense or be of use to a reader.

7. The content was published elsewhere before it was published at WomenOnLife.

8. The content is potentially copyright-infringing. This includes content that:

  • is not 100% original content you created. This means that it (or portions of it) can be found elsewhere (online or in print) attributed to another author.
  • includes portions and/or quotes that can be found elsewhere (online or in print) attributed to another author without proper citation.
  • is available for reprint, but not originally created by you.
  • includes too much quoted or cited material. When a submission includes too much third-party information, we do not consider it original.