If you are considering publishing your work with us, please read through the following information and attachments to fully understand the process we work with for the benefit of our readers.
Introduction and background
Firstly, a big welcome and thank you for wanting to be part of a very elite team of extremely generous women who are passionate about sharing their knowledge, skills, experience and talent with others.
As the number of women who share a love for the great outdoors continues to grow, they look to others who have gone before them to provide encouragement, expertise, guidance, tools and information to help, advise and inspire.
That, of course, is where you come in.
You become part of a cohort of relatively few women who are proactive in providing helpful, useful or entertaining material. Material directed to an audience drawn from millions of women around the world that love the outdoors just as you do.
Whether you have some images, video, story, article, review, recipes or even a whole book, Camping for Women offers an outlet for you to showcase what you have to benefit fellow outdoor enthusiasts.
When providing material
You are the acknowledged creator
You will always be credited by Camping for Women on each occasion your material is published, whether via the website, social media or in print.
We use a template to put together your author profile on our site so that readers can always identify you and your material published with us. You can download that template here.
Your contact details
The contact details you provide in the course of communicating with Camping for Women are kept confidential and are not shared with anyone unless otherwise agreed.
Preferred formats
As much as possible, please ensure you utilize the following formats for us to work with:
Text: Word document
Photos/Images jpeg or png with at least 300dpi if possible
Videos: MP4
Address for submitting guest posts and other material
All material should be emailed to [email protected]
When sending material, please ensure to look through the final checklist found near the bottom of this page.
Editorial Guidelines
Articles
An ideal minimum of 1000 words with no maximum limit. Unless under exceptional circumstances we no longer publish articles under 800 words. Articles over 1000 words are always preferred to provide readers with greater value. Also bear in mind this statistic: “The average page that is listed on page one of Google has 1,890 words”, meaning that the world’s largest search engine prefers greater value of content when deciding whether to send more readers to your article.
A really good technique for planning out your word count is to start laying out your headings and subheadings first according to the content of the main topic you have to share. Once you have done this, it becomes an easier process to fill in the detail of each heading and subheading. For ease of reading, please ensure headings/subheadings contain less than 300 words each.
While there is no maximum word limit, if an article is considered too long, we could look at breaking this up into a series of articles depending on the content and context.
If you have images to go with the article, please include them (ideally a minimum of 6). If you don’t have any images, Camping for Women can assist in obtaining some for you.
To understand more about how you can write an article that is likely to receive much greater exposure in the long term, take a look at our SEO writing tips.
Travel or Location Reviews
These are normally submitted by contributors that use the Camping for Women Location or Activity Review Template. The template is simple to follow and makes doing reviews easy by answering questions and following the prompts. Otherwise, you are welcome to present your own Travel or Location Review that you feel most comfortable with.
If you would like to use the template, you can download this here.
Gear Reviews
There are two types of gear reviews that can be done:
- A general review on what readers should look for when they are trying to find the best quality or value for a particular type of gear (e.g. footwear, clothing, shelter, sports equipment, cooking aids etc); or
- A review done on the merits, pros and cons of a specific item. Here, the author needs to be very objective and speaking from first-hand experience and have relevant photos.
With regard to the second type of gear review, you can see examples of gear reviews published on our Review page. Camping for Women regularly receives requests for outdoor enthusiasts to be sent gear in exchange for us publishing a review. If you would like to be involved in reviewing products for readers, then let us know by dropping us an email: [email protected]
Recipes
As we all want to enjoy good food while in the outdoors, these can be really popular. To be effective, the format (layout) of your recipe needs to be easy to read and follow. A list of required equipment, a list of required ingredients followed by preparation method and cooking tips is best. Including a photo of what the finished dish should look like and if you are able to show photos of the various steps of preparation, that would be really wonderful!
There is also an option for you to demonstrate making dishes in the outdoors using video. In this case, we can assist with editing if needed (see further comment on videos below).
Stories
Short campfire tales or stories are always great to share. Longer fictional works can also be submitted and we will assist with obtaining relevant images if required.
True life stories, particularly those that provide inspiration are really welcome. Perhaps you have a story to tell about overcoming a significant problem, challenge or circumstances that outdoor women adventurers could relate to and learn from.
Videos
Videos shot and submitted do not have to be professionally presented or edited. If you have video content that is interesting to fellow women outdoor adventurers, we can use video editing software to help. Editing together with CFW branding, music etc can be done and published via our channel.
Likewise, if you have a number of smaller bits and pieces of video that forms part of a larger story, we can work with you to edit these all together as a single presentation. We will not publish any video without you being happy with the finished, edited result.
Books
There are times when contributors can reach a stage where they have gathered enough quality material to be compiled into a book. While that is not very often, Camping for Women can facilitate this and can discuss the merits of doing so on an individual basis with the author.
Editorial Discretion
All material including words, images, video etc being submitted for publishing is presented and finalized at the absolute discretion of Camping for Women’s editor. Alterations deemed necessary to improve some material including spelling, grammar, placement of images, SEO requirements etc may occur, which in the editor’s opinion best presents the information to readers. Such changes will always be made in consultation with the author. At all times the editor retains the right to refuse to publish any material at her absolute discretion.
Standard Publishing Agreement
To ethically allow us to publish your material, contributors are required to complete, sign and return a simple one-page Contributor Declaration and Material Release Form. This form essentially declares that the contributor meets basic requirements (female, over 18, has created the material) and states that Camping for Women is permitted to publish this online and within any other relevant publications under the Camping for Women brand and copyright.
You can download the form here.
Pre-created or Existing Material
We often get asked if material that contributors have already created and published online can be submitted. This practice is not preferred as this will conflict with SEO efforts online to promote material to more readers and expand our readership base. Publishing identical material would not serve you, our readers or Camping for Women’s interests. This doesn’t mean you can’t use the same subject matter if you are able to ensure that the wording is completely different and tailored to our audience.
Links
Links within any story, article or text are permitted provided that these provide additional value, pertain directly to the content and are deemed to be of interest to the readership. The links should not contain any commercial or affiliate element to them unless approved due to special circumstances.
Links of a commercial nature should be submitted as part of a sponsored post which is labelled as such to ensure openness and transparency to our readers. Should you wish to include links more in keeping with a sponsored or commercial post, let us know via email [email protected] and we will be happy to assist you on that basis.
If you are a blogger and want to share your story, experience or expertise with our readers, we are happy to provide a link back to your home page in addition to the information you include in your author profile.
Our Publishing Process
In a nutshell, this is what we do:
- We receive and review your material, together with your author profile info and completed Contributor Declaration and Release form.
- We finalize any potential changes with you and create your author profile on the site.
- We draft up the material to a preview stage, ready to publish.
- We confirm a publication date with you depending on available publication spots and your schedule to allow you to respond as the author to reader comments.
- After publication, we distribute the published material to our subscribers and relevant reader forums.
- We provide recognition to you for your contributions.
- We monitor and moderate reader comments on your material.
Final Checklist
When submitting your material to us, here is a handy checklist to refer to.
- Ensure your material has the appropriate word count, grammar, spelling and images included.
- When submitting a guest post, where possible, submit SEO friendly material with relevant keywords (don’t worry if you don’t know anything about SEO as we can do this for you). You will find detail about SEO tips for your post here.
- If submitting material for the first time, don’t forget to include your author profile form, photo and completed Contributor Declaration and Material Release form to allow us to publish your work.
- Then email your creative material, completed author profile form with your photo and your completed Contributor Declaration and Material Release form to [email protected] – If your files are large, it may be best to use Dropbox so as to not take up too much inbox space.
Once published you can also:
- Respond to reader comments on your material.
- Promote your article to your own circle of contacts, displaying your published contributor logo and linking back to your work.
- Sign up as a free subscriber to receive published posts of other contributors.
- Actively comment on the material of other contributors that interest you.
Thank you again for looking to join with other contributors around the world providing guidance and leadership for fellow women in the outdoor adventuring space. We look forward to working with you to everyone’s benefit.