Be an About.com Guide - Overview
About.com Guides create content specifically to help our users in their moment of need.
Every month, millions visit us for help with everything from health care and parenting issues to advice on travel, cooking, technology and hobbies. We're looking for passionate, experienced writers to join this group of Guides, covering one of our available topics in depth.
All About.com Guides are freelancers who work online and set their own schedules, giving them the flexibility to work at the time that's best for them. There are other advantages, too, including a compensation plan that offers a monthly payment for content produced as well as incentives for performance, support from our highly-trained editorial team, and the opportunity to take part in our Guide-focused PR program.
All potential Guides go through a two-part online orientation and evaluation program, learning about our editorial standards while writing articles and blog posts and publishing them on a test site with our publishing tools. During evaluation you'll be evaluated by an About.com editor, who will give you comments on your work before making a final decision at the end of the process. You can read more about
the process here.
Interested in applying to become an About.com Guide? Check our list of
available topics and see if one matches your passion and expertise. We look forward to reading your application.
Advantages of Being an About.com Guide
There are many great reasons to write for About.com.
Create Your Own Hours
About.com Guides are freelancers, giving them the flexibility to work when they have the time. Most Guides work their magic at night and on the weekends, allowing them to keep their day jobs or other freelance gigs. In fact, with a time commitment of about 10 to 15 hours per week, 60 percent of our Guides are Guides on the side, working with About.com as a secondary endeavor.
Work From Anywhere
About.com's corporate offices may be located in New York City, but our Guides live in more than 35 countries all around the world. Our self-directed orientation program happens online, so you don't need to travel in order to become a Guide.
Advice and Support From a Highly Trained Editorial Team
Although About.com's publish-first model means you'll be producing content on your time, you'll have About.com staff available for guidance in order to help you generate story ideas, improve the user experience, and build a large audience for your work. (To ensure quality, Health Guides create content through a different process.)
Competitive Compensation
Guides earn a base amount for content they create, plus the opportunity to earn more based on the number of page views their site generates each month. For more information, please read this page about Guide compensation.
Expanded Influence in Your Topic Area
Guides write books, are interviewed by the press, serve on panels at trade events and establish a variety of professional contacts because of their work at About.com.
Press Access
About.com is a part of The New York Times Company. This association grants a certain prestige helpful in opening doors to obtain interviews and review products as well as to take part in other media-only events.
Extensive PR and Marketing Support
Guides are a big part of About.com's brand, so we do a lot of promotion of the Guides as experts, including press releases for new GuideSites, appearances for Guides at trade shows, and coverage of Guide successes, like book deals, television and radio appearances.
About.com Guide Evaluation
How does Guide Evaluation work?
Every week, our editors pick a group of topics and review applications, looking for a few candidates to put into evaluation. If we select your application, you'll start in Stage One, a two-week period where you'll write three blog posts and several articles with the guidance of an editor. At the end of Stage One, the editor will review your writing skills and ability to integrate editorial suggestions to determine whether or not you'll continue on to Stage Two
In Stage Two, you'll learn to use our publishing tools and publish the content you created in Stage One to a test site over a second two-week period. As in Stage One, your editor will review your work and make comments and suggestions for improvement. At the end of Stage Two, your editor will evaluate your work and the work of anyone else in Stage Two for the same topic and make a hiring decision in conjunction with other members of our editorial staff.
How does About.com evaluate potential Guides?
When evaluating potential Guides, we look for the following:
Writing Ability:
A strong writer whose content is not only informative and factual, but compelling enough to make you want to read more. Because we trust our Guides to publish their own content, we'll also be looking for writing that is free of spelling and grammar errors.
Web Formatting Comprehension: Someone who grasps the idea of formatting for the Web (whether from prior experience or from our evaluation materials), organizing their content into clear, easy-to-understand sections with effective use of bold text and bulleting.
Topic Expertise:
An expert in the subject area with the knowledge and ability to cover the basics with ease and the passion to research anything they don't already know.
Desire to Educate:
A teacher who can communicate the basics of the topic to a beginner audience in a way that's not only easy for a novice to understand, but interesting, too.
Passion:
Someone whose love for the topic motivates them to see being a Guide as an opportunity to write in-depth about something they love. Writing for About.com is a long-term investment of time and energy, and the Guides who treat the job as a labor of love tend to do the best.
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Courtesy : About.com
