Guest posts

Want to help out Pocketables and our audience? Good! Let’s continue.

Long set of disqualifiers so we don’t waste your time

As of April 1, 2022 I’m done with telling people we’re not taking their paid/sponsored/commercial/self promoting/etc. As of right now Pocketables does not accept guest posts. You’re a real person promoting a project or having an opinion, you can read on. You’re being paid to promote something, go away.

Let me preface this with a TL;DR breakdown: we’re not looking for outside content from people paid to promote a client’s product. However, we are willing to accept and post content if it’s good and fits our audience (really, some of our guest posts have been great.) If you contact us asking if we accept guest posts we will assume you have never been to the site and are wasting our time.

If you’re just promoting your website or client’s product and you don’t know who we are you can probably skip contacting us.

We  get 16 requests per day on average to guest post something. This is not an exaggeration. Some days it’s 25, some days it’s 8. If there are less than 10 when I get to my email in the morning I check the mail server because something’s wrong. We delete anything that looks like the following (this is a template SEO blog spammers use):

Hi, I’m a big fan of [Blog Name]. I loved your blog post: [post with “guest post” in the title]. Great Article!

Stop here and quit if you don’t know what Pocketables is, who our audience is, and what we write about. We’re not interested in trading SEO, backlinks, etc. We write about gadgets, home automation, digital life, rigging things, Tasker, phones, programming hacks, things that make life simpler, etc. We’ve been around 20 years, you can see what the place is pretty easily.

Stop here if you were searching “guest post” and ran across an article on Pocketables and did not check the site to see what we write about. I’m not interested in shopping ideas when people don’t bother to look even at the main page to see what we’re writing about.

You can most likely skip reading this if you’re the following (there are exceptions, you can contact me if you believe you have something exceptional – this does happen more often than you’d expect)

  • Employed by an SEO firm to get links to your client’s website.
  • Don’t remotely know who the Pocketables audience is or what we write about.
  • Are trying to sell a VPN, lounge chair, fashion accessories, or piracy product.
  • Want to contribute links to a sex site.
  • Aren’t writing about a cell phone, gadget, programming trick, interesting service, etc.
  • Are planning to write something and include an unrelated one-off link to something you’re promoting. EG: linked text or paragraph that has little to do with anything followed by an article mostly unrelated to your link.

Is the audience going to wonder why it’s there?

Pocketables readers are gadget loving highly technical intelligent and sexy people who are here to learn new things, tricks, and news. They’re not here to read a post they already know or could Google easily. You submit something like 6 things that  can save you time and number three is “online shopping means no waiting in line” and I’m going to hit delete.

A set of quick things we don’t want

  • Linking to gambling sites, credit repair services, make money fast, schemes – sorry, we’re not puritanical, just not interested in these and it’s not relevant to most of our audience. Also reflects badly on us SEO and grandmother-wise.
  • Sexual health and wellness sites – there may be an exception for an editor here, but if you’re not a regular contributor and it completely doesn’t fit, we’re not interested.
  • Contributors that are not willing to check their post for questions and comments.
  • Comparison articles based on spec sheets.
  • The top five <blank>… seriously, it’s 2020… listicles?
  • Bashing product X (unless it really needs bashing, there are exceptions)
  • Links to spam sites or hideously bad SEO scoring websites

Does it fit?

The first thing to ask yourself though is does this fit Pocketables’ audience? Currently Pocketables is Android/Google-centric, Tasker, IFTTT, some Windows, a scattering of iOS stuff, news, tips, deals, gadget reviews, and the like.

We cover things people interested in things listed above might be interested in, and occasionally we bring on an editor with new interests who may take the site in a slightly different direction.

Does a guest post on how the Novel Coronavirus is influencing stock prices in the farm wholesale sector work for us? No.

An IQ comparison chart between various users of phones? No. those are generally fake and just divisive.

An app that is nothing but a contact-us form for a plastic surgeon in Tijuana? No.

Have we written about it five times before? Do you have something new to add? Are you writing it better than us? Maybe. Let’s talk. Use the search bar to check our history first.

Is this a trick that will root most phones without losing data or using a paperclip? Write away.

Would someone reading it think “wow, I’m glad this is here and this is relevant to my interests without seeming spammy?” write away.

Is this game you’re writing about actually fun and interesting or are you just getting paid to promote it or a friend wrote it? Nahhh, we’ll pass. Or maybe we won’t.

Have you read only the front page of Pocketables and think your investment software would make a good writeup? Check about 10 pages in and see if you still think so.

Is this about how much you hate something? Once again, we attempt to focus on the positive. Occasionally an editor here will go the other way but we’re not really here to talk about what’s terrible unless you’ve got an interesting and original take on it.

Are you in love with an obsolete gadget? Has your CPR on it turned into necrophilia? Do you want others to keep it alive as well? Sounds like you fit and might want to be an editor rather than a contributor. We’ll talk.

Are you going to get yourself sued?

You need to know what fair use in the United States is. This means don’t steal an image and use it as your own. Don’t steal paragraphs from other companies and use them in an article. Don’t use something without citing a source. Don’t slander, lie, defame, etc.

Basically I don’t have a team of lawyers, I’ll point anyone with a valid complaint to the source while removing it from the site.

I’m also capable of Google Image Searching your image to see if it’s copyrighted/not fair use.

Why are you asking me for suggestions?

I get at the moment ~16 unsolicited requests for contributions a day that say the site is great and ask if they can run some ideas by me for a guest post. Generally these go in the format “Long time reader, love your stuff, I’d like to write a guest post about the five worst telehealth companies, or perhaps STD dating apps, or the best mechanics in the Ukraine.”

Errr no. You’ve got an idea, send that idea. “Hey, I’d like to write about the OnePlus 6 and my experiences with the previous versions” – great! Not five or so things that an SEO farm is being paid to promote.

Please no shopping multiple not-fitting ideas.

Also target to USA is preferred, English speaking is fine.

How much are you paying?

Doesn’t matter, we’re not accepting money for guest posts. Unless it’s a lot. You know I’ll totally take a lot of money for one post. Like a lot. You can make an offer, we’ve currently never accepted one.

What have you written?

If you’re claiming to be a writer, shoot over some links to things that you’ve written that have your name anywhere on them. The first sign of an SEO farm seems to be linking to pages of unrelated tech writing with other people’s names on them.

The second sign of weirdness seems to be articles with nothing but free stock photos. We’ll use those occasionally but man, I don’t know who these people are who contribute on 20+ websites about timelapse or drone photography but don’t have a single photograph they’ve taken.

In some cases on Pocketables a post will be posted under another author’s name, but proper attribution will always be given on the last paragraph.

Who are you promoting?

We’re all promoting something for some reason. Personally I’m promoting Pocketables and hope that the referral money eventually pays me back. This is stated multiple times and places across Pocketables. It’s known if I have Product X they probably sent it to me and likely I’ll review it.

Some editors and contributors are promoting their own websites. Some are promoting a cause.

In the end, just let me know what you’re promoting.

Is the information correct?

I can’t stress enough how much low quality content content I get.

If I can disprove a statement with a simple Google search, it’s not worth anyone’s time. You make a claim, back it up with a source. We’re not here to make fake claims to get sales, we’re here to be right, provide factual information, not be spammers, and hopefully help someone with a project or decision.

Have you actually worked with the products you’re writing about?

This is really important – everything reviewed on Pocketables has been handled by Pocketables unless otherwise clearly indicated. If you see a review here, or a comparison, it’s because the two items have been tested or it’s very clearly established that the comparisons are based on specs.

English

Pocketables is an English language blog written in mostly American colloquial. You make a mistake or two grammatically I’ll correct it. A phrase or two that doesn’t work in colloquial English is not an issue, we can correct that. Minor spelling, not a dealbreaker.

If every paragraph reads like it was run through a machine translation app we’re going to reject it as being a complete rewrite. If I have to read and re-read to make any sort of sense, it will be rejected.

Have fun

This is Pocketables. We’re going to make mistakes. It’s not the end of the world. Make them, fess up, move on, have fun.

Contact Paul if you think you still want to contribute to Pocketables. Important – subject line MUST be input by you and contain the word “concocting” or “I’m human” or I will disregard your email as an SEO spam bot.