Writing Guidelines

Editorial & Article Style Guide

We thought it would be helpful for you to provide the following article guidelines. Naturally, not all guidelines need to be used in every essay. They are general.

1. Find a way to relate your article to a free-thinking , forward-looking and independent person.
Remember who the  ZenLama audience is.

2. Provide relevant and quality examples and supporting facts to backup your ideas and positions.
Our readers are smart and do not appreciate  mindless rants or unsubstantiated wisdom.

3. We are here to inform, enthuse, support and educate.
What we do is bring ideas, options anf inspiration to the table for people’s consideration. We love you to share your expertise, passions and unwavering perspectives; remember your point of view isn’t the only one.We like the idea of debate – seeing an issue from a number of different angles.

4. Use humor and intelligence.
A happy, healthy, and successful ZenLama life requires humor and laughter. Note; if you cross the line into disparaging remarks or rude idioms we won’t publish your article.

5. Look to the past and future for inspiration.
We’re not the first trailblazers advocating a productive, happy life free of rules and controls. Many others have come before us, we have titans walking in our presence today pioneering the future. So find these folks and use them as models. Comment on their philosophies and tactics. Weave their teachings into your own stories. It’s a powerful way to bolster your credibility.

6. Actually read ZenLama.
If you submit an article for our consideration and have NOT read ZenLama your efforts may be wasted. Reading our guidelines and past articles is the best way to get a feel for what our readers enjoy reading and the style they expect .

7. Write in a conversational-friendly voice.
This may be the most important style element.  If you’ve never written for the web before then you may not realise that traditional writing styles do not do well here. Write in your real voice. Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Break up your article with sub-headlines, quotes, and other relevant yet entertaining tidbits. Use bulleted and numbered lists. And use active voice!

Requirements for Guest Posting

Here are some general yet essential requirements that need to be followed.

• You must write all of the content yourself. No ghost writers allowed.
• No affiliate links are allowed. But you are permitted to link to supportive sites (including your own).
• If the article you submit has been published on other sites (including your own) you must inform us and give us a link to the original post.

Article length and structure:
You have two options.

Option 1

Article Length 1200 – 2400 words

Article Structure

Introduction: 60 / 200 words
Main Essay: 1000, 1,400
Check it out:  60 / 100 words
Quick Tip / Action point:    100 /200
Author Bio:   50 / 100

Option 2

Article Length 400 – 800 words

Article Structure

Introduction: 30 / 60 words
Main Story: 200, 400
Check it out:  20 / 60 words
Quick Tip / Action point:    20/60
Author Bio:   Name (with link to a social profile)

If you’re leveraging someone else’s idea, content, or article – then source it.
Link back to it and/or provide quotes in block-quote. Stealing is bad karma. Don’t do it.

Editing Policy

We expect that the article you submit has been fully edited and PROOF READ to the best of your ability. Mind you, we don’t expect you to be an expert at this. But a flaky rough draft won’t cut it. We’ll examine your article for grammar and simple typo mistakes. We reserve the right to apply these edits as we find them.

Images Policy

You are encouraged to find an awesome image yourself for your article. But make sure it adheres to a creative commons license and is valid for re-use.

Further, if you in fact use a creative commons licensed image (we recommend searching via Flickr.com or Wikipedia) then you must cite this image in your article (at the beginning or end).

Lastly, we reserve the right to change your image without notice if we feel there’s a better option and/or if you did not comply with creative commons requirement.

SEO Policy

We do our best to amp up our Google-juice with each and every article. And we appreciate your help to make each article its SEO best.

This means four things – (1) meta title, (2) meta description, (3) meta keywords and (4) the correct category and tags

1. A powerful title that is catchy, enticing, and filled with good keywords (see #3 below).
2. A max 160(ish) character summary of what your article is about. Use active voice and as many of your strong keywords as possible.
3. All the highly searched words and phrases that apply to your article. We recommend using Google’s Keyword Search Tool and Google’s Wonder Wheel. Both are free to use and damn easy!

We highly encourage you to submit the above three items with each article submission. It will go a long way to enduring you get published

And if you don’t have a clue about SEO, well, it is kind of key to your success as an on-line writer so perhaps now is a good time to start learning! It’s a valuable skill that will carry your writing career far.

Publication Policy

Please remember that your article submission is not a guarantee that we’ll publish it. If for any reason your article does not confirm to our style requirements or ZenLama.com standards then we will not be publishing your article.

 

Content Contribution & Curation Policy:

We welcome you to contribute your work to ZenLama.com. ZenLama.com is growing it’s readership rapidly. We vigorously and repeatedly promote our feature posts so over time your work will be read by thousands of readers.

We believe that you deserve credit so we will do our utmost to ensure that you receive it, however, technology changes and formats change therefore to protect us and you you will need to agree to the following

By contributing your work to ZenLama.com, it will grant ZenLama.com a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, fully sub-licensable, commercial, non-exclusive right to use, reproduce, modify, translate, adapt, publish, create derivative works therefrom transmit, distribute, perform, display and delete such Content (in whole or in part) worldwide and/or to incorporate such Content in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed.