Nobody pays for an opening
Not a tenner, not a coffee, not a "small admin fee". The minute money touches an opening, this becomes the thing we're trying not to be. So it doesn't.
Indie Guest Posts only works if everyone shows up in good faith. Here's the small handful of things we actually ask, and a few more that just tend to work better.
There aren't many. We mean these ones.
Not a tenner, not a coffee, not a "small admin fee". The minute money touches an opening, this becomes the thing we're trying not to be. So it doesn't.
Don't post fifteen near-identical openings. Don't mass-apply with the same template. If a stranger could tell at a glance you didn't read the brief, that's spam.
No agencies dressed up as founders. No AI ghostwriter running an applicant account on autopilot. The whole point of this place is the people on it, so be one.
"Any tech post, any topic" isn't an opening, it's a wishlist. Say the topic, the angle, the kind of writer you'd actually publish. Specific posts get good writers. Vague ones get nothing.
Reply to applications, even with a no. Honour what you agreed to. If something falls through, say so. The internet rewards behaving slightly better than the internet usually does.
Take them or leave them. Most of the time, take them.
Try not to publish someone just because they're publishing you. Two sites trading favours back and forth reads as a deal. Many sites going in different directions reads as a community. The board works best when nobody is paired off.
If the writing doesn't actually belong on the host site, the readers can tell. Take the opening that genuinely suits what you write about, not the one that's roughly in the neighbourhood. Relevance is doing a lot of quiet work here.
The pieces that move sites are the ones the writer would have been proud to publish on their own blog. Don't save those for later. Send them out. The exercise is pointless with anything else.
A one-line "thanks, not this one" is a kindness. It takes ten seconds, and it keeps the board feeling like people instead of a void.
One real post a month does more than ten thin ones. This isn't a numbers game. The internet has plenty of those already, and they're not the ones working.
That's it. Be useful, be specific, be kind. The rest tends to take care of itself.