If you’re reading this page, chances are you would like to write a guest post for us. Which is great. But there are a few things you need to know first:

1. We do NOT offer links in exchange for a story. If your goal is to drive traffic back to your website, you are not the guest writer we are looking for. We will publish links within an article to authoritative websites that provide related, authoritative, and clear additional value to our readers. Those links to external websites will always be “nofollow” links, no exceptions.
2. We do NOT accept sponsored posts. While we will work directly with destinations and a very select number of travel companies as part of a deeper partnership to create content we write and produce in-house, we NEVER accept guest posts in exchange for money. Don’t even suggest it.

Now we’ve gotten the two “Do Not’s” out of the way, if you’re still with us, read on.

3. Please understand we’re selective. Very selective. In fact, 95% of our content is written by us with photographs only by us, which doesn’t leave much room for guest posts at all. Meaning only the most experienced travel writers who have a track record of writing awesome and award-winning content with splendid photos will find a home as a guest blogger with us. Are you that awesome writer we’re looking for? At the risk of sounding a bit snobbish, we’ll need to see examples of your skills before we’ll agree to consider publishing you. Links to your personal blog, your Amazon author’s page, and/or to articles you’ve written for well-known publications and websites are a starting point.

4. We need to see a solid story pitch. And by “solid story pitch,” we mean one with specifics about a topic that fits our style and subject matter, how you’d approach it, and why it’s one for us. What gets the immediate delete key are pitches something like, “I’d like to write a great new post for your blog filled with awesome content that will be engaging and relevant to your readers. I look forward to hearing back from you.…” You will need demonstrate that you know us, know our readers, have a solid understanding of the type of content we publish, and be able to clearly show how your article will be of strong value to our readers. If we’ve already written about a topic, simply writing another version of a similar post is not the way to get our attention. You must demonstrate your expertise and authority on any given topic you pitch to us. We are hopeful that an experienced writer, one good enough to write for us, already knows this tidbit, but just in case, we’ll repeat it here: Read what’s been published by Michael Hodgson, by Therese Iknoian, and also joint bylines here to get an idea of what stories work for our site. And go here and here to see a couple of past guest posts that worked well. It should go without saying, but let’s just get this off our chests here: If your pitch has spelling and grammatical errors in it, that means you’re not as good a writer as perhaps you thought and certainly not ready to guest post for HI Travel Tales. We do expect a relatively clean piece that does not require hard editing by us.

5. You will be asked to provide three to four relevant links to our website. At the risk of sounding presumptuous (which goes with appearing a bit snobbish, above), we will expect you to have researched our website well enough to be able to suggest three to four relevant articles on our own website that you will link to within your article. But that means you’ll need to study our website to find the appropriate articles to link to. And the best way to become familiar with our site is to become a subscriber.
6. The story idea you pitch must be detailed and distinctive. We are looking for informative and original articles about travel that are at least 1,250 words in length. Your pitch must demonstrate your expertise and authority and illustrate how your article will be immensely useful to our readers. The story idea you are pitching must be unlike others you have published before on your own site or elsewhere. Simple tweaking an oldie is a no-no for us. Understand we will verify pitches as original and not simply another version of an article published elsewhere. We are not looking for serial guest bloggers.
7. We are an image-heavy travel site. We will require you to submit with your story eight to 10 images that you own all the rights to from which we can select. We do not accept stock photography, and all images must be high-quality – to match the high-end, award-winning photography we are known for. These images must be relevant to the story and effectively illustrate the destination or tips mentioned in your story. Random images for an image’s sake will not be accepted. If you do not have photographs to support your story idea, then we will not be willing to publish it. We don’t pay for images, and we will only take non-exclusive rights, while you will retain all rights to any images you submit.
8. You must have your own active blog and social media pages. Part of the reason for requiring our guest writers have their own active blogs and social pages is to create a basic submission filter. We only want serious writers. While we may pay for amazing content (imagine that) we still don’t pay much at all, barely enough for a round of beers. But the main reason for this requirement is that we are looking for a mutually beneficial cross-promotion. We are hoping that because of your blog and social following you will lead visitors to our site, too, naturally. And, in return, we will promote you on our blog via your author bio, and we’ll promote you and your article on our social media sites and in our newsletter. If you are a book author, and the article we agree to publish is an excerpt or the book is specifically related to travel, we’ll be all too happy to promote your book and also help drive possible sales.

Thanks for reading this. Are you ready to submit now?

After reading all the above, if you are still interested in becoming a guest writer for us, we’d love to hear from you. Send us a query via our contact page. As long as you’ve followed all of our guidelines and rules above, we’ll get back to you with a response within a few weeks.