Are you able to write a small-ish essay on a dog-related topic, and willing to donate one or more pieces of content to the cause?
We are building an informative website/blog to generate funds for the rescue.
This Q & A aims to cover the basics related to volunteer content writing. There is a contact form at the bottom, so please feel free to hit us up with any further questions.
Writing Subjects
What are the articles about?
We will work together to decide on the focus of your first article, choosing a specific topic from our content plan. And the ones after that, should you wish to keep the ball rolling.
All article subjects are in a way related to dogs or cats. That still leaves a lot of room for certain angles.
For example, if you like to cook/bake, talk about homemade dog biscuits. If you’re interested in travel, you could write about how to take a pet on a train or plane. Or list road-trip essentials for your dog. If you live with one or more heavy shedders, you likely know exactly which vacuum is best.
Alternatively, informative articles are excellent, too. About specific breeds, providing some history, background, and information on the pros and cons of a certain breed.
As the last example, you might enjoy putting together articles meant for “lighter” reading, consisting of a compilation of certain breeds, for example, ‘top 10 smartest cat breeds’, ‘best dog breeds if you have allergies, or ‘top 5 largest dog breeds in the world’.
Article Length
How long is one article supposed to be?
Roughly 800 words is a minimum. A typical short-form blog post is between 800 and 1200 words long. Certain topics covered in-depth can result in articles that are 3000 words or more.
As a rule of thumb: a helpful, well-worded article of 800 words is better than a 1200-word article that contains a lot of “fluff”.
Anonymity
If you’d like “the real you” to be featured on our website, perhaps with a little bio and a backlink of your choosing, that’d be awesome.
Should you prefer to use a pseudonym or pen name, that’s totally fine too.
If for whatever reason you’d rather remain anonymous, no problem at all.
Writing Frequency
How often you choose to write is totally up to you.
When you start writing, when you finish, when or whether you decide to continue is all up to you. No questions asked. We all understand that life happens. (Actually, we ourselves are working on this project during late nights and stolen moments, next to our daily duties, work, and family life.)
There will not be any contract or obligation other than the agreement that you donate (the rights of) your work to the website and the rescue.
Whether you donate a single article once or keep them coming, whether regularly or irregularly, everything is helpful.
Since you choose to volunteer your time to this project, we highly appreciate and value anything and everything you have to give.
How will the article(s) I contribute make money to rescue animals?
Unless you’re familiar with blogging, you’re probably wondering how exactly writing articles begets money, and rightfully so.
In short, a blog that is large enough and provides value to the readers can earn an income through display ads, or by promoting products to its audience.
This takes more than just a few web pages. A website with ten articles won’t make any substantial income. With a hundred articles, we may start to see some momentum. Five hundred or a thousand articles later, we should be able to fund the happy ending of enough dogs to call it a rescue organization.
Writing a hundred articles one by one would take us a relatively long time. Hence the idea to seek out volunteers to help. If we can enthusiasm a hundred people to write one article each, the blog will be able to make a difference that much sooner.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions, or would like to get involved.