Now, personally, I like lots of kinds of stories. However, this is a birding site and I am going to restrict publication to stories and articles about birding, birds, or bird watchers. To that end, I have set the rules listed below and I most sincerely ask that you follow them. The really big rule here is that I retain complete control over over which articles get published here. After all, it's my website. But don't be concerned; I'm easy.

These are the Rules:

To Be Qualified For Our Site, Your Article:

·         MUST BE AN ORIGINAL ARTICLE THAT YOU WROTE.

·         MUST NOT BE AN ARTICLE YOU RIPPED-OFF FROM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN OR BOUGHT (PLR).   

·         MUST BE informative and share your unique expertise and/or experiences. Include tips, strategies, techniques, case-studies, analysis, opinions and commentary in your articles. We do not accept articles that contain more than 5 lines of quoted or sourced material. 

·         MUST NOT be a press release, advertisement, sales letter, promotional copy, or blatant and excessive self-promotion or hype.

·         MUST FOLLOW SIMPLE PUNCTUATION RULES: One or two spaces after each period, colon, or semi-colon; Periods should be inside of quotes; When doing "..." -- you should use only 3 dots minimum and maximum; When using dashes, use two in a row, ex: "--"; There is never a space BEFORE a period or BEFORE a comma. Your article must have proper English, spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and sentence structure. While we know there is a variation in what is considered "proper English," we ask that you at least be consistent within your article. Your article must also be proofed and double checked for accuracy. If English is your second language -- we strongly suggest that you have it proofed by someone who has English as their native tongue before submitting your articles to us. 

·         MUST NOT contain: pornography/adult material, hate or violence-oriented, suggest racial intolerance, advocate against any individual or group, have insulting, obscene, degrading tone, or contain profanity.

·         MUST NOT contain information on: Hacking/cracking content, bomb creation, support for terrorism/ radicalism/ religious fanaticism, illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia, steroid use or advocacy, weapon/ firearms/ ammunition/ balisongs/ butterfly knives or brass knuckles, or the promotion of hard alcohol/tobacco-related products or prescription drugs.

·         MUST NOT contain information that promotes: Term papers or essays for sale to college students, PLR (Private Label Rights) articles as a good thing (it's not), the promotion of email Safe-Lists as a good thing (it's not) or bulk email spamming as a good thing (it's not), advocacy for paid auto-surf programs as a good thing (it's not), advocacy of click fraud or clicking on Adsense ads as a good thing (it's not), advocacy of creating MFA's (Made For Adsense) sites as a good strategy (it's not), or advocacy of Adsense Arbitrage (this policy is created to protect our advertisers interests).

·         MUST NOT contain any content that is a violation of any law, be considered defamatory, libelous, or infringes on the legal rights of others.

·         MUST NOT be a submission of the exact same article as one that you already submitted. Some authors have submitted the same article multiple times with only a few words changed in the body -- we reject these and ban authors who engage in this practice.

·         MUST NOT include a reply to a personal email, letter or other correspondence.

·         MUST NOT contain excessive and/or bolded keywords/ phrases. Bolding is limited to headings and subheadings.

BirdingStuff.com Editorial Guidelines: (FORMAT)

ARTICLE TITLE:

·         Your Title MUST Be In Upper and Lower Case Letters With The First Letter of Each Major Word Capitalized.

·         It is not required that you capitalize common words such as "a" - "the" - "to" - "for" etc, we accept these either way.

·         We will accept QUOTES around your entire TITLE. 

·         Refrain from excessive repetitive punctuation in your TITLE. One exclamation "!" or question mark "?" is enough to make a point.

·         We do not allow HTML tags of any kind in your TITLE.

·         We do not allow your AUTHOR NAME or any WEBSITE URL to be in your TITLE.

·         Your TITLE must not be keyword stuffed (too many redundant keywords used over and over again), but rather should read as a natural language TITLE that any human could easily appreciate. Do not over-optimize your TITLE please.

·         We do not allow Prescription Drug names in the title of your article.

·         We do not accept One Word as the article TITLE, a MINIMUM of two unique words is required.

·         We do not accept articles that use slang terms or profanity in the TITLE.

·         We do not accept articles that do not deliver on the article title. You must deliver in the article body on the promises made in the article title.

YOUR FULL AUTHOR NAME:

You must include your first and last name as the author of the article.

·         Your AUTHOR NAME must have a First name and a Last name.

·         We do allow "First name - Last initial" or "First initial - Last Name."

·         We do not allow email addresses or URLs to be your AUTHOR NAME.

·         You may NOT include your title after your AUTHOR NAME unless you hold a doctorate-level degree (Dr., MD, DDS, PhD, etc.)

·         In order to include a Co-Author you must first list them as an authorized Alternate Author on your account.

·         We do not allow numbers to be included in your Author Name.

ARTICLE BODY:

·         Must be a minimum of 250 words and no more than 1,000 words. For us, an ideal article size is 400-750 words.

·         Please do not repeat your TITLE and AUTHOR NAME at the top of the ARTICLE BODY.

·         Copyrights must be at the bottom of your article. If you put it at the top of your article, we will move it to the bottom of the article body.

·         If you include a REPRINT RIGHTS statement in your article, it must be at the BOTTOM of your article. If you put it at the top, we will move it to the bottom.

·         If you sell hard in the ARTICLE BODY by including your URL or product pitch or blatant self-promotion, we will toss your article without notice. The RESOURCE BOX is where you get to pitch yourself or your website address.

·         Your article body MUST deliver on what is promised in the title. We do not accept teaser links or phrases that require a reader to click away from the article or reference another source in order to receive the full benefit of what has been promised.

·          

SUMMARY:

·         The purpose of the ARTICLE SUMMARY is to give an abstract or summary of the benefits that your article delivers.

·         Every article must have a 2-5 sentence article summary and not exceed 200 words. If you don't know what to put in your summary, just use the first paragraph of your article.

·         We do not allow HTML tags of any kind in your ARTICLE SUMMARY.

·         We do not allow blatant self-promotion in your ARTICLE SUMMARY.

·         We do not allow your AUTHOR NAME to be in your ARTICLE SUMMARY.

·         We do not allow any website URL or Email Address to be in your ARTICLE SUMMARY