Advantages of Being an About.com Guide

There are many great reasons to write for About.com.

Create Your Own Hours

About.com Guides are freelancers, giving them the flexibility to work when they have the time. Most Guides work their magic at night and on the weekends, allowing them to keep their day jobs or other freelance gigs. In fact, with a time commitment of about 10 to 15 hours per week, 60 percent of our Guides are Guides on the side, working with About.com as a secondary endeavor.

Work From Anywhere

About.com's corporate offices may be located in New York City, but our Guides live in more than 35 countries all around the world. Our self-directed orientation program happens online, so you don't need to travel in order to become a Guide.

Advice and Support From a Highly Trained Editorial Team

Although About.com's publish-first model means you'll be producing content on your time, you'll have About.com staff available for guidance in order to help you generate story ideas, improve the user experience, and build a large audience for your work. (To ensure quality, Health Guides create content through a different process.)

Competitive Compensation

Guides earn a base amount for content they create, plus the opportunity to earn more based on the number of page views their site generates each month. For more information, please read this page about Guide compensation.

Expanded Influence in Your Topic Area

Guides write books, are interviewed by the press, serve on panels at trade events and establish a variety of professional contacts because of their work at About.com.

Press Access

Extensive PR and Marketing Support

Guides are a big part of About.com's brand, so we do a lot of promotion of the Guides as experts, including press releases for new GuideSites, appearances for Guides at trade shows, and coverage of Guide successes, like book deals, television and radio appearances.