Submission Guidelines — Freelancer’s Hub

What we publish and how to submit your story

Welcome to Freelancer’s Hub, the publication dedicated to chronicling your journey as you hustle your way to the top.

If you want to be published here, you’ve come to the right place, for we are on the lookout for new writers with powerful voices who share their stories about freelancing — everything from finding clients, managing time and finances, to taking care of yourself as a freelancer.

Enjoy reading, and hope to hear from you soon.

1. What We Publish

Lessons learned from a past client, tips and tricks to land new clients, a list of publications that pay writers for money, a breakdown of your income streams — basically anything and everything related to your journey as a freelancer.

The only requirement is that the story has to have some takeaway for the reader. Yes, we appreciate personal stories, but make sure anyone who reads it can gain something valuable from it.

2. What It Means to be Published on Freelancer’s Hub

You are the author, and you will retain all rights to the story. If you wish to republish it on your own website or blog, you are free to do that. Keep in mind, however, that if you choose to publish with Freelancer’s Hub, it is to remain here. Removing an already-published piece from the publication is not encouraged.

When your story is published with Freelancer’s Hub, it will be shared with the community of people passionate about freelancing on this platform.

Feel free to leave a reply to this post if you have any further questions.

3. Before Submitting Your Story

Here are some guidelines to help you make sure your story is best fitted for this publication.

3.1 Your Medium profile

Set up your Medium profile with a headshot of yours as the profile picture and a crisp bio that lets us know who you are and what you write about. Feel free to add any external links to your website in your bio.

3.2 Formatting

Follow Medium’s curation guidelines to ensure that your story is formatted in the proper manner. Don’t keep massive chunks of texts as they significantly lower readability.

• Choose a title that lets the reader know exactly what to expect from the story.
• Type the title in Title Case, i.e. with all the major words capitalized. You can use the Title Case Converter if you have any doubts as to how to write your titles.
• For the subtitle, use sentence case without any punctuation marks at the end. There should be no punctuation mark at the end of the subtitle.
• Use a relevant (high-resolution and duty-free) featured image and credit the owner or creator of the photograph. You can use Unsplash for good quality images that fit with the theme of your story.

3.3 The language

Make sure your story has no grammar errors. If English is not your first language, you can use the free Grammarly Chrome extension to have a quick look through your story before submitting it. The best news is: it works on Medium.

If the editors find some errors in your story, we will either correct them or leave you a note saying how you can filter them out.

3.4 Word limit

We are looking for thought-provoking stories that leave an impact on the reader. The ideal word count can be anywhere between 800 to 1200 words. If you feel your point can be conveyed in fewer words than 800, you are welcome to submit, but make sure the takeaway for the reader is clear and actionable.

3.5 Use proper tags

Medium allows you to use 5 tags for each story. Choose them according to the genre you think your story fits in. Since you are aiming for FH, we prefer one of the tags should be Freelancing.

3.6 Regarding affiliate links

From Medium Rules:

You must disclose affiliate links or payment for a post. Affiliate links, such as link out to Amazon with your code, or any other link out where you will receive a commission or other value, are allowed in posts. But, you must disclose somewhere in the post that it includes affiliate links. If you have received payment, goods or services, or something else of value in exchange for writing a post, you must still disclose this fact in writing within your post (as per FTC Rules and Guides).

3.7 Be careful with CTAs

If you wish to include a Call to Action (CTA) at the bottom of your story, make sure it fits in one sentence and is not too aggressive. Refer to Best Practices for Calls to Action in Partner Posts for more details.

NOTE: We give preference to unpublished drafts. However, we are also open to publishing older articles ONLY if the editors specifically request them.

3.8 No Clickbait

Generally, we’re looking for well-developed stories with a solid structure and a clear takeaway for the reader. Consider what Medium Staff says about this:

In short, curators are looking for thoughtful, clearly written pieces that tell a compelling story, convey an interesting idea, or share a smart point of view. These can take many forms …We explicitly do not want to distribute misinformation, stories with clickbait headlines, stories that are primarily marketing a product or service, stories that use photos that the author doesn’t have the rights to use, or stories with excessive typos and errors.

This is exactly what the FH editors feel.

4. How to Submit

If you are not already a writer for FH, send us an email (mediumfreelancershub@gmail.com) with a short introduction of yourself and the @ version of your Medium profile. For example, my URL is anangsha.medium.com, so I would send @anangsha in the email.

Please allow us at least 2 days to get to your new writer application.

Once you are a writer and your story is ready, click on the three dots at the top right of your story and select “Add to publication”.

From the list that pops up, select “Freelancer’s Hub” and click on “Save”.

The final step is to select the green button that says “Submit” right next to the three dots. When you click on this, a page will prop up where you can add five relevant tags and choose whether or not you wish to put your story behind Medium’s paywall.

Freelancer’s Hub prefers if you make your story eligible to earn money and allow curators to recommend it to interested readers in the topics.

We will process all submitted stories within three business days. If we reject your story, we will leave a note explaining why. If we think it would do better with some edits, we will let you know our thoughts. Under no circumstances will we edit any part of your story (except grammatical errors) without your consent.

If you need further help, you can read this post to clear your doubts.

If you’ve just joined the publication, we at Freelancer’s Hub welcome you warmly and look forward to reading your stories.

That’s all from our side.

We’ll keep updating this piece as and when we make changes to the guidelines.

Till then, keep writing, keep reading, and keep spreading the love for hustling.

Love,
Anangsha
Editor, Freelancer’s Hub