How to write about fish for AquaDaily

Are you someone who only dries your hands to write about aquariums on your blog or favorite tropical fish forum?

Then AquaDaily may be desperately seeking YOU!

I’ve been talking to about a couple of cool aquarium bloggers about guest articles, so I thought I’d get all my thoughts about writing for AquaDaily in one place.

Right now, I’m looking for 3-6 contributors from across the fishkeeping spectrum to blog about aquariums and tropical fish for AquaDaily.

All AquaDaily contributors must have good written English skills and a love of aquariums.

Ideally, you’d have kept fish for a few years, and you’ll run several tanks today.

The vision for AquaDaily is a magazine-style aquarium blog with several voices combining to bring aquarists everywhere tips, news and reviews about aquarium products and techniques – as well as insights into the fish, inverts and plants, of course.

As a contributor, you might write about:

• New products, like this post about Tunze Silence pumps

• Tips for aquarists, like this post on testing for carbon dioxide in planted aquariums, or this one on good soft corals for new reefkeepers

• Reviews of new aquarium products, such as this hands-on Deltec skimmer review at Advanced Aquarist

• Short writeups of developments on the web, such as this post about Local Fish Store Locator, or this pointer to an interesting thread about clownfish on Reef Central

• Short summaries of aquarium-related news stories, such as this article about global warming affecting coral reefs

You must love to write about fish tanks

There are two reasons why only passionate aquarists would want to take up this opportunity:

• Firstly, this site is for eager fishkeepers, so you’ll need to be one too
• Second: I can’t pay you for contributions

You knew there had to be a catch, right?

While I’d dearly love for AquaDaily to be able to pay contributors, the fact is that ads and Amazon clickthroughs from the site have so far generated less than $5. And that’s in eight months!

I haven’t begun to try and properly generate money from AquaDaily yet – I’m more interested in alerting readers to the site. But put simply, I cannot see AquaDaily being in a position to pay contributors in the foreseeable future.

Never say never: If the site started bringing in significant revenues, I’d definitely put its established contributors onto some kind of monthly retainer. I’m a journalist by profession, and I believe people should be paid for their writing where possible.

More likely is that as we grow the site and come to the attention of manufacturers, there may be freebie products to test and so on floating around that I will definitely share among the staff.

At the moment, I can’t promise anything though.

Be part of an exciting new venture

Here are some nice reasons to write for AquaDaily:

• Get satisfaction from your views being read by thousands of aquarists
• Be part of a growing website – you were one of the first!
• The staff page will include your photo and bio, with links to your website or blog
• One-off guest articles will conclude with a short bio and a Gravatar photo (like this)
• Maybe you have an online aquarium shop or blog you’d like to get attention to?

I’m basically looking for two types of contributor.

Guest authors

If you’d like to write a guest post like this one on goldfish, then please do drop me a line. Guests posts must be at least 500 words, with at least one photo you own the copyright to (or a link to an explicitly freely-usable flickr photo) and must focus on tips and insights for the reader. If you’re an expert, whether a cichlid breeder, aquascaper or a reefer, I’d especially love to hear from you. Please drop me a line.

AquaDaily staff members

Love the idea of writing more regular articles about tropical fish? Hurrah! If you’re written English skills are good and you know all about one aspect of aquariums (reefs, plants, ponds, livebearers, whatever) then please do contact me.

Please note you’ll have to commit to writing at least four posts a month, ideally one a week. This is so readers get familiar with your name, and because there’s quite an overhead to managing guest contributors.

To conclude, I’m not sure if this will be of interest to anyone. I’d jump at the chance, but that’s probably why I set up AquaDaily.

Anyway, even if just one person writes one guest article, that’d be lovely. Let me know.

Check out Katy's Tropical Fish Guide for more aquarium info.

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