Sponsored Content Editorial Guidelines
Here at Smashing Magazine, we like to ensure that the content we publish is both informative and engaging and that our readers are provided with real-world solutions to the problems they may be going through.
Sponsored content is very similar to the traditional content that is published in Smashing Magazine, except that it is explicitly designed to bring visibility to our partners and their products and/or services. The articles are not advertisements per se but rather true actionable how-tos and case studies that focus on specific products or services approved by our Editorial team.
Smashing’s audience consists of advanced designers and developers with a focus on UX design and front-end development. They look to us for guidance — articles that add value to our readers. To that end, here’s a checklist to see if sponsored posts on Smashing are a good fit for you:
- Do you have a clear developer or designer interest in your business model?
- Are you creating or offering products or services that developers or designers can leverage to solve their needs?
- Are you able to articulate a topic based on your products or services that is easily transferrable to a tutorial or case study?
If you can answer all three questions with a “yes,” please get in touch with Mariona at advertising@smashingmagazine.com. We’ll develop a publishing schedule with you that fits your budget and the topics you are looking for.
Sponsored articles are mostly hands-on tutorials dedicated to specific applications and technologies, but they will never be product reviews or press releases. The ideal case is when Smashing’s readers are able to read through an article and solve a problem, which by proxy brings visibility and value to our partners.
Figures About The Smashing Audience
Our readership is comprised of all aspects of the web design community, from designers and developers and freelance designers to business professionals and creative agencies.
- A new sponsored article goes straight to the top of smashingmagazine.com. (1,000,000 pageviews/month)
- The post goes out to the RSS feed (425,000 readers),
- It goes out in the email newsletter (207,000 subscribers)
- It goes on our Facebook page (276K friends)
- It gets tweeted by @smashingmag< (903.9K followers),
Depending on the topic, you can expect about 20,000+ page views per article in one month after publication, and your article will live on Smashing forever. We see a great average reading time of 5 minutes per article here on SmashingMag. Once a sponsored article is live, we leverage our social media channels (1.2 million friends and followers) to ensure maximum reach for the article. We’ll provide you with comprehensive insights a month after publication.
Recent Sponsored Articles on Smashing:
- Making Sense Of WAI-ARIA: A Comprehensive Guide
- The Growing Need For Effective Password Management
- Running A Page Speed Test: Monitoring vs. Measuring
- Penpot’s Flex Layout: Building CSS Layouts In A Design Tool
- iA Presenter: A Case Study On Product Pricing Considerations
You can book some extra Sponsored Tweets and Facebook posts, too! Please contact our Director Of Partnerships Mariona N. Jones at advertising@smashingmagazine.com — she will be sure to get back to you with more details very shortly.
Finding An Author
We typically work with partner or in-house authors and authors from the web community to write and develop a sponsored article. Republishing existing content works, too!
We also have talented in-house editors who’d love to work with you on creating a new tutorial (example) or a new round-up (example). Round-ups with a technical background also work very well here on Smashing (example).
Partner Authors
In the event that an in-house author isn’t available, we should work with you to identify a subject matter expert. This could be an employee or client of the partner or perhaps someone from your community groups. Ideal candidates:
- Have a deep technical understanding of the product or service;
- Ideally have demonstrated solid writing capabilities;
- Can convey complex technical topics into easily understandable sentences;
- Have a background in public speaking, developer relations, or community building.
Such authors will have a better understanding of how to position a topic from the developer or designer’s perspective which is precisely what we want for our audience.
Marketing and Sales Authors
Please understand that authors with strong tendencies towards advertisement and promotional materials typically don’t understand the technical angle needed to produce an article for our audience.
Community Authors
If you don’t have a technical or design-focused in-house author, we will help you find a respected author from the web community.
- A community author will have an-unbiased credibility;
- Will be viewed as someone with real-world, “been there, done that” experience;
- Will be able to convey their thoughts from a real-world perspective;
- May be willing to help socialize the piece by leveraging personal branding and thus scaling the article organically.
It’s expected that when commissioning an author for a sponsored piece, they are compensated with a fixed amount of $500 per article.
Get In Touch
We’re always glad to make new contacts and explore new possibilities. If you’re interested in publishing sponsored content on Smashing Magazine, please feel free to get in touch with Mariona N. Jones at advertising@smashingmagazine.com anytime. She will be sure to get back to you as soon as possible.
Last updated by Iris Lješnjanin on 30.01.2024
