We pay for outside contributions. Below is what we publish, what we don't, what we pay, and how to pitch us. Read it before you write to us — it will save us both time.
Inside one of these buckets is the pitch zone. Outside it, we are unlikely to commission. The rates below are starting points and go up for established contributors.
On-the-job pieces from working cleaners — a job that went sideways and what you learned, a customer relationship that survived twenty years, a difficult building you finally figured out. Long enough to breathe.
Mechanical, granular pieces on a single technique or piece of equipment. The kind of writing that includes phrases like 'at a fifteen-degree angle' and 'after about six hundred panes.'
Reporting from somewhere we don't have a contributor — a profile of a working cleaner in a specific town, a piece on a regional water-chemistry quirk, a story that locates the trade in a place.
Honest comparative testing of cleaners, tools, or methods. Real methodology, real numbers, real results. We will not run softball coverage.
We do not accept finished drafts on spec. Send a 200-word pitch describing the piece, the angle, the reporting that will go into it, and what makes you the right person to write it. Pitches go to pitch@windowwashingguide.com.
Most pitches get a yes-with-revisions, a polite no, or a 'come back with this slightly different' inside ten business days. If we say yes, we will send you a kill fee letter and a deadline. The kill fee is 25% if we cancel.
First drafts get an editorial pass and usually a second one. Mara handles most editing personally for technique and chemistry pieces; Sam handles fieldwork. Plan on two rounds of edits and one round of fact-checking before we publish.
Net-15 from publication. We have not missed a payment in three years. We do not pay in 'exposure.'
We are an editorial publication, not a content marketing site. We expect a writer's voice, opinions clearly held, and prose that has been worked over. Sentences vary in length. Paragraphs do not all start the same way. The reader is treated as an adult with attention to spare for sentences that earn it.
We keep a small list of bland phrases that we will edit out on sight — the kind of corporate filler that signals nobody had the conviction to say what they meant. If your draft is mostly that kind of phrasing, we will not commission again. If you cannot tell the difference, read three pieces by Mara before you pitch.
Subject line: the working title of your piece. Body: angle, reporting plan, why you. Two prior writing samples linked at the foot. That is the whole pitch. Anything more is too much.
PITCH@WINDOWWASHINGGUIDE.COM →