Mumsnet Blogger Network guidelines

[ElinorMumsnetBloggers]

Hi there

Many of you have caught wind of our new network for bloggers, which launched last week. We're delighted about all the brilliant applications, which we're blasting through < keep em coming >. But we also want to explain a bit more about how we work, and to clear up some confusion about our guidelines for membership.

Mumsnet has long been home to loads of funny, provocative women and we're keen to give a similar platform to talented bloggers, many of whom haven?t really been heard. So we're bringing together these voices with dozens of established writers, on everything from politics to parenting (and all the juice in between).

We promote the bloggers to our audience across Mumsnet and through a new homepage for the network. We link out to all blogs and individual posts on our site and social media. It's pretty simple, really: you get the readers.

The top aim is to promote great writing, but we'll also be sharing tips on how to improve blogs and build audience, and offer a bloggers forum for peer-to-peer banter.

Bloggers in the network remain free to write about and publish what they choose on their blogs. Network members retain full control and ownership of their work.

Our bloggers will also have the option to share in any revenue generated from readers. In this way we're hoping to develop a new, more democratic publishing model in which the author and publisher split any proceeds of the work.

To join our network, we ask our members to adhere to our network's Editorial guidelines and Mumsnet's Terms of Use (with one very important exception: please note that the section on copyright does not apply to bloggers. Your blog = your rights!) If you decide to join the bloggers forum, anything you post there is part of Mumsnet Talk, so it's subject to Mumsnet Talk Guidelines and Terms of Use.

We want to build a network that focuses on great writing for its own sake. So we're open to blogs that carry the odd product review or paid link from elsewhere, within the general mix of an honest and entertaining blog. We just draw the line at blogs that focus on reviews because that's not what our network's about.

We'll update our guidelines to make this all clearer, and apologise heartily for any wobbles this caused you. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to drop us a line at [email protected].

Happy blogging.

Elinor